7 Simple Blog SEO Tips: How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts

I’m sure you thought, how do I do SEO for my blog more than once in your blogging endeavor. Or at least I hope you are.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t focus on SEO until over 2 years of blogging and it was a giant mistake. If I had started these blog SEO tips when I began, I think my business could be in a much different place.

But that’s part of learning anything new. You’re not supposed to know it all (or in my case anything) before you begin. And blogging is no different.

I have always enjoyed writing and helping others but never understood why I didn’t have consistent traffic. The first year or so I am not even sure I knew what SEO stood for (Search Engine Optimization).

But now that I’ve turned this into a serious brand that I want to grow I couldn’t avoid SEO anymore. I’ve learned a ton recently through mentors, fellow bloggers, and one of my favorite courses ever, Stupid Simple SEO. This course has been a gamechanger for helping me learn how to implement SEO in my blog.

If you’re a newbie and feel overwhelmed about SEO, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Keep reading to learn easy blog SEO tips to help you get more people to your site.

These simple tweaks can make a huge difference in your page views! 

How to Do SEO For Bloggers

If you’re a blogger and aren’t concerned about SEO, you’ll be in for a surprise in the future. I wrote on my blog for two years without ever caring about SEO or keyword research.

Neglecting SEO single-handedly one of the three biggest mistakes in my blogging career.

Read that again, one of the biggest mistakes of my blogging career! Being too lazy to have a basic understanding was one of the reasons no one was reading my blog. 

Because, if you use these blog SEO tips on a regular basis you can amass huge page views, subscribers, and consistent monthly blog income.

Don’t be like me and waste countless hours on other stuff and neglecting the biggest thing of all — SEO.

While you might get Pinterest traffic the algorithm might change in the future like Facebook did. Google, on the other hand, is the biggest search engine in the world and can give you traffic for years to come.

Uses these 7 SEO blog tips to start getting your blog readers before you feel like giving up and quitting on something that could change your life and tons of others!

Use Yoast SEO Plugin

In case you don’t have it installed yet, make sure that you download Yoast. It’s a free plugin that will help you optimize SEO for your blog. It’s by far the best SEO plugin for bloggers.

Watch the Youtube video version of this blog post here or click on the image below.

7 Blog SEO Tips

1. Don’t Neglect Keyword Research

I started my blog in January of 2016 and didn’t do a single bit of keyword research until May 2018. I hate myself for it. Ok, I don’t hate myself but this is a big learning moment.

I wasted countless amounts of hours writing content that no one read!  

Seriously, keyword research is so important and why it’s listed number one in the blog SEO tips!

Include your keywords in the following places:

• Title (H1)
• Meta Title
• At least one H2
• First 300 words of text (you don’t have to put it in the first sentence like Yoast SEO says. More on that in section three.)
• Once more in the intro
• 2-4 times in body (longer posts = more times to mention the keyword)
• Conclusion
• Images (use the alt-tag field…more on tip #3)

2. Improve Your Page Speed

Speed kills…not just in life but in your blog as well.

Humans have a shorter attention span now more than ever. If your site is running slow it’s almost a given that potential readers will leave.

If people leave your site quickly this will increase your bounce rate and signal to Google that your site isn’t user-friendly. This will NOT help with your SEO!

Your site speed is one of the biggest factors next to keyword research.

Input your URL into Google Page Speed Insights to find out what is slowing down your site.  Use a free tool like Autoptimize plugin to fix Optimize HTML Code, Javascript code, and CSS Code.

Try to have your site load under 3 seconds. Remember, the quicker the better!

If you aren’t techy or don’t feel like doing this extra work on your own I recommend iMarkinteractive. I’ve used them for several things including site speed.

My site speed used to be atrocious at around 8 seconds thanks to bad photos, extra code, and a lot of blogger rookie mistakes. Grayson and his team at iMark helped get the speed down to 3 seconds!

Use iMark interactive now!

3. Use SEO Alt Tags in Images

Another huge mistake I made with SEO is not using alt tags in my images. This sounds technical but it’s not at all.

When you upload an image to WordPress you can edit the title, alt-text, caption, and description. Make sure to use your chosen keyword in the alt-text field.

This will help Google know what your image is about. It will also help increase the chance of your images appearing search. Just another opportunity for your site to be found! 

Make sure to add the keywords in the alt field for this for all new posts!  

If you’ve neglected to do this in the past I highly recommend going back to old posts and images and uploading. This is one of the easiest blog SEO tips you can do right now with minimal work!

4. Create Long Form Content

While shorter posts might work for Pinterest, Google loves longer form content.

Your blog posts should never be shorter than 500 words but really should be 1,500 words or more. I understand that not every post will require that much but Google wants the best result for their users. Usually the longer the post, the more in-depth the post.

But don’t make it longer by adding fluff just because. No one like fluff!

Remember, when a user clicks on your site and bounces back to search results it signals to Goole that your content isn’t “good” enough for the reader. This is why the average word count for the first page of search results was over 2,000 words. 

Not only is long-form content it’s a better experience for your readers. It shows them that you care enough to create epic content and also helps build trust. Show your readers and Google that you care by creating, quality, long-form content more often than short content.

If you have similar posts another great way to increase your SEO is to combine these posts into mega posts or guides. I did this for several of my posts and saw a huge jump in rankings.

If you do this use the redirect WordPress plugin to make sure you don’t have any broken links.

