SEO for Bloggers: 6 Ways to Search Engine Optimize Your Content
All bloggers want to go from 0 to 100k visitors as quickly as possible. SEO for bloggers is the number one most important factor to help get you there.
Outstanding content isn’t enough anymore and Google is getting smarter. To rank your blog content now, it has to be long-form, properly structured for SEO, match user intent, and have other relevant, high Domain Authority (DA) sites pointing to it.
Sound complicated?
Don’t worry, I have you covered.
One thing I learned about blogging is that you don’t need 100k or even 10k visitors to start making real money with your blog. If you treat your blog like a business – focus less on writing and more on scaling your backlink acquisition, you’ll reap the benefits.
When I first started my blog, I had only 5 “pillar posts” – high-quality, long-form articles that I could easily get links to (bonus points if they have statistics to cite for easier links). After launch, I focused 100% of my energy on obtaining links to these articles rather than writing any new content.
Who’s gonna find me if I don’t have Domain Authority?
Luckily, I was able to find some hacks to scale my link building acquisition and guest blogging strategy.
According to Ahrefs, I obtained over 1,000 links from 200+ referring domains in my blogs first 90 days:
This had a direct correlation with my sites early organic traffic as well:
Which led to future SEO success after 17 months:
By implementing a few simple SEO tactics including link building, optimizing your title tags and headlines, improving the quality of your content, and outreach, you can grow your traffic in less time.
Plus, if you’re looking to outsource, there are plenty of companies that offer SEO services and others that sell white label SEO that can help scale your processes.
Here are some top SEO tips for bloggers to try this year.
1. Do Keyword Research and Focus on 1-2 Long-Tail Keywords that Match Your Reader’s Intent
Optimizing your blog posts is not about stuffing as many relevant keywords into the article as you can (that can actually hurt your SEO now). It’s about writing for humans first, and search engines second.
Including 1-2 long-tail keywords that you’d like to rank for helps create solid content that doesn’t feel unnatural or forced. You should also focus on these long-tail keywords because they are longer, offer more user intent, and are usually less competitive.
Make sure to check different SEO tools to view the keyword “difficulty” score to see how much competition is out there for that keyword. If you have a new blog and are just starting out, aim for long-tail keywords in the 200-2,000 searches per month range with difficulty score under 0.2.
2. Include These 1-2 Target Keywords into Specific Areas of Your Post
Now that you’ve completed your keyword research and chosen 1-2 good keywords you’d like your blog post to rank for, it’s time to place them in your article.
Where are the best places to add these keywords so that your SEO rankings are as high as possible? There are four main places, outlined below:
1. Title Tag
The title (headline) of your blog posts will appear on the search engine results page (SERP) and will be the first thing search engine’s use to determine the relevancy of your content.
You’ll want to include your target keywords in the first 60 characters of the title, and make sure they’re at the beginning so they don’t get cut off (optimal title length is 50-60 characters.
2. Your URL
Search engines still look to your URL to figure out what your blog post is about. It is a good idea to optimize your URLs on every post you publish, as each blog post will live on its own unique URL.
3. Your Headers and Body Copy
Mention your target keywords throughout your blog post’s headers and body content. You should stick with a natural cadence and not overdo it.
For example, your primary keywords should be in your H2 headers in the form of a question.
“What Are the Best SEO Tips for Bloggers?”
Then your answers to those questions should be in numbered H3 headers.
Ultimately, you need to write for reader intent. So whenever you’re writing a post, first focus on what matters most to your audience, not how many times a keyword is on the page.
4. Your Meta Description
This is the description that appears under your page title on the SERPs and is very important for click-through-rates.
The keywords inside of the Meta Description as not as important as the title tag, but a clear description that matches your readers’ intent is a good place to start.
3. Quality Content is King
Google’s latest algorithms are rewarding content-rich, long-form articles that include things like videos, images, and infographics.
Aim for 2,500+ words, as the average first-page result contains 1,890 words. Just remember that content quality and relevance play a huge role in page rankings. Solely creating a long blog post won’t help your rankings if the content isn’t relevant to the user’s query.
4. Link Building Strategies for Bloggers
Link building is one of the most important and toughest parts of SEO for bloggers.
Google sees links to your blog as an indication of your site’s authority.
Each link is a signal to the search engine that you have a quality, authoritative website, and ranks you higher in turn. Remember that the first key to receiving more inbound links is to create content that others will actually want to share.
Here are four more link building ideas for your blog:
1. Write guest posts
A guest post is a post you write for someone else’s blog that is valuable to their audience. You can reach out to similar bloggers in your niche.
One easy way to do this is through email or simply Facebook. Just ask them if they accept guest posts on their blog, create an outline for them, and write the content.
Make sure to include 1-2 relevant links to your site, only mention your brand when it makes sense to do so so that you don’t come across as spammy. Writing guest posts take a lot of work, but is a great way to build links to your site.
