SEO Complete Guide 2024
What Is Blog SEO?
The term “blog SEO” refers to the process of optimizing blog’s content as well as its structure and HTML code to be able to use the search engine. The common tasks that are associated with blog SEO include optimization of the site’s on-page by installing plugins, enhancing the speed of loading pages, and improving internal linking.
Why Is Blog SEO Important?
Search engines are an important source of traffic for blogs.
Indeed, a recent study of more than 1000 bloggers revealed that SEO was the third most significant method of getting traffic (just ahead of email-based marketing).
Our blog is a living example of the effectiveness of SEO. We have a good amount of traffic through Twitter, LinkedIn, email and direct traffic. When combined the sources listed above comprise the majority of our traffic each month.
However, Google provides us with more than 396,000 people per month.
Without SEO for blogs our site’s growth was significantly slower.
If you’d like to understand how you can improve the SEO of your blog Check out these tried-and-tested SEO strategies.
Best Practices
Find One Main Keyword For Each Post
Every blog post you post must be optimized around one key word.
If you build your blog around a wide range of words, Google and other search engines become confused. They don’t understand what your post is actually about.
If you concentrate on a specific key word, Google can easily understand the content of your blog post to be about this specific area.
Your first task is to locate one key word for your blog post.
In the event that your website is brand new I suggest focusing upon the long tail of keywords initially. Because long tail keywords aren’t extremely in the market for.
To locate the long-tail keywords you need, enter the term in Google the search…
…and look up the search terms Google suggests under Google’s search bar.
It is also possible to use an excellent tool for free named “Answer The Public”.
This tool will generate the list of keywords based on questions that you can improve your content around.
(Besides keyword research This tool is also great to come up with topics for content.)
Optimize Your Blog Post
Once you’ve identified an extended tail keyword and you’re looking to optimize your blog post to include that phrase.
It’s not necessary to put your keywords with many times on your site. This is known as ” keyword stuffing”. Keyword stuffing was popular earlier in the past. However, it could be more harmful and beneficial in the present.
In addition, you should include your keywords in a couple of prominent spots on your website.
Title and Title Tag
The majority of CMSs (like WordPress) have a title field located at in the middle of the page.
.
It is also important to include your search term in the title of your blog post as well as the page’s page’s title tag
For instance the page on our website, we have included our targeted keyword “SEO keywords” in the post’s title:
The exact word exactly on our Title Tag:
In terms of your blog’s SEO your name tag will be the more significant of both.
It’s because Google places a lot of weight on terms that appear in the title tag of your page.
Some WordPress themes, plugins and templates automatically give your blog post’s title tag. Some do not. You should therefore make sure you double-check the page’s HTML to ensure that your keywords are included in the title.
Intro and Conclusion Sections
It is also important to include your keywords in the blog post’s intro and in the conclusion.
My experience is that placing your keywords in these two areas can help in terms of SEO on-page.
For example, I’ve published a book that was titled copywriting: A Ultimate Guide.
As you will see, I have added my primary phrase (“copywriting”) within my introduction…
H1, H2 and H3 Subheadings
Make use of your keyword within an H1 subheading such as H2, H2 or H3.
The majority of WordPress themes automatically give the post’s title an H1.
Like the title tags, you have to verify your page’s HTML to ensure.
Alongside an H1, you should add at minimum one subheading with a keyword.
For instance, I have added my keyword to the H2 subheading
These suggestions are among the most essential SEO practices to remember when you are optimizing your blog’s content.
They only scratch the top of the iceberg. In terms of on-page SEO, you could also optimize your website’s alt text, speed and mobile-friendly design Mobile optimization and many more.
If you’d like to optimize your every each post, I suggest viewing this short video.
Setup SEO Plugins
Wix. Squarespace. Shopify. WordPress.
All of them claim that they are “SEO friendly” out of the box.
However, regardless of the level of SEO-friendlyness each website has generally, they require some assistance from an SEO extension or plugin.
Yoast SEO is the most well-known SEO plugin available for WordPress. There’s also all in One SEO and RankMath.
Additionally, there are similar SEO plugins for nearly every blog platform available.
The specific plugin you use does not matter much. It’s crucial to use the correct kinds of SEO plugins for your blog.
In particular, you’ll want plugins that
● Let you optimize your description and title tags. This way you’ll be able to write SEO-optimized title as well as descriptions for meta tags.
● create a websitemap The XML sitemap aids search engines to locate the blog’s posts and pages
● Allow you to design a site that is SEO friendly design: For blogs, this means that you can quickly not index pages or posts you do not want search engines to index.
● compress images to speeds: Page speed doesn’t affect your ranking. But pages that load quickly will give you a small boost.
Once you’ve got those plugins installed It’s the time…
Put Your Blog On a Subfolder
If your blog is actually your own, then you don’t have to fret about this.
What is the best option if you’re an SaaS company? Do you sell services?
Where do you place your blog?
In the past there was a time when people create subdomains for their blogs such as:
blog.example.com
It turns out that subdomains don’t have the best SEO qualities.
In addition, you can place your blog in the subfolder like this.
example.com/blog
Use Evergreen URLs
Web URLs are often extremely long.
It is, longer URLs aren’t ideal for SEO.
We discovered a connection between shorter URLs and better Google ranking.
This is the reason I suggest shorter, customized URLs for every blog post.
For instance, many blogs (including WordPress), generate URLs based on your blog’s title.
However, you are able to easily modify your URL to reduce it to a shorter length.
As long as your URL includes keywords that you can use, you’re in good shape.
But that’s not all there is to it. problem with URLs that are long:
Based on the way your blog’s configuration is Your blog posts may be tagged with dates on your URL.