5. Use the Yoast Plugin (Kind of)

The free version of the Yoast plugin is one of the best blogging tools to help bloggers with SEO. But, make sure to take it with a grain of salt. It’s helpful but don’t let it define how you write blogs posts completely.

For example, they often require a lot more keywords than I think is optimal. This can lead to keyword stuffing which is a negative signal to Google.

Instead, try to get most of the buttons “green” but don’t worry too much if you have some yellow lights.

6. Use Internal and External Links

Another big mistake I made when creating new blog posts is neglecting the old ones. Google crawls your site and wants to find related content on your site.

Link to Related Blog Posts and Pages

If you interlink to related posts this will help Google understand what your post is about!

Make sure to add 2-4 internal links to related content on your blog. The longer the post, the more links but don’t go overboard by inserting 7-10 unless it’s a 10,000-word monster post.

The biggest thing to remember is that it should link to posts within the same topic or category.

For example, I won’t interlink a blogging post to a post about creating morning routines. That doesn’t make sense to Google’s crawling bots.

Try to link to your best posts and even category pages if you have created specific, high-quality category posts.

Link to High Authority External Sites

While it may sound weird directing people to other sites this can also help increase your SEO rankings over time. If you are quoting another post, book or article link to it.

Try to link only to high-quality sites and not spammy ones. Also, don’t link to a competitor who is trying to target the same keyword as well! 

7. Build Your Links

Google ranks each website based on a metric known as domain authority. Your domain authority is based on several factors including the number of links coming to your website. The more links, the more authoritative and trustworthy Google will deem your blog.

If you’re not just trying to make a quick buck and are trying to make blogging a full-time gig this is very important!

Here are the best three ways to build links to your blog:

Guest Posts

Guest posting is one of the oldest and still best ways to get high quality, reliable backlinks to your blog. Plus, guest posting can help you connect with other bloggers and grow your audience as well!

While it may be hard to “give away” your content to other blogs think of it as a way to reach a new audience for free. If you do any guest posts make sure to confirm with your fellow blogger that you are:

• Receiving a follow link
• Can include a bio (make sure to create a landing page to capture emails with Clickfunnels, Converkti or LeadPages)
• Confirm any guest post requirements (length, editing, images, etc)

One last thing, always try to guest post on blogs that have a higher Moz ranking than your blog. Otherwise, it might not be a great use of your time.

Infographics

While guest posting is a great way to get backlinks, they take a lot more time and effort on your end. Not only do you have to reach out to other bloggers but you have to create more posts, not for your site. While it’s still a great idea for SEO and networking, another way is to use infographics.

Why?

Infographics tend to get a ton of inbound links to them and don’t require much work on your end. While you can make your own on Canva if you’re savvy, another way to do it is to hire a graphic designer on Fiverr.

Yes, it might cost $10-$30 depending on the designer but consider it a great investment in your blog. If you decide to try infographics make sure to send the designer a post so they can make the infographic. 

Here’s a free template I found using Canva:

Round-Up Posts

While I haven’t tried this method (yet) it’s another way to build your number of inbound backlinks. Round up posts can also take time. Make sure to weigh your options if you are building out your links.

Read this post to learn everything about creating your first backlink post.

FAQ’s About SEO For Blogs

How do you write good SEO content?

Follow the steps above. I don’t mean to simplify it but it’s all about writing posts that readers are looking for. You have to think how a user would search when typing in the content and reverse engineer it.

How long should blog posts be for SEO?

Research shows that posts containing more than 1,000 words rank best with search engines for many reasons. Usually more than 2,000 to get in the top three results (which is how you get serious traffic).

More importantly, according to Forbes, blog posts containing over 1,500 words were over 68% more likely to be shared on Twitter and over 22% more likely to be liked on Facebook compared to shorter posts.

While you might not want to write long blog posts, I recommend quality over quantity. As you long as you break them up with headers, table of contents and short sentences, readers will appreciate it. And so will Google crawlers!

How do I make my blog SEO friendly?

Seriously, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I recommend putting in a lot of work before you start writing. This will ensure you create an epic post that will rank high in Google.

Final Thoughts on SEO for Blogs

You can get traffic to your blog a lot of different ways. But over the years I’ve seen common platforms cripple blogs with one algorithm change. Facebook used to be a monster for pageviews until changes that made it very difficult for small blogs. It’s much more of a pay to play site.

Pinterest has done the same over the past years. Other platforms like Stumble Upon have vanished.

Don’t waste your time on a platform that might vanish in the next year. Focus on your SEO because Google isn’t going anywhere. They are going to be a trillion dollar company in the near future.

Don’t neglect your presence on the biggest search engine available!

What to Do Next

Start taking action. Don’t wait until you’re in year three of blogging before taking SEO seriously as I did. Use these tips to get your website to rank higher in Google!

While these blog SEO tips will absolutely increase your traffic, I recommend learning much more with Mike Pearson’s, Stupid Simple SEO Course.

Mike knows SEO better than anyone I’ve met and makes it relatable. Plus, he has the numbers to back it up. Last year alone he built an affiliate site that made over $95,000 in passive income while working full-time!

Learn More About The Course Now!

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Michael Leonard

Creator at Inspire Your Success

My name is Michael and I'm the creator of Inspire Your Success. My goal is to give you the tools, resources, and inspiration to build an epic freelance writing business.

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