3 Essential SEO Tips to Optimize Your Blog

We had such a great response from the first SEO tips post and I’m excited to share another post that will help you grow your pageviews and achieve better ranking on search engines. This one is jam-packed with awesome SEO Tips for Bloggers from one of the top SEO experts! After providing you with the basic SEO tools you need for your website, this time we want to focus on the actual optimization; in other words, you need to make sure that search engines understand what your post or page is about, while ensuring that your reader also finds what he/she is looking for in your content.

Here are 3 areas you need to focus your optimization on:

SEO Tips to Optimize Your Photos:

Each picture you upload on your page or post should be optimized; search engines can not YET read your images, so adding a text will help them understand what your image and post/page are about. Google recently published new guidelines as it indexes web images differently and here is what you need to do:

• Be sure to add a description in the Alt Text field.
• Be sure to include the keyword you’re focusing your post/page on
• Be sure to add your brand (to increase your brand exposure)

You do not need to title the pictures a specific way when uploading them on your blog platform nor do you need to add a title, but be sure to add your description in the Alt Text field.

SEO Tips to Optimize your Posts:

SEO best practices change regularly thanks to search engines amending their algorithm, but here are some best practices for your blog posts that were applicable 8 years ago and that still are today:

• Choose your keyword wisely; think about what your post is about and focuses solely on one topic. You should opt for a longtail keyword (Ie: “Nordstrom Half Yearly Sale” instead of “Sale”) – you will have a higher chance of ranking on Google’s first pages with a longtail keyword, increase your pageviews, and help your readers find the info they’re looking for on your blog.
• For a WordPress blog, plugins exist to help you optimize your blog; the most used one is Yoast SEO, a free plugin that guides you through your post/page optimization with a system of stop lights. You can opt for Yoast SEO’s premium version for even more optimization features. With the Yoast SEO plugin, you can easily add a focus keyword, SEO title, slug, and meta description. You also want to ensure your longtail keyword is in your meta description.
• Just a few of the steps I take to optimize each post include placing my longtail keyword in the first paragraph as well as throughout the text where natural.

SEO Tips to Optimize your Site:

Now that you understand the basics of onpage optimization, your entire site should ideally be optimized… however, if you’ve been blogging for years, optimizing 3,000 posts may be overwhelming!.

Instead, focus on the past content which you feel is evergreen; maybe you have a post on styling a classic ruffle skirt, or you worked a lot on your favorite Christmas recipes, these are the posts you’ll want to focus your optimization efforts retroactively, whilst also optimizing your current/upcoming posts. It will take some time at first, but optimization will become second nature as you get used to it!

You also want to optimize each key page or category on your site. By optimizing these pages with appropriate keywords that help your site rank, you will better reach your target audience and your content will be seen more. Afterall, you dedicate a lot of time and effort creating content so you certainly don’t want that hard work to be for not!

If you are like me, SEO optimization can be daunting, but keep in mind that you’re optimizing your content so your readers can find relevant information; so they come back and visit your brand regularly as they identify with your content. Don’t forget to focus on keywords that are relevant to your brand and content! And when in doubt, don’t hesitate to contact a top SEO expert!

Hope you will make the most of these SEO Tips to optimize your blog! What kind of SEO tips are you looking for? Let me know in the comments below! If you missed the first post, check it out here, and if you are new to blogging or you are wanting to grow your blog, check out my series on How to Start a Blog. Here’s a handy pin so you can save this for later.