Breaking into the first page of the search results can be tough, especially for a blogger. Search engine marketing can be a complicated business, but there are a few simple topics to focus on to improve your blog SEO.
The basics of blog SEO can be broken down into four categories: keywords, titles, content, and linking.
Find Your Keywords
Take some time to research keywords for your blog posts to focus on. These keywords will be central to your blog SEO and how search engines categorize and rank your posts. The Google AdWords keyword tool can help you choose a keyword or key phrase relative to your content. It’s important to choose a keyword or key phrase that has a lot of searches, but fewer competitors. Even a small adjustment in phrasing can change these variables, so experiment a little.
Attention Grabbing Titles
Once you have chosen a good keyword or key phrase, include it in the title tag of your blog post as well as the post URL. The text you use in your title tag will become the headline for search engine results. This will be the most prominent part of the result, so leaving the keyword out of the title tag will hurt your blog SEO. Try to keep the post titles less than 79 characters to avoid a search engine cutting off your title in the results page.
A good title tag that includes a well-chosen keyword will make it easy for people to find your content. Remember that this title will be shown among pages and pages of other sites. The titles of your blog posts should be relevant, but interesting enough to stand out among the rest of the pages.
Your Content vs Search Engine
The content you write absolutely must be relevant to the keywords you use to tag it. You can’t write an article about bee keeping, then use election keywords just to gain timely attention. Doing this will not only hurt your page rankings, but decrease your integrity as a content creator.
Keyword density will help search engines ensure that your blog post is, in fact, relevant to the keywords that you choose. If you only mention your keyword in the title and never in the post itself, your page wont be indexed efficiently.
You’ll want to mention your keywords multiple times in your posts, but avoid overdoing it. If the text no longer reads naturally, cut back until it does. Overusing keywords will lower your credibility as a quality source of information. Many blog SEO experts suggest a keyword density less than 7%. So for every hundred words in your blog or article, don’t use your keyword more than seven times.
Linking To And From Your Blog
Your blog isn’t alone on the internet. Your blog can benefit by sharing links to other websites. Ask blogs and websites to link back to you if your content is related and don’t be afraid to use outbound links. This shows that you are well connected and have valuable sources. It also drives traffic between pages, which the other party will appreciate. They may return the favor in the future. If a well-established website chooses to link to content that you have written, their readers may trust that your page has important information.
Once you’ve published your content, share it! Linking your blog on various channels of social media can increase your blog’s visibility. Sharing your links increases the chances for people to find your content. It’s also important to engage within the community of people you want to read your blog. Make comments and answer questions you see pop up about the topics you write about. Doing so will help develop your image as a trustworthy source of information.
An Ongoing Experiment
These are four simple blog SEO principles for you to understand and use to your advantage. Search Engine Marketing methods are constantly changing. So you’ll have to keep an active eye for what works, what doesn’t, and what did work but doesn’t seem to any more.
You’ll have to gain experience in understanding the difference between good and bad keywords, titles, and keyword density. There’s no precise formula to get to the top of the search results, so it will take time and effort to get there. But don’t get discouraged and have fun experimenting!