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SEO for Beginners
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how the search engines will find and recommend content. Because of this, you’ll need to make sure that you’re using SEO on your blog. If you can do this, you’ll be able to improve your search engine ranking and get plenty of traffic.
However, when you’re just getting started in the blogging world, this can often be very confusing. To help you do this, let’s look at how to do SEO.
What is SEO and Why is it Important?
Let’s start by briefly talking about what SEO is and why it can play an important role in determining the success of your website. As we mentioned, SEO is the way that search engines will rank search results.
Because there are millions of sites online, search engines use algorithms to scan through each site to find what they should be recommending to their users. SEO ensures that the algorithm sees the right things, to be able to recommend your site.
You must achieve a good ranking because 92 percent of customers are unwilling to look past the first few results. It’s also important to note that most online traffic is driven by search engines.
These days, whenever we want information, we can simply jump online and search for it. As a result, having good SEO can be a great way to drive traffic, and will often be a more effective technique than advertising on social media.
As a result, learning the SEO basics can be a great way to set yourself up for the future. When done properly, you’ll be able to enjoy a top-ranking result for many years.
Choose the Best Page Titles
When you are creating a post, you need to make sure that you take some time to make you’re selecting the best possible title. This is how the search engines will know where to classify your content.
As a result, you might want to try to put the main keyword into the title of the post. You should also make sure that the title you select is related to the content on the page.
Choose Keywords
You’ll need to make sure that you’re choosing the right keywords for your article. The keyword is what search term your audience will enter to find your content. Choosing the right keyword can often be one of the most difficult things for new bloggers.
However, it doesn’t need to be. There are many tools that you’ll be able to use to get the right keywords. For example, you might want to use SEM Rush to help you analyze what the most popular search terms are.
It’s often best to use a wide mix of terms, from shorter ones to longer tail keywords. However, you should try to include them naturally, rather than oversaturating the post.
You should also make sure to monitor the keywords to see which ones will deliver the best results. Though it will take a while, once you are most experienced, you’ll be able to start using keywords more effectively. This will deliver a steady stream of traffic to your blog.
Content Freshness
The search engines will also look at how your content freshness. This is how often you update your blog. Search engines tend to be reluctant to link to an inactive site.
As a result, you’ll need to make sure that you continue to add new posts to the site. In most cases, you should aim to add at least one new post a week. This will show the search engines that you are still monitoring the site and providing fresh content.
Get Links
Search engines are placing more weight on your ability to get links. The more sites that link back to your post the more that post will be promoted. There are a few ways that you can get people to link to your site.
First, you might want to start writing guest posts for other blogs. This is a great way to introduce people to your content. In most cases, at the end of the post, you’ll be able to include an author bio, which you can link back to your site.
Another way to get a lot of links is by writing high-quality content. Most online creators will want to link back to your site if they feel that their readers will get value from it.
Add Alt-Text to Images
When writing a blog, it’s important to include plenty of pictures. These will help break up the text, keeping the user engaged. However, a search engine will be unable to see these pictures, and can only read the description which you’ve posted for them.
Because of this, you might want to add alt-text to each picture. If you don’t know how this is the process for adding alt-text. This is the equivalent of adding a caption, so the search engine knows the picture you’ve shown.
When doing this, you might want to make the caption one of the keywords that you’re trying to target. However, it’s most important to accurately describe the picture.
As a bonus, you’ll be making the site more accessible for people with limited vision, as they’ll be able to use the description to understand what the picture is.
You might also want to try compressing the size of the images. This will allow your site to load faster. The quicker your site loads, the more likely a search engine will recommend you to their users.
Conclusion
Search engines are playing an increasingly important role in the way that we look for information. Because of this, you want to make sure that your blog is getting highly ranked on these search engines.
As we’ve seen, there are a few simple SEO for beginners’ tips that you can implement. As your site grows, and your understanding of the way search engines work increases, you might want to move on to more advanced techniques.
So, start implementing SEO on your site, to improve your rankings.
