If you’re new to blogging, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about keywords and SEO but you might not know exactly what they are, or why it’s relevant to you and your blog. Let’s go ahead and take a few minutes to cover the basics of keywords and SEO.
Keywords – These are the words or phrases that people use to find things on the internet via search. When you include these in your posts, it will help people find the things that you write.
Search engine optimisation – This phrase refers to the process of drawing people to your website by optimising the site so that it shows up high on the list of results returned by a search engine. Basically, you want to rank high for your chosen keywords so that you get more traffic.
Now that you know the basics of what they are, how do they apply to your blog?
First, you need to know how to research keywords to help you know what to write about. You also need to know how to use those keywords throughout the content itself, as well as how to create a nice headline/title using the main keyword phrase. These things are important because they will help draw internet users to your posts. Even more important, they will attract people who are already looking for the things you have written about. When your keywords are accurate, you’re inviting people who are looking for exactly what you wrote. It’s a win-win.
You want to use keywords:
- In the title
- In the headers and body
- In the URL
- In the meta description
There are some other important steps to search engine optimize your blog posts, aside from just picking and using a great keyword phrase. For example, you also want to be sure your blog is mobile-friendly. This means it will display properly on all devices, including mobile devices.
You want to use great images with each post and use keywords in the title and alt description of your image. Search engines look for posts with images that have alt tags. This will help your traffic in a big way and it’s very important you take a few extra minutes to do it and do it correctly.
You should also link internally to other blog posts or pages within your site when it’s relevant. It helps keep visitors on your website and it also helps surface your other relevant pages and posts for the search engines.
SEO can also be made much easier with tools like SEMrush which provide valuable insights on not only your website, but also your competition.
If you want to get the most from your site’s SEO, then you may want to hire a professional to do an SEO audit and make sure everything looks good on your blog. Most bloggers find they can handle the basics on their own, especially once they know what to do and how to do it.
