Hi Friends!
You may recall a few months ago when my friend Danielle stopped by to share some of her SEO knowledge with you guys. Many of you found it helpful, so she’s back for round 2! Read on to learn more!
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Hi LGB readers! I’m thrilled to be back today with more tips on SEO and blogging. If you missed part one, I recommend checking that out first- SEO 101: How to Increase Organic Search Traffic for Blog Posts.
All caught up? Let’s dig in to part two.
You’ve installed an SEO plugin and fill out your title tags religiously. You spend time coming up with a catchy title and include at least one image with each post.
Now what?
Even if you made a pretty title image, Google can’t read the text. So if you want it to show up in search, you have to help the search engines by filling in the alternative text. I like to do this as soon as I upload the photo so I don’t forget. If you want to go back and fill in alt tags for old photos, you can either click on the photo in each post, or go to your media gallery.
Don’t stuff this area with keywords! Either use your post title or a relevant phrase or sentence.
If you use a share button for Pinterest, the alt text is often what will show up in the description for the pin, so this is another great reason to be filling it in!
Photo Name
This is an often overlooked area of optimization. Just like you want to optimize the URL for your blog post, you want to optimize the name of your photo, which turns into a URL of its own once it’s hosted on your blog. The name should be short, simple and related to your post.
Title + Description
What you fill in here will show up when you hover over the image or while the image is loading.
Caption
You only need to fill this out if you want a description to show up under your photo in your blog post.
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Compressing Photos
Images are one of the biggest culprits for slow page load time, which affects everything from reader retention and engagement to SEO rankings.
Here are three ways you can shrink your images and optimize them for the web:
Plugin options
Install the WP Smush.It plugin to optimize your images. This plugin will optimize each new photo you add behind the scenes, and you can also run all existing photos through the plugin in your media library.
Manual Options
Save your images as PNG files and upload to http://www.tinypng.com. Then download and upload to your blog. If you’re creating your image with Picmonkey, like many bloggers these days, you’ll see the formatting option when you hit “save.”
Save for Web
If you’re using photo editing software like Photoshop, you can choose the “save for web” option.
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Page Load Time
According to Kissmetrics.com, “40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.”
Test your load time with GT Metrix.
GT Metrix also gives you a detailed report of what you can do to improve your speed. I recommend having a developer take a look and help you make the changes. Some of them can be technical and require understanding code.
WordPress can install the WP-Cache 3 plugin.
“W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.”
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What are your biggest struggles around SEO for your blog? Let me know in the comments so I can help further!
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Huge thanks to Danielle for stopping by today!
Enjoy!
–Lindsay–
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Always love your tips – thank you!!!
Amazing tips- I still remember the first post of this and has been super helpful- cheers!
Good tips! I always used alt text but only ever utilized it for short keywords. It definitely makes more sense to use the post title there or something someone will likely search! Thanks for the tips!
i always learn from you danielle, so thank YOU!
Great info. here. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Great tips! I’m working on load times right now so this is really useful 😀
Thanks for sharing!
So helpful! Thanks a bunch
A super duper post with awesome information… thanks!!
I’m so a noob to SEO it’s not even funny. I’ll start doing everything suggested on that list, especially the alt text, which I thought was just bogus before, but now see it’s importance.
I’m glad this was helpful! Since you’re just getting started, I would definitely recommend checking out my first post that’s linked at the top of this one.
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Awesome tips, I’ve been blogging for a year and I still have trouble with SEO and etc. I’m wondering if the tips will translate to a non-wordpress host. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Jess, what blogging platform do you use? These tips are definitely important for ALL platforms, but the way you enter alt text, etc. is a little different for each. Most of my clients use WP, so I usually focus on that, but I have helped with blogger too. Just send me a message if you want 🙂
Def learned some new things here!
Excited to try the Smushit!!
This is such a great post! I have noticed that the loading speed on my page could be slow at times, and I was wondering how to fix that!
Great tips! I struggle with determining the best keywords for a post. What’s the best way to figure out which to use?
Hey Jessica, you can use Google Keyword Planner or google.com/trends to determine the popularity of keyword phrases. The Keyword Planner will provide ideas for you, while Google Trends is just a way to compare specific ideas you have. You can also start typing your topic into Google to get ideas on the top searched phrases. Please feel free to contact me with any other questions 🙂
Thanks so much Danielle! This is so helpful!
This is super helpful! :] Thanks so much!
Super helpful great tips
THANK YOU. I don’t know anything about SEO. I’l now save pics as png and use alt tags!
Wow great tips, thanks for shedding some insight about blogging!
Thanks a lot for this post! Even though compressing my images took forever my blog loads at least ten times faster =)
Is there a way to rename a picture? They all have cryptic names and i haven’t figured out how to change them without reuploading. Any ideas?
I wouldn’t rename any old photos that are already on your site in case someone has the link saved/bookmarked/linked on social media. It could cause 404 errors, which will be bad for SEO and user experience. I would just focus on having short, related names moving forward. 🙂
Which SEO plugin do you recommend?
I like Yoast All-in-one-SEO. I think it’s now called WordPress SEO. https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
Thank you for having Danielle guest post – so hopefully (both of her posts to dates) – while SEO sometimes is a bit soul crushing, she gave very specific and easy to do tips -appreciate it!
Thank you, Linsday, for letting me share some SEO knowledge with your audience! I’m so happy to see it was helpful for so many people!
Hi There
Some great tips here.
Just to add, when doing alt tags, make sure that you describe the image as best you can.
Also on a call to action button, make sure to add a title tag there as well, to give users an idea where they are clicking through to.
Lastly, yes page-speed is extremely important as it’s part of Google’s ranking algorithm.
Thanks for the other links. Here is some plugins I did not know about.
Cheers
Dave
Great additions, Dave! Thanks for commenting!
Thanks a million for this post! I had no idea that SEO was this crucial until I stumbled on this amazing website – looking for health blog posts, but found this post which has given me new perspective. Thank you Danielle, for the tips and Lindsay – i love your blog!