Improve your SEO as a Blogger with These 3 Tips

Whether you’ve been in the blogging world for years or for a few months, you’ve likely heard about the term “SEO” or “search engine optimization”. What is it exactly, you ask? I’m getting a little technical in the post but just hang with me if you are overwhelmed. I will try to keep this as simple as possible!

Generally speaking, SEO is the process of increasing and improving traffic that comes to your blog from a search engine, like Yahoo or Google.

Want to know more details? Before you read this post, watch a video that I found via Blogging with Amy, produced by Common Craft on YouTube:

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Now that we’ve learned what SEO is, we know that as bloggers we want to improve it. It increases your page rank {one of many factors that contributes to where your pages come up in Google searches}, brings more visitors and hopefully permanent readers to your blog and helps you compete with the ever growing list of blogs on the web.

There are three methods I’ve found to be effective in improving my SEO and therefore the views and clicks onto and within my blog. I am NO expert, I’ve only been blogging “for real” for less than two years. But let’s learn together by counting down my tips on how to use these methods!

3. Use anchor text to boost SEO. 

“Anchor text” is the visible part of a hyperlink. In a blog post with anchor text, you don’t see the url, what you see instead is clickable text that directs you to another post, either on your blog or someone else’s. Here’s an example of how I might use anchor text:

If you liked this strawberry recipe, be sure you have strawberries on hand for making it by learning how to keep your berries from getting moldy. 

Here’s what anchor text looks like on the html side:

how to keep your berries from getting moldy

It is the destination page of the link that gets the SEO benefit of good anchor text. So, in this example, my post on how to keep berries from getting moldy is the receiver of the SEO mojo.

Two tips for making anchor text strong:

• Make your anchor text keyword-rich. That means, instead of just putting “learn how to use scripture with kids here“, use relevant keywords to write your link: “learn four ideas for teaching Scripture to your toddler.” 
• Utilize this strong anchor text when creating inner links {links to other relevant posts on your own blog} and outbound links {links to great posts on other people’s blogs, especially those in your niche}. Outbound links share the love and provide other bloggers with “external links”, which is a link to your site that comes from another blog.

2. Use relevant keywords in your posts.

Figuring out how to best use keywords can get rather complicated, but I really am striving to keep it simple for myself and not get too caught up in the logistics. What I do is this:

Before I write a post about a certain topic, I think to myself: what terms would I Google if I was searching for information on this topic? If I want to know how to get stains out of white pillowcases, I’m probably going to type in “how to get stains out of white pillowcases” rather than “getting stains out of my bedding”. I want others who are wondering the same thing to find the answer at my blog. 

Using specific keyword phrases in your title, body, url of your post and tags will help you in search engine results and will simply draw readers to your posts because they’ll know what it’s about! 

If you’re on Blogger, you’ll want to use your keywords mostly in your title and first few sentences. This is what Google will grab when people type in search terms. If you’re on WordPress, using keywords in your headings makes for great SEO (or so I’m told!).

Google offers a free tool called Adwords for keyword research, if you want to take this a little further. Just go to the link below and type in a word or phrase and click “search”. Under the results, you’ll want your keywords to align with the results with low competition. You can also see how many searches have been performed for that particular phrase within the last month.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

photo credit

1. Write good content.

If you want people to explore your blog and come back for more, write something people want to read.

More than keywords, anchor text, tags and algorithms, providing readers and future readers with fresh, engaging content is what will bring people back to your blog time and time again. Others will link back to your helpful posts {external links}, pin them and share them with their friends, family and blog readers.

Stumped on where to get started writing powerful posts? Tomorrow I’ll share my three best tips for writing good content, so be sure not to miss that post!

Any questions I can answer about blogging? Feel free to leave them in the comments! And don’t forget to read the rest of the series! 

If you enjoyed what you read, have my free {no spam} email delivered directly to your inbox! Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner