Simple tips to improve your SEO
If you want your content to be found, it’s important to improve the SEO of your blogs. Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most essential ingredients when it comes to improving online content visibility. Also known as SEO, search engine optimisation gives search engines something to “grab and reel to the first page.”
Think of it a bit like fishing. Throw in some bait, in this case, the (keywords) and then the fish (search engines) finds and hooks the page. Next, the fishermen, in this case, the (viewers) reels in the pages for views.
We all know that the content ranking on the first page of Google is more likely to receive the clicks and visitors. That being said, we’d like to help you improve you SEO and thus also assist at giving your audience a better chance of finding your website.
What are the benefits of learning how to improve the SEO of your blogs?
It takes a lot of time and effort to create content. So you want your carefully crafted articles to be discovered by people who can benefit from what you’ve written.
Improving your SEO will benefit your website because it:
- Helps you keep your posts current
- Improves the overall search
- Helps you to add other links
- Builds brand awareness
- Others may link to your website (this is called backlinks, which Google loves and will boost your SEO even further).
How to improve the SEO of your blogs
Side note: Before you get started on improving the SEO of your blogs, you have to keep abreast with the latest “trends” in Google. By this we mean that Google often changes the way their algorithms work, it becomes more and more “human-like” and thus expects a more natural flow of content and structure.
Research the keywords
Keywords are words you select to tell Google what your post is about. One can do research beforehand to see what people are actually searching for on Google and then building your blog topics around that. You can use tools like Google keyword planner, Moz and Keywords Everywhere to help you research keywords.
Many content creators create when they feel “inspired”. The problem is that you might be writing about topics that no one is searching for.
Rather do some keyword research and determine how you can shape your blog to meet the questions people are asking on the internet. This will give you a better chance to optimise your posts for search engines.
Breaking out the long-tail keywords
Over the years, with better algorithms and analytics, search engines learnt that long-tail keywords make more sense. It sounds more realistic because in most cases, people type longer sentences into the search bar.
Example of short keywords
“Clothing shops”
Example of long-tail keywords
“Women’s clothing shops in Johannesburg”
Long-tail keywords are easier to find and if your blog post has them, then viewers will find more of your posts.
Short keywords don’t really define the search and make it hard to narrow down what the person is searching for. Short keywords will just bring up more “randomised” results making it harder for the viewer to find what they’re looking for.
Don’t overuse these keywords but use them strategically such as in the subheadings and in the body of the post.
Overusing keywords create a spam-like effect and when search engines penalise spam pages dropping them further down in ranks. The chances of people finding your content will decrease dramatically.
Think about mobile devices
When it comes on how to improve the SEO of your blogs, you have to consider the user experience of your viewers. If anything, most people use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. While people are always on the go, so should your blog posts be.
Consider the design of your blog posts. Are they resized to fit well on mobile devices? Are the pictures that you’re using in the blogs small enough to avoid the lag time when opening a post?
Don’t forget to “boost” your meta description
Keyword placement of your post is very important when it comes to ways to improve the SEO of your blogs. That being said you can’t simply slot them in anywhere and everywhere. The trick is not to stuff your post but instead, apply them carefully. One of these crucial places includes the “meta description.”
A meta description is a very short description that picks up within search engines. It forms part of the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language.) However, they can easily be forgotten in SEO. When you optimise your meta description, you’ll give your post a better chance of standing out and being found online.
The meta description will boost traffic to your website and blog posts because when optimised people will find your posts first. It is also important because it tells your audience what the post will be about.
Work the Seo magic in your pictures too
To improve the SEO of your blogs doesn’t stop at content writing, instead, you should also think about the pictures. Blog posts must be a balance of words and pictures because pictures add that extra “interest factor.”
This is important because it gives the search engine more visibility. You can do this by optimising the alternative text or simply known as “alt text.” The alt text forms part of the HTML and works hand-in-hand in helping viewers find your content.
Be sure to add your keywords in the alt text section of your images because Google “sees” and “reads” this content and this helps with SEO.
Don’t forget about your old posts
You can use SEO as a way to “revive” your old blog posts. As we’ve mentioned, with time Google and other search engines change the way they find content on the internet. It’s probably most likely that you haven’t incorporated any of the new SEO tactics into your earlier posts. This is more reasons to refresh your topics adding SEO elements.
Another thing you can do to save you heaps of time is to repurpose old blogs. We’ve written an entire blog to help you repurpose content, check it out here. Just be sure to update the blog so that Google doesn’t see it as “duplicate” content.
Give your topic tags
When it comes to topic tags try not to use tags that are interchangeable or the same word just written slightly differently. Otherwise, Google might flag your post as “spammy” and the algorithm will not be on your side.
The best thing is to keep your tags unique but still related to your overall blog topic.
We’ll show you an example of what we mean below.
Let’s use THIS blog as an example.
“Bad” or “incorrect” tags would be: SEO, search engine optimization, search engine, optimization
The actual tags we’ve used for this blog are: SEO, Google, Online Writing, Blog, Content
Can you see the difference?
Link to social media
When trying to improve the SEO of your blogs you can also use social media to your advantage. Don’t be afraid to link your blog posts to your social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
You can link to previous blogs you’ve written because this content can add value to the current blog you are writing.
Use SEO plugin tools such as Yoast
If you want to take most of the guess-work out of SEO, there’s a free WordPress plugin called Yoast that it will help you in your mission of improving the SEO of your blogs. The plugin will analyse the blog content and evaluate it for readability and SEO. It will give you useful tips that you can use to tweak your blog to make it more Google-friendly.
The Takeaway on how to improve the SEO of your blogs
When looking to improve your SEO, some tips are quick and easy to implement. Once you understand how the search engine optimisation works, you’ll be in a better place to optimise your posts more effectively.
It definitely requires a bit more time and effort, but once you understand the basics, you’ll implement these tips almost automatically.
The more you optimise your blog posts, the easier it is for your content to be found. We want you to have better chances of increased page views and interaction from your viewers.
Do you optimise your blogs for SEO? If not, try these tips and check the progress.
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