SEO basics for beginning bloggers
Starting and maintaining a blog is very exciting, but you also want to reach a broad audience. That is why understanding SEO is crucial.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a combination of strategies to increase your blog's visibility on search engines, making it easier for potential readers to find your blog.
SEO is not an exact science with a fixed set of rules you have to follow. It's a strategy where you try to concince search engines that your blog is worth a ranking on the search result page.
Basics of SEO
In a previous articles, I explained how search engines work. SEO is the 'art' of structuring your blog to make it easy for Google to categorize it. When your blog is optimized for seach engines, it can rank higher which leads to more traffic.
One thing I want to tell you (and I hope I will not disappoint you) is that it takes a long time to see the results of your SEO strategy, especially if you have a new blog.
There are a few important terms that will keep on coming back when you read about about SEO :
Keywords
On-Page SEO
It handles the correct use of keywords, creating quality content andhaving a good user expperience.
Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
It includes: loading time, UI/UX (user interface/user experience), site speed, ease of crawling, ...
As this is a bit technical, I will not go into much depth on this one here.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the process of finding the right keywords to target in your blog posts.
Let's say you are passionate about bonsai trees and you plan to write a blog around this.
The first you will do is find a lot of topics you will discuss in your blog. These are the keywords you write blog posts about.
Possible topics can be 'how to prune bonsai trees', 'can you make an apple bonsai tree'
There are 2 main type of keywords you can target:
Short keywords
Although they have a gigantic search volume, the first page on Google will be occupied by major players.
Let's say you want to target 'SEO' as keyword, the first page on Google will be conquered by Ahrefs, SEO.com, Semrush, ... for this keyword.
So, how you can ever rank on Google if all these short keywords are targetted by big companies?
This is why you (and me) as beginner have to target long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords
They often have a much lower search volume but a higher intent and lower competition.
For example, instead of targeting 'SEO' as keyword, you may target 'A beginners guide to SEO for bloggers'.
The above long-tail keyword has less search volume, but the chance of being ranked for it is much higher than a short-form keyword.
As beginner (like me), you should only target these long-tail keywords.
On-page SEO
This is everything you do on your website or blog post to make Google-friendly. You have direct control over everything you do and you can tweak it as much as you want (as long as it keeps your page user-friendly).
The most common on-page SEO techniques are:
Title tags
A good practise is to put your primary keyword at the first part of your blog post title, rather than at the end.
Header tags
These 'smaller' tags are perfect to break down your long-term content and search engines also use these tags to make a structure of your blog post.
Quality content
Spread your keywords naturally througout the content, but don't exagerate. Using the same keyword over and over again is considered as keyword spamming and search engines don't like that.
Remember: Google rewards good blog post with traffic (even in times of AI and continuous algorithm updates).
Internal linking
Internal links (links to other articles on the same site) help search engines understand the structure of your site and it keeps the readers engaged (you keep them longer on your site).
Ideally, you should have at least 3 internal links in each article.
Depending on your article, you should have 1 to 2 external links (links to other websites). External links are used to give extra information to your readers.
Image optimization
Use relevant images throughout your text and describe each image with a proper name and include the alt text with keywords.
This not only helps for SEO but it also makes your content more accessible.
Embed relevant videos
By embedding a video in your blog post, you enhance the experience of the reader.
YouTube is another search (and part of Google), so it's always good to have another way to have your post being found on the internet. And videos are getting a prominent place in the SERP's too.
Me, I don't have any videos embedded on this blog, but I am thinking of starting a YouTube channel for this blog and then I will link both.
Write a meta description
If you have a WordPress blog, this can be done using the Yoast SEO plugin.
Metatags were used to display a short description of your page in the SERP's, but nowadays AI has evolved so much that Google writes its own description.
I keep writing meta descriptions because I still think it might help Google a little bit to understand what the blog post is about.
High quality content
High quality content is king when it comes to SEO.
Search engines are becoming smarter and smarter and are capable of scanning and understanding your posts with the use of A.I.. Traditional SEO techniques are still the cornerstone of your ranking strategy but A.I. will play a more dominant role in search engines.
Google is smart enough to see if you deliver a high quality content by analyzing your content, so make sure you make every post the best there is on the internet.
Creating quality content is all about finding the right balance between 'pleasing' the search engines and 'pleasing' the real users who need information.
But makes it makes your post a high quality one?
Originality
It is nearly impossible to write something that nobody has ever written about before. The key is to ensure that your content approaches the subject in an original way.
Being original is not that difficult: just be yourself and write in your own style and give your vision on the subject. Don't just copy popular blog posts, everyone does it.
Engaging
Also try to stimulate interaction with your audience by asking them to leave a comment on your bog post.
Length of your post
In what is the perfect length for a blog post I go a bit deeper in how long your blog post should be.
Frequency
As you might have noticed, search engines love predictability (and stuff that makes their virtual life easier). If they know you post new blogs every monday and friday, search engines will schedule their bots to visit your blog on those days (ok, it will nog happen immediately but after a while they will notice you have a fixed posting schedule).
Not only publish new posts but also update older posts regularly (search engines love new and updated content).
Your audience will also love this predictability by knowing they can read new content every wednesday or so. Combine this with a newsletter and you have a good strategy.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensure that your blog is optimized to be navigated, indexed and understood by search engines. It helps increasing visibility and rankings.
Technical SEO is in fact the behind-the scenes stuff that power your organic growth engine. It's not the most fancy thing to take care of, but it is incredibly important.
I will cover the most fundamentel aspects of technical SEO:
Mobile friendliness
Site speed
Securing your site
Have a sitemap
Off-page SEO
