Hi Friends!
I have a very special guest post for you guys today. For the past few months, my friend Danielle has been helping me improve SEO for my blog. She’s phenomenal to work with and a wealth of knowledge so I asked her if she’d be willing to share some of her top tips with you guys since I know a lot of my readers have blogs of their own! Danielle is also a business coach, so if you need help with business strategy, social media management, SEO or blogging, definitely go check out her services on her website Danielle Zeigler!
So, are you ready to learn? Here we go:
What is Search Engine Optimization? This means optimizing your posts for search engines like Google and Bing so they can better understand what the post is about and what questions it will answer for readers. A nicely optimized post will rank better and reach a wider audience. “Organic search traffic” means visitors who find your blog through typing a query into a search engine.
When you’re thinking of optimizing your posts, you should be thinking of how to help your target audience, not just how to rank better or reach more people in general. Start thinking like your audience. What do they want to know? What questions are they asking?
How to optimize your posts:
First, let me stress that shareable, engaging content is more important than keywords. However, following a few easy steps can help increase your organic traffic and reach more relevant readers.
1. Keywords: Choose a keyword phrase or two that best represents your post idea. Ex: “How to cook spaghetti squash”
a. Use Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to find the most popular (most searched) way to phrase your keywords. Compare multiple phrases to see which has the highest traffic (low-medium competition is best). There are tons of keyword tools out there, but these are quick, easy and free, so start here. For the example above, other search phrases might include “best way to cook spaghetti squash” and “how to bake spaghetti squash”
2. Title: Your post title is possibly the most important aspect of your blog post. This will entice people to click, shows up in social media sharing, is usually your H1 tag for SEO, etc. Titles with the most clicks often include: “How-to”, “Mistakes,” “Secrets,” Questions (people are typing full questions into Google more often now) and lists. Examples include: “3 Ways to Cook Spaghetti Squash,” “The secret to cooking perfect spaghetti squash,” or “4 mistakes people make while cooking spaghetti squash.” Keep your title under 60 characters and be sure to include your keyword phrase. This will most likely be used for your title tag.
3. Title Tags: Google will show about 60 characters. Include keyword phrase(s), but don’t overdo it.
4. URL: Include your keyword phrase(s) — you can shorten it to use just the main keywords, use dashes rather than underscores, and use all lower case letters.
5. H1 tags & Header tags: The H1 tag is usually your post title. Make it engaging and include your keyword phrase(s). Secondary headers are a great way to break up the content. They also cue readers (and search engines) in on what your post is about if they quickly scan it. Use closely related keywords in the header tags.
6. Meta-description: Google shows about 160 characters. The meta-description is not used for ranking in search engines, but what you put here will encourage people to click on your link. Use an alluring snippet from your post, a call to action, or write a short introduction to the post, such as, what problem will reading your post solve for readers? Google won’t always use what you enter. Sometimes it will pull text related to the search query, but it can still be a good idea as a backup.
7. Content: I mentioned having engaging content. Make sure you also use your keyword phrases within your blog post. You only need to use a few related phrases once or twice. Focus on your writing and don’t keyword stuff*.
Bonus Tip: Use phrases to link to other posts you’ve written, too. This will keep the reader engaged in your blog longer and will signal to search engines that your blog is cohesive and organized. Make sure to have the link open in a new window.
8. SEO Plugins: If using WordPress, grab a free SEO plugin. Yoast All-In-One is highly recommended.
Visual Example:
When searching for “how to cook spaghetti squash,” this is what the post looks like in Google. Lindsay appears on the first page for this search.
In no time you’ll get the hang of optimizing your posts and be able to draw more organic traffic to your blog!
*A note on keyword stuffing: Keyword stuffing is when you use your keyword phrase as much as you can. Not a good idea! Google has evolved and it’s now recommended to use similar phrases so Google can get an idea of what your post is about.
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Huge thanks to Danielle for sharing her expertise today!
Enjoy!
–Lindsay–
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Super informative post! I knew SEO is important but I had no idea where to start, or what things actually mattered. Thank you SO much for the tips – I feel like now I can actually start making my posts more SEO-friendly!
Thank you so much for this, Lindsay-and thank YOU Danielle! This has been something I was aware of but not familiar with so cheers for the heads up!
I’m glad it was helpful!
I think it can be difficult to find the right balance of writing for SEO and keeping it authentic. There are blogs I’ve clicked away from because it’s so obvious they are writing for SEO and SEO alone. It sounds robotic and contrived.
