Seven Basic Tips for Blog SEO

Today, the benefits of blogging are undoubtedly well established. Statistics show that:

• Businesses that blog get 67% more leads than businesses that don't
• Marketing specialists who blog blogging priority 13 times more likely to get a positive ROI than marketers who don't
• Businesses who blog get 97% more links compared to businesses who don't blog
• Websites with a blog are likely to have 434% more indexed pages.

However, if you don 't have an SEO Strategy for your blog, you are definitely missing out. Research shows that SEO leads have a 14.6% closing rate , compared to 1.7% closing rate via means outgoing.

In other words, blogging is not enough. You need to make sure that your blog ranks in the search engines. The following basic tips will help you optimize your blog for search engines:

1. Use Ariadne's thread

Watch the screenshot below - from an article on the Writers in Charge website :

Notice the section underlined in red? This is thread of 'Ariane.

You can also see this implemented in all Search Engine Watch articles, including the one you are reading.

Using Ariane's Thread has two main advantages:

• It helps Google and other search engines understand the structure of your blog . By using clickable paths, it is easy for search engines to see how your blog is structured. This also helps internal links of your blog, making it almost impossible for your blog content to be undiscovered by search engines.
• This improves the user experience of your blog . It makes it easy to navigate the sections of your blog without necessarily having to go back or close the browser tab. This increases time spent on the site and reduces bounce rate , and good user experience will help your SEO .

2. Write longer and thematically relevant content

Any post on basic blogging SEO tips that doesn't talk about content is incomplete. Although Google has maintained a level of secrecy about the factors it uses to rank websites, it has never shied away from emphasizing the importance of content. In fact, according to Andrey Lipattsev, strategist senior In Google search quality, content, links and rankbrain are the three most important searches. Ranking factors .

The main question, however, is: what gives a blog post an edge over others in the engines? of research. Although Google has been very vague, the SEO experts have data based on analytics:

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• Longer, more detailed content is ranked higher. showed that content between 1,800 and 2,000 words and more tends to rank higher than shorter content.
• It has News content has been found to be better.A blog post focusing on one topic and discussing in depth will work better than having it discuss two or more unrelated topics.

3. Make your blog posts visually appealing

Take the extra time necessary to add relevant and properly tagged images to your blog post pIt might sound frustrating, but it will be worth it. This is one of the easiest and most basic things you can do to improve your content to rank higher.

According to Backo 's analysis of over a million posts , blog posts containing at least one image have significantly surpassed content without any image. That said, it doesn't seem important whether a piece of content has one or ten images - at least make sure you include an image in all of your blog posts.

4. Internal links

The links are undoubtedly one of the most important search engine ranking factors. In fact, the impact of links on search engine rankings is so great that Backo's research found that links influence the ranking of any piece of content more than anything else.

However, great care is always takenent granted to externs. links at the expense of internal links. In a case study, Ninja Outreach explained that they were able to increase their search traffic by 40% just by working on their internal links.

Here are some tips:

• Use deifs anchor texts when linking internally
• Moderate the number of links on your page - while internal links are good, there is no point in having too many on one page.
• Occasionally review old content items to make sure they link to other content items.

5. Improve your blog's permalink structure

Depending on the CMS you use for your blog, you may be