As a blogger, you may not look at SEO as the most important part of what you do. However, getting traffic depends on SEO, to an extent. It’s necessary to pay attention to the SEO of your blog, if you want to rank well on search engines.
SEO is known as search engine optimization and it involves specific techniques within the content and the design of your website. Here’s a look at six of the top tips bloggers can use for better SEO.
Start With Keyword Research
While keywords are not used the same way they used to be used, they are still important. Start by doing keyword research before you write. It’s important to make sure you understand your market and those you are trying to attract.
The right keywords will help you gain traffic, as well. When you have the keywords ready to go, you can start optimizing your content in other ways to gain better ranking.
Put Readers First
Keyword research is important, but you still need to put your readers first. If you write for the search engines, it won’t help you much. However, if you write for your readers and you have the ability to sneak in a few keywords, you’ll be in better shape for better SEO.
Making your readers happy is the entire point of your blog. Make sure you pay attention to the user experience and your rankings will improve.
Quality Content Only
Today, if you try to publish poor quality content, you’ll struggle to get any traffic from search engines. However, if you provide quality content useful to the reader, you have a better chance of ranking and pleasing the reader. It’s important to give readers the best possible content you can produce without all the fluff.
Titles Matter
Getting the title right means you have a much better chance of ranking. It starts with the title and it starts with getting your target keyword into the title, if possible. Your title should also be compelling enough to get someone to click on it.
A strong title will not only give you SEO in the content, but also through shares on social media and links from other blogs. Make your title relevant and grab the interest of your readers.
Use a Plugin
If you’re using WordPress, choose a plugins, such as All-in-One SEO or Yoast SEO. Plugins makes getting the SEO portion of your content right much easier. Other CMS options also provide extensions and tools for better SEO.
Understand The Linking
While your content needs to be written correctly for good SEO, you also need the right linking. Interlinking is a great way to gain better SEO. Wikipedia provides one of the best examples, as they use interlinking in every article, wherever it makes sense.
When you interlink your content, the search engine robots can crawl your sites easier. You will also gain better link juice.
SEO takes time to really see the benefit from, but it’s not a hard thing to do as a blogger. Get the content right, provide what readers want and you’ll be well on your way to more traffic.
