How To Do SEO For Bloggers? SEO Tips For Bloggers Anyone Can Implement

Any and every blogger would like to gain more traction within the search engines and generate more organic traffic for their website.

The problem is, the concept of search engine optimization (SEO) can seem so foreign and/or overwhelming to many new and even veteran bloggers.

Many people get freaked out by all of the algorithm changes put forth by Google (yes these happen every year), and how to stay ahead of a marketing strategy that seems to be constantly evolving and changing.

The good news is that if done correctly and methodically, SEO can really help you grow your blogging business and lay the groundwork for long-term success.

And over-time it will just become second nature with the consistent effort that you put in.

In this article, we’ll take a look at a few helpful SEO tips for bloggers that anyone can implement.

Make sure to save this link or bookmark this page so you can refer back to it.

How To Do SEO For Bloggers

1.) Long-Term Mindset

First things first, let’s ensure we have the right mindset when it comes to doing SEO for your blog.

SEO is in no way an overnight process.

There’s a good chance I just lost 50% of people who are reading this blog post after saying that.

But it’s true…and as a blogger you should already know that you need to be in this for the long-haul.

You must adopt a long-term mindset if you ever want to see major growth from your blog.

Give your SEO efforts at least 6 months before drawing any conclusions if it’s working or not and continue implementing the other steps that we’ll lay out below.

2.) Keyword Research

In order to get found within the major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, you need to target the right keywords.

For this step you can use any of the tools provided below:

• Ubersuggest (free)
• Google Keyword Planner (free)
• MOZ Keyword Explorer (paid)
• Keywordtool.io/google (paid)

A lot of bloggers get this step wrong and target keywords that are way too broad and competitive.

I am a big believer in going after long-tail type keyword phrases – meaning terms that have anywhere from 3-6 words in a single phrase (sometimes more).

For example, you may want to target “strategies to make money from home” rather than “make money”.

Although the longer-tail terms may have less monthly search volume, if you rank for enough of these over-time, it can really start to add up to a healthy amount of organic traffic.

It’s important to be realistic here as well…Not every blog post you write will rank on page #1 of Google, it’s just a simple fact.

But the more quality content you produce on a regular basis, the more options you give Google to choose from.

Which brings me to my next point.

(If you want to learn more in-depth on keyword research please be sure to read my post here or watch my video here).

3.) Produce Consistent & Quality Content

Within this next SEO tip for bloggers, there are two areas to focus on when it comes to content generation.

Consistency and quality.

Master these two and you put yourself way ahead of the blogging competition.

1.) Consistency- When it comes to doing SEO for your blog, it’s essential that you publish consistent blog content.

Google wants to rank a website that they know is updated with fresh and unique content.

Also, if you’re starting to establish a readership, know that your followers are craving more informative content from your end.

• Strive to publish at the very least 1 blog post per week…This equates to 4 or so per month.

If you can do even more, that’s excellent…but this should give you a good place to start.

Producing content on a consistent basis also provides more opportunity to rank within the search engines.

As stated in the keyword research step above, you won’t rank or “hit” for every blog post you write, but generating lots of content will increase your chances.

It will also allow you to go after many different keyword phrases…More opportunity means more potential to rank highly.

2.) Quality: You want to make sure that each piece of content you produce is of the highest quality possible.

Now obviously not every blog post you write will be your best…we’re all human and cannot always produce our best content, but the majority of your content should be highly valuable and helpful to your readers.

Do not write low-quality articles just to get something published on your website.

Take the time to craft well-written pieces that will bring people back to your website.

In return, your search engine rankings and organic traffic should improve.

4.) Optimize All SEO Tags on Blog Posts & Main Pages of Website

This is an SEO step that most bloggers get wrong in my opinion…Or if they are implementing these tags, their work could use major improvement.

This is where the keywords you generate in step #2 will come into play.

There’s 4 on-site tags that we will briefly discuss here that you will want to optimize for every blog post you publish.

• Title Tags: Your Title Tags essentially hold the most SEO weight and should be optimized with your most important keywords in place. They are seen in the search results as the blue hyperlink (see screenshot below) and also in the browser window tab. Try to make your Title Tags as close to 70 characters as possible without going over.

