SEO Tips For New Bloggers

January 25, 2023

A guide for new bloggers where they can learn how to SEO their posts and boost their rankings.

What Is Seo And Why Is It Important For New Bloggers?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and its all about how Google and other search engines work out where to place your post in the search results. Now, as you might already know, those posts or pages that find their way to the first page of the search engine results (SERPs) are much more likely to get read than those that aren’t.

What this means is to get traffic your posts need to be as far up the SERPs results as possible, and that is why SEO is so important, because it is the process of achieving this. Traffic is of course important because it helps you achieve the goal you have set for your blog. This could be educating people on a certain topic, encouraging them to join a community, or enticing them to buy a product.

The good news is that traffic from search engines tends to perform much better than that from other sources like social media. This is because it targets people with a specific interest or question, so they will already be interested when they arrive at your post.

All of this is why it is so vital for bloggers, even new ones to understand SEO and be able to use it to achieve the goals for they have set out. Fortunately you can find an easy to understand guide on SEO for begingger bloggers, below. Read on to find out more.

Keywords Are The Cornerstone To Your Seo Strategy

For effective SEO, there is one thing that matters above all else – keywords. Keywords are words or phrases that you will need to use throughout your blog, and people enter into search engines like Google to find content like yours. That means for your blog to be found and read, your keywords need to closely match those that the audience you are looking to attract, use.

How The Heck Do I Choose The Right Keywords?

Picking the right keywords to use in your blog isn’t just a matter of luck. Instead, you will need to conduct rigorous keyword research to find out what the best words are phrases are, as well as which will provide you with a better chance of getting ranked.

The first step of this process is to take your seed word or phrase (usually the topic you are talking about) and then braindump all the words and phrases you can think of that surround it, and that people (and specifically the readership you are trying to attract) would type into a search box if they were looking for a post on that topic. This is where it really helps to have a good idea of the type of reader you are looking to attract and an insight into the kind of things they are looking for.

Once you have your seed word/phrases and those that surround it you can use a keyword tool to access the data you need to choose the most effective keywords for your blog. However, there are several problems that newbie bloggers come across here that you need to watch our for.

Trouble Shooting The Keyword Research Process

The first problem that new bloggers often come across is that the tools that SEO professionals use for keyword research like Moz, and SEMRush are pretty darn expensive, and often outside of the price range of a beginning blogger. Fortunately there are other effect keyword research options to explore. One of the simplest of these is to use Google, which is free! You can use free keyword / seo tools like Ubersuggest too, which will allow you to see suggestions for similar keywords, and phrases as well as the the cost per click as well as the search volume, which leads us onto the next point issue that many begging bloggers encounter – using high volume keywords in their posts.

Many beginning bloggers see keywords with a high search volume, and decide to use those in their posts. After all, that is what people are searching for right? Well yes, but the problem with high volume keywords is that then tend to be more general, which can get your blog lost in sea of competotiors and means its not found by people that are most interested in it. Instead using keywords with low volume is better as they tend to be more specific and niche and so will target you intended audience in a much more effective way.

To help you stay more focused on a specific audience, try using long tail keywords, with low search volume as this means you will have less competaition, and so your blog is more likely to rank higher in the SERPs.

Perfect Your Title

Another way that new bloggers can boost the SEO of their posts is to use their blog title to their advantage. Indeed, the single sentence that makes up a title has many roles to fulfil, including encouraging the reader to click on the post and read it, as well as improve SEO. The good news is that these aims are often aligned and can be achieved with the right use of keywords. This is because by making sure that your keyword is in the title you will guarantee that both your reader and the search engines will know precisely what it is about. Just be sure to use those keywords amongst dynamic adjectives to really tempt your reader in.

Using Your Keywords In The Main Body Of Your Post

Keywords also need to be put to use in the main body of your post. In particular, using your most important keyword phrase in the first paragraph of your work, will help to signal to the search engines what your blog is about and so boost its SEO.