2. Create a statistics infographic
Blog writers love statistics. If you can bring a large number of statistics into an easily accessible format, you’re providing value to writers who are looking for that information.
If you give this content away for free, many users will either put it on their site or simply link to your site as the original source of the content.
3. Don’t forget internal links
Linking to other pieces of content on your site helps assist users with site navigation, and can also contribute to SEO success.
Make sure to identify the most important pages on your site, be strategic with your anchor text, and link to relevant content only.
4. Build relationships with other bloggers
Real relationships are a huge part of link building. People are much more likely to help someone they know and trust than a stranger they’ve never interacted with before.
Always think about the goals of other bloggers and make sure to share their content, comment on their posts, re-tweet them, and find other ways to collaborate.
5. Give Readers the Opportunity to Subscribe
Include prominent links that offer readers the ability to subscribe to your email list. This allows you to regularly engage with your audience and maximizes your blog’s impact.
I currently use OptinMonster to collect email addresses on my blog’s sidebar, within in the posts themselves, and on exit-intent. Provide a freebie offer also entices users to subscribe – and it doesn’t have to be something super in-depth. A simple one-page checklist works just fine.
Also make sure to include social sharing options so that readers can post to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other networks.
6. Optimize Your Images with Alt Tags
Whenever you upload a photo to your blog, make sure to include keywords in the file name and fill out the alternate text field with a brief, keyword-rich description of the photo.
Since search engines cannot “see” images, they need to be told what they are with alt text. Adding this alt text to your images will improve SEO for bloggers.
SEO FAQs
It is to create content for users and rather than search engines as meeting the needs of your users is far more important than just ranking high as you want users to return to your pages.
– Make your site informative and valuable.
– Know what your readers need and supply them with it.
– Act in a way that allows and cultivates user trust.
– Make expertise and authoritativeness clear from the get-go.
– Provide an appropriate amount of content for your niche.
– Avoid the use of distracting advertisements.
– Use links sparingly and wisely.
The short answer is no, SEO does not require much if any coding knowledge. Even still, having some knowledge of coding and an understanding of how programming works can get you much farther by having a leg up on the competition.
SEO for Bloggers – Summary
I don’t expect you to incorporate each of these SEO best practices into your blogging strategy right away. But as your website develops, you should look to these SEO tips to help you rank higher organically and eventually monetize your blog.
I think you nailed the most important pieces of writing a quality blog post on the head. Very simple and to-the-point! Through my experience, writing valuable content is definitely the #1 most important thing among anything else. If you have a 2,000+ word article that’s trash, it doesn’t matter how much optimizing you do – it’s still going to be trash 🙂 Value, on the other hand, will get shared, linked to, and passed along with much less effort than trying to race a Ferrari without gas…
I think another helpful point to add is referencing Google’s related searches for additional long-tail keyword ideas that you can thoughtfully integrate into your post to help rank for other queries in addition to your main keyword.
Hey Christy, thanks so much for your comment and I agree with you on all points. I’m going to update this post soon and will include your ideas around creating valuable content (most important) and the importance of long tail and related keywords. Thanks again and please reach out anytime! 🙂
I always forget about interlinking. Not sure how important it is compared to the others on the list. But I’m assuming it’s important since it’s on the list 🙂
I appreciate the fact that you have taken the effort of providing a piece of helpful article for SEO techniques that can surely guide many individuals.
Nice blog post to optimize website content for search engines. Content always plays an important roles to drive traffic to a website and increases the visibility.
Awesome, thank you SO much! I love your website for being educational without sounding boring. Always keeps me coming back.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve been trying to learn SEO strategies. Great post for me and people who are learning SEO or digital marketing. I have a question kindly guide me
Which is the perfect structure for the url?
1) digital.com/category/article-world
2) digital.com/article-world
Thanks man, glad you liked it. No category is best. The cleanest URL structure closest to the domain works best. 🙂
Thank you ! I appreciate you for providing SEO related information for bloggers. It really helps SEO’s to learn more and more through this kind of blogs.
this article is so awesome it includes such a great point about seo thank you 🙂
Nice blog post to optimize website content for search engines. It really helps SEO’s to learn more and more through this kind of blogs.
I completely agree with your all these 6 reason you provided in this article. Specially “optimize the image with alt tags”.As a blogger I value images for teaching and for drawing people to my articles.
Simple and informative blog, thanks for writing this.
Adam Enfroy, I enjoy reading blogs. These tips you have shared are indeed very helpful and will help people come up with more SEO-friendly content. Your presentation style and format of the post is also quite nice. Keep sharing more informative tips for content writing. Share more images too next time.
Awesome article Adam! Every type of content is increasingly being preferred in visual mode. Infographics, charts, diagrams and more offer great opportunities to catch the reader’s attention and also getting linked to other articles. Great images can help a website’s rankings climb higher.