Yep, that’s what keyword stuffing sounds like! The search engines are smart enough to pick up on the general theme of your writing so there’s no need for that 🙂
Wow! Thanks Lindsay and Danielle! This so cool! I will definitely be using this, I had no idea about this, and it hadnt even really crossed my mind! I will now though! If it helps much as it seems!
That would be great to help reach out to more runners who want to learn to be the best they can be and would appreciate advice from my insight as an elite!
thanks danielle! 5 1/2 years of blogging and I’m just now learning these things.
This is great. Thank you for all the help and advice.
Very interesting! I know that SEO is important, but a lot of this stuff overwhelms me at times. I like how Danielle broke-it-down though. It actually feels as if I could make some of those positive SEO changes pretty easily.
Awesome advice! I have been blogging for 4 years now (woah, is that right??) and still feel like I know nothing about the back end of things. So helpful!
This made it SO simple. Thank you! Most articles I read on SEO go way over my hobby-blogger head, but this made sense and is definitely something I can begin to think about incorporating.
I agree! Most posts about SEO seem to be written for other people who work with SEO already. Bloggers can definitely benefit from just incorporating a few of these tips or taking it one tip at a time.
great tips! thanks so much!
Such an informative post! I know I need to work on improving my SEO, so thanks for the tips!
Love this post! I have been trying to get better with SEO and am slowly learning the in’s and outs of it 🙂
Definitely pinned this! How helpful!
Great tips! I didn’t realize how important this was and she made it very easy to understand. Thanks for sharing!
GREAT POST & thank you !! Printing out for future use!!!
Thank for sharing this Lindsay! I’m so happy to see it’s been helpful for your readers.
Great post! I know and do a lot of these things, but today I learned some more great tips. Thanks!
huge thanks for you and Danielle 🙂
Very cool and SUPER helpful!! Thanks so much! I am definitely going to get a plugin for WordPress now.
Thank you for all the fabulous tips!
Great tips. I think SEO is such an art! You need everything to be searchable but sound natural to the reader.
Thanks for the helpful tips. Since I’m just entering the blogging world, I am definitely pinning this for future use.
This is so helpful! Thank you both!
Wow, I have much to learn about! I’ve heard about SEO before but it just sounds so over my head I’ve never taken the time to learn, I’m definitely going to try to ramp it up using some of these tips, thanks for sharing!
Miche from Buttons and Birdcages
GREAT POST! This is so helpful and I will definitely be implementing some of these tips for my own blog!!
Ahhh thank you for this Danielle! SEO has been on my list of things to start learning but I really didn’t know where to start. This is very helpful!
Amazing tips! Thanks for the advice.
Quick question – Is the plugin Yoast All-In-One the same as WordPress SEO by Yoast? It’s the only plugin I can find by Yoast. Thanks so much.
i believe so.
Yes, these are the same. Sorry about the delayed response and sorry if I messed up the name!
This a really great and condensed list. I have tried using the Google keyword tool but it really confuses me. Any tips on how to navigate this? Also, for the meta-description, does that get automatically populated or is there a way to fill this in for each blog post?
SEO has been one of the hardest things for me to learn and I feel like I’m just barely starting to understand it. Thanks so much for these tips!
This is a good one!!! Thanks, Danielle & Lindsay. Especially love the google keyword tips 🙂
SEO is hard for me, and I get lazy about. I feel like it’s just so much extra thought to put into a post once you’ve already poured a ton of energy into writing it, but I can completely understand the importance. Thanks for the reminder!!!
Thanks for sharing how you we can all make improvements to our blogs! Before reading your post, I had no idea what “Organic search traffic” could be. Something to do with food, maybe?!
This was a wonderful introduction to the world of SEO! Thank you for this Lindsay! I’m very excited to learn more about this as I try and actively grow my blog this year. And thank you for the introduction to Danielle!
This is really helpful info! I remember jotting down notes at blogging conferences but getting overwhelmed by all the things on my ‘to do’ list by the end of the day and then not doing much with it at all!
i definitely know the feeling!
I research daily, trying to keep up with changes in SEO. Thank you for breaking this down in steps and showing us what the end result should look like. Helps to have a visual. Thanks, Danielle and Lindsay!
This is such an informative, helpful post! Thanks so much for sharing!
Nice post, Danielle. I just love Yoast and use it on all my sites. 🙂
Another fun method of doing keyword research is to just start typing in a google search and see what it autofills. Surprise!
Yes, that’s definitely one of the ways I research. It’s also a good way to get blog post ideas!
Thanks for the tips in terms that are easy to understand!