Keywords also need to be used in the rest of your blog as well, and a great way to do this is to pepper use the long tail keyword phrases we talked about earlier. To be effective phrases need to be distributed in an even manner throughout your work.

Although, it is worthn noting that many new bloggers can make the mistake of keyword stuffing. This is when you use your keywords too many times, or crowbar them in unaturally. Unfortunately, Google and other search wnegine will pick this up, and are likely to penalise your blogs rankings because of it. With that in mind, be sure to limit yourself to a maximum of around one keyword or phrase per 100 words.

SEO Your Meta Description Summary

When posts are displayed on the Goggle SERPs, its not just the titles you will see. You’ll also notice that there is a brief summary of what the post contains. This is known as the meta description, and once again its vital for SEO.

Meta description can be a bit tricky to perfect, especially for beginning bloggers, as they are very short, and need to follow a very specific format. For instance, most expert suggest that meta descriptions should never exceed 13 words. The reason for this is that if they are longer they will be cut off by Google and so won’t make as much sense or be as effective.

Also meta descriptions need to accurately describe both what the content in the post is about, and the benefits it provides to readers. The good news is that usually in blog content, this means learning about a specific topic or getting a question answered which means if you begin your meta description with discover, learn, or explore you usually be on the right track.

Even Your Images Can Be ‘SEOed’

For new bloggers, the craft of writing is often foremost in their mind, but it also pays to remember that even images can help you improve your SEO, if you deal with them in the right way. What we are taling about here is making use of alt-text or alternative text associated with the images you use to illustrate your blog. Indeed, bot scrap alt text as when searching your post as it helps those that may not be able to see your content. It also helps Google to index the image for Image search results. This means its another great way to get your keywords and phrases into your post, and increase your SEO.

Changing or adding alt text to an image will depende on the platform you are using, But its often as easy as clicking on the image and following the prompts that follow.

Quality Content Is Still King!

Keywords are vital, bu the quality of your content will always matter too. After all, blogging is all about providing great quality content that not only ranks well on Google, but provides real value for your readers as well.

With that in mind, there are some tactics surrounding conten that you need to follow. The first of these is to make sure you format your blog posts correctly. This means using the proper headers (H1, H2, H3, H4 etc). Indeed, using these headers is a double win because not only will they make it easier for Google to see what your post is about, but it will make it easier for your human visitors to read as well.

Erring on the side of long form content is also recommended for SEO purposes, as posts that are more than 1000 words are much more likely to be indexed than those that aren’t.

Internal Linking

Another way to signal to Google that your blog is a high quality piece on a specific topic is to use internal linking. Put simply this means linking your post to others on your site. The good news is that its highly likely even as a begging blogger that you have a few posts that relate to the topic or some of the things you have discussed in your current post.

By creating an internal link to these posts ( aim for 2-3 per post) you will be able to provide more information to Google on the content of your post, making it easier to rank. Additionally by providing links to other relevant content on your site you will noy only add value to your readers by directing them to posts they are likely to be interested in, but you will encourage them to spend more time on your site. The great thing about this is the Google will pick this up, associating longer site visits with better quality content and boost your SERP accordingly! Nice.

External Linking

You can also boost your blogs SERPs by using external links. This means linking your post to external website that are relevant. Although, there is an art to doing this well. For instance, linking to a competitor might not be the best idea, even if they have a post that fits exactly what you are saying. After all, you may inadvertently end up directing your reader to their site, instead of encouraging them to stay on yours.

Additionally, you will want to look to link to other sites that have high authority. That is they are well established and appear high in the SERPs. This is particular important because by linking to high authority site you demonstrate to Google and other search engines the credibility of your own blog.

Final Thoughts

SEO can seem intimidating, especially for bloggers when they are just beginning. However, it is a very important part of making sure your work gets found by the right audience and achieves the level of success it deserves.

With that in mind, spending some time and effort into using the simple tactsis above to optimizing your posts for SEO, and choosing the right keywords, creating quality content and ensuing you have relevant internal and external links is well worth the investment as it will help increase your blog’s long term chances of success.