Thanks for sharing all of your experiences!
This is a great read. Search engine optimization is incredibly important for marketers. It’s nice that you have shared your thoughts on this. You have clearly discussed SEO from A-Z.
Awesome information about SEO, very helpful. Thanks.
Hi Adam, you have done a great job. Your post is clear and very relevant to the latest SEO strategies. These days, video is a demanding content that is able to engage many readers for its visual appeal. It would be better if we include video content to this list of most effective SEO tips for blogger. In fact, placing a short and relevant video within a blog post is a good idea to retain the attention of the readers. It will increase your readers’ interest as well.
Hi Adam, you have published very informative tips about search engine optimization. This article is beneficial for every website owner and blogger for optimizing their website and blog. Thanks for publishing such kind of article. I am eagerly waiting for your next publication.
WOW, i am a professional blogger and was looking for some effective ways to promote my blogs etc. Thanks buddy to provide this exclusive information.
Great article about SEO. Link building is definitely a very great skill for a good blogger besides great content.
nice article.
You have given the spirit of all the SEO practices. It is written well and strategically. Great article.
Thanks for sharing the genuine seo tips and how blogger can optimize their blog to drive the huge traffic on blog. I am also a blogger and your tips will really work for me..
You have explained very well about the SEO related information, It’s really very helpful for everyone to know how to optimise their website. We also provide SEO Services in Louisville.
Nice Article! It was exciting
Hey Adam, Very informative and useful post to optimize content. You have explained the whole topic in a simple way to understand easily. Also, these tips are helpful for content writing I will make use of it. Thanks for sharing..!
Thank you so much for this great post. I’ve seen the Google Wheel but didn’t really know what it was all about. Really appreciate the detailed explanation on this topic!
Thanks Enfroy for sharing the valuable content for blogger..
I have recently started the blog and your tips on seo will help to improve the digital presence of my blog..
Please let me know if you have some more effective technique through which i can improve the ranking of my sites..
Thanks for this seo info
Good Day adam! you have explained seo very well… i was flattered after reading your article. keep it up dude!!
Hi, Matiha here, Slovenia. Question about point 3 (internal links). What is your opinion about importance of internal links vs external? Which one would you consider more important if you had to choose one? Thx, Matija
Hey Matija, great question. Your internal links should include “topic clusters” that connect related content. For example, I have my post on the best web hosting services. Then when I go deeper into specific reviews or “vs.” articles, I make sure to internally link them in a topical cluster. Your broader, long-form articles should rank to your lower-level articles and vice versa. I also recommend adding internal links at least somewhere near the top and the bottom of every article to increase your reader’s dwell time and time on site.
Adam in your blog you explained very crisply. In the future, the text queries will be less in comparison to voice searches. People will be using the voice assistant in the mobiles to find answers to their queries. The content should be optimized as per voice search. The content should be conversational.
Hello,
Great information, thank you for sharing this wonderful post.
length of article matters alot and how do we do a longtail research
Valuable information and excellent design you got here! I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and time into the stuff you post!!
This is the awesome Blog thanks for sharing this
You have explained it very well. I never do ALT on images. I thought it is not really important. Thanks anyway
Nice post and it’s informative too and good tips are given for blogger to optimize their content. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing the genuine seo tips and how blogger can optimize their blog to drive the huge traffic on blog. I am also a blogger and your tips will really work for me..
Adam,
Thank you for Valuable information and excellent design you got here! In the future, the text queries will be less in comparison to voice searches.
I agree with that – it’ll be interesting to see how voice search increases as the interfaces we use change.
Nice blog post to optimize website content for search engines. Content always plays an important role to drive traffic to a website and increases visibility.
Agreed!
One of the best article about content optimization. Content is always the king of SEO
Awesome information about SEO, very helpful. Thanks.
SEO for bloggers is the number one most important factor to help get you there
Awesome information about SEO, very helpful. Thanks.
No problem!
Hi Adam, Thanks for the information. It is true that the blogs should have quality and unique content so that it gets noticed.
Making sure that your content is already SEO optimized before you hit publish is one of the most beneficial things you can do, as it saves you a whole lot of time and effort later on.
This article is very helpful and I got so much new perspective regarding SEO. Thanks for sharing this article.
Thank you, I appreciate your blog
Hello there! Thanks for sharing wonderful information, as an SEO executive it is very useful to me. Thanks again and keep sharing!
It’s really helpful for beginners like us. Thanks for sharing!!
Awesome, thank you SO much! I love your website for being educational without sounding boring. Always keeps me coming back.
This article is very informative, updated and transparent.
What a useful information provided by this blog! It’s remarkable. Thanks for helping me out
I have started blogging and for further do I have been researching a lot about SEO that how and when I will be doing this. So after going through your blog I am now able to know some tricks and I hope these will gonna surely help me out to ranking.
Thank You so much for sharing.