• Meta Descriptions: Your Meta Descriptions don’t hold any SEO weight, but they do affect click-through rate as they are the snippet of text that is seen below the Title Tag, underneath the URL (see screenshot above). It is recommended to write a unique and engaging Meta Description for every page/post on your website. Try to keep them around 150-160 characters without going over that limit.
• Header Tags: Like Title Tags, Headers Tags on a website are very important in regards to SEO and pack a lot of punch. These are generally the main heading above any block of text on a blog post/webpage. They help break up the page, explain what a certain section is about and provide Google with another ranking signal of what your content is about. These are the only front-end facing meta tags on a website so it’s important that they read naturally to your visitors, while also incorporating target keywords. Header tags can be used in a hierarchy starting with the H1 tag, H2, H3, H4 and so on. You can see an example of a header tag below:

• Image ALT Tags: As bloggers, we most likely have tons of images on our website. The problem is, most people when doing SEO for their blog completely ignore their Image ALT Tags. Whenever you upload an image to your website you have the option to write an Image ALT Tag along with it. This helps Google better understand what the image is about and offers additional optimization.

If you are using WordPress, a plugin that will make this process as easy as possible is Yoast.

If you start optimizing your meta tags from here on out over a long enough period of time, you should start seeing noticeable increases in your search engine rankings and organic traffic.

5.) Copy Optimization & Internal Linking

Optimizing your copy with target keywords helps add more relevancy to each and every one of your blog posts, giving Google a strong signal of what you’re trying to rank for.

Internal links (links pointing to other relevant posts/pages on your website), helps users navigate your site more effectively and also helps spread some link equity throughout your pages.

When it comes to copy optimization and internal linking, try to only add in target terms and links where appropriate.

We do not want to “keyword stuff” here or try and “force” any unnecessary internal links.

Be methodical in your approach with each and every blog post.

6.) Add Schema Markup

Structured data or schema markup helps Google better understand what the content on your page is about.

Google has said that adding structured data to your blog articles can potentially enhance your position in the search results (see here).

This also gives you more opportunity to rank for rich snippets depending on the types of keywords you’re targeting and how you are formulating your content.

There are really helpful plugins to make this process really easy such as this one here.

Any blogger using schema markup for SEO purposes are putting themselves way ahead of the competition.

7.) Build Quality Backlinks

Link building generally comes after much of the on-site SEO work (all the steps discussed above) is completed and should be a strategy that you do on a monthly basis.

Google heavily favors websites who have a strong backlink portfolio.

Websites that rank the highest in Google are normally the ones who have other quality websites linking back to them.

Let’s quickly bring up a very simple link building example, and one of my favorite techniques which is guest posting.

Guest posting is as easy as researching/reaching out to other relevant blogs in your niche and asking if you could write a high-quality article for their website.

Within your content, you would insert a link that points back to your website.

Once your guest post is published to the external website, you’ve built yourself a quality and natural backlink which Google will love.

Again, this needs to be an on-going effort in order to acquire as many quality backlinks as you can.

But over-time, this strategy alone could dramatically help with overall search engine rankings, domain authority and organic traffic.

8.) Track Your Progress

As a blogger utilizing SEO tactics, you must track your progress to see if your work is paying off or not.

You will want to monitor your traffic data, search engine rankings/keyword movement, conversions/goals, crawl errors and more.

This will help you identify trends, patterns and areas where your website could use improvement.

A few tools that come to mind that I believe are essential are:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Rank Tracking Software (i.e. Serpfox, MOZ, Ahrefs)
• Screaming Frog

Get comfortable diving into the data at your disposal and use it to your advantage moving forward.

Knowledge is power and especially when it comes to SEO and blogging.

Conclusion:

To close, implementing SEO on your blog needs to be a long-term marketing strategy and should not be thought of as a quick fix. Follow these steps one-by-one slowly until you get the hang of implementing proper SEO on your own. Be extremely consistent with your efforts and Google won’t have a choice but to notice the changes you’ve made on your website. We are building your foundation here, and the work you put in now will be well worth it in the end.

Check out the video version of this post here: