SEO Basics for Beginner Bloggers
A blogger who takes the time to learn about SEO (search engine optimisation) will have a greater chance of obtaining free traffic to their website. But also a greater chance of getting the right sort of visitors to their blog.
Google and other search engines look at a lot of different elements on web pages to help them determine how to categorise them. Your website should make your topic clear, so that search engines can easily decide what sort of traffic to send to you. There are many different ways to do this.
Here are some rudimentary SEO basics to keep in mind when setting up and posting to your blog.
The name of the blog
Is the name relevant to your topic? Picking johnsmith.com might not make it clear to Google that you aim to be a resource about carpentry. A better way to identify what your blog is about might be to call it carpentrytips.com.
The link structure
Does the site look like this: carpentrytips.com/p123 or carpentrytips.com/essential-tools-for-a-carpentry-enthusiast. By creating a descriptive link structure for blog posts, you have a better chance of ranking when someone googles “What tools does a carpenter need?”
Meta data
The data that shows up in search engine results should appeal to people. Search engines will look at your meta data to ensure it’s populated. Meta data includes titles, a list of keywords describing what the page is about and a brief description summarising what the page is about.
Images
Images on blog posts help SEO and help you connect with the people that read the page, too. Search engines can’t read what an image is, but you can include an alt tag to describe the image so that search engines can deem its relevance to your page and topic.
Posts
Posts should include relevant keywords and keyphrases. This doesn’t mean you should use the keywords and keyphrases unnaturally. However, it’s smart to ensure that you are inserting a sprinkling of keywords and keyphrases that people are searching for.
For example, if you want to appeal to people looking for “how to lose weight”, you might include that keyphrase in the title, the beginning of the blog post, one of the subheadings and the end of the blog post.
Using a keyword research tool can be very useful. You will find many free online options. But remember, quality over keyword density. Search engines will ignore websites that appear to be “keyword stuffing” their content.
Frequency of updates
Every time you update your blog, the search engines will come to see what’s new and to figure out how to index that web page. So, if you haven’t updated your blog in 3 months, don’t be surprised if visitors stop coming.
SOURCE: Learn How To Blog