This can add extra content to your URL, which can harm your SEO. However, it can make your older posts look… old.
If you do revisit and revise your content from the past the date on the URL remains the same.
A unique, permanent URL for each post avoids both of these problems.
Write Unique Meta Descriptions
We have analyzed more than five millions Google result pages.
One of the most intriguing conclusions from our study is that the meta description may boost organic click-through rates.
You should create an individual meta description for each blog article you post in your website.
If your website isn’t equipped with the meta description on it, Google can create one, based on the information that is on the page.
Sometimes, their descriptions will entice users to click. But the majority times written descriptions perform better.
NOTE: You don’t need to include the keyword inside your meta-description. Google doesn’t include description in its algorithm. This is to improve organic CTR on Google’s SERPs.
Internal Link Between Posts
Are you looking for a simple, white hat SEO technique that actually performs?
Try using internal linking between posts on your website.
The simplest method to benefit from internal linkage is by following this two-step procedure each time you publish something new:
In the beginning, you must include 5-10 internal links in your latest post. These links should be pointing to earlier content on your website.
In the second step, you should add 5-10 internal links to earlier posts to your latest post.
While you’re there ensure that you’re using anchor words that describe your article. For example, instead of anchor text such as “this post”, use anchor textlike “this post about user experience”.
This is all there is to it.
Noindex Category and Tag Pages
Tag and category pages are nearly 100% identical content. This can lead to grave SEO issues.
This is the reason why I suggest that the majority of websites include”noindex,” or the “noindex” tag to category and tag pages. This way, these largely unimportant pages will not be found in search engines.
One exception is when these pages bring an increase in traffic to your site. If that is the situation, you are able to keep them on your site.
If you’re like the majority of bloggers then your tag and category pages must have the tag “noindex” applied to them.
Create a Blog Sitemap
One of the best aspects of blogs is that since they’re constantly releasing new information, Googlebot usually crawls them constantly.
To make it simple for Google to search and index your entire blog I would suggest making use of the sitemap. A sitemap is essentially the list of hyperlinks to your entire blog pages and posts.
A variety of SEO plugins can automatically generate an online sitemap for you. For instance, Yoast created a plugin which links to articles and pages.
In terms of pages, this is another reason why you should use the sitemap feature on your blog. As opposed to blog posts which are displayed on your blog’s feed, pages may be hidden within your website.
This could make it difficult it for engines to locate these pages. Internal linking to these pages could aid. However, it is never a bad idea to get your pages listed on an online sitemap.
Monitor Your SEO With Search Console
Search Console is an essential search engine optimization tool for every blogger.
There’s a lot of features packed into the GSC.
There are some aspects you must be aware of for SEO on your blog.
The first is called the Performance Report.
This report reveals every keyword you are currently ranked for on Google (and what percentage of people click on your page).
Also, you should take a look at your “Coverage” and “Sitemap” sections.
The Coverage feature will show you how many pages you have indexed on Google.
The Sitemap feature displays the most recent sitemap Google has examined. It also allows you to create the latest sitemap.
Optimize Your Posts for Featured Snippets
You’ve likely seen featured snippets of information before.
These are short fragments from text Google draws from results of its search. They typically show up on the top of the organic results.
Google often pulls the text of blogs and other articles for use in Featured Snippets. Given that blogs almost mostly only publish content and blog posts, the Featured Snippet optimization should be a part of a blog’s SEO strategy.
In order to tap into Featured Snippets you have to determine first what kind of Featured Snippet you’re looking for.
If you’d like to rank for the term “Definition Snippet”, then ensure that you include a definition Google can incorporate into your blog post.
This is an illustration:
Another popular type of Featured Snippet that is commonly used is an “List Snippet”.
The most effective way to make your post more efficient is to include many subheadings within your blog post.
For instance the content we have currently rank within this featured snippet.
Every item Google includes on the list comes from an underheading of that post.
Reduce Your Bounce Rate
The question of whether or not Bounce rate is an important Google ranking factor is a matter of discussion.
It is true:
A few studies in the industry have revealed a connection between bounce rates and rankings.
Does correlation refer to causality? No.
There’s no harm in reducing bounce rates. This could aid in improving your SEO ranking.
It is therefore sensible to work on increasing the bounce of your business.
On a larger scale the best method to lower your website’s bounce rates is to post material that provides Google users what they are looking for.
(In another word: content that is in line with the search engine’s requirements.)
When someone stumbles across your blog and comments: “Nice! It’s exactly the kind of thing I’m looking to find” They’ll remain and look over your content.
If your content isn’t the right fit the user will bounce.
If there are enough bounces, Google will notice and lower your rank.
In addition I would suggest focusing on your blog’s style.
Users can make a quick decision to remain or go away from your blog. If your site appears very professional, they’ll be more likely to remain.
In actual fact I am looking over our Google Analytics data, I see that our guides designed professionally generally have lower bounce rate than standard posts.
Publish Content Designed for Link Building
Your blog is ready for success with SEO.
It is true:
Your blog could have incredible top-quality content. It is possible to implement every SEO technique available.
To get your blog to rank on Google you must create backlinks. Many of them.
Since you have a blog, your website is well-positioned to attract hyperlinks. You’re regularly producing high-quality material. The kind of material that other bloggers are looking to share via links.
If your primary goal using the content marketing strategy is to generate more hyperlinks to your blog, I would suggest the following areas to focus your efforts on
A review of 900+ million pages found that the following kinds of posts received more links than the average.
It’s not that you shouldn’t publish only informational posts or infographics. However, when it comes to creating hyperlinks, these formats are the most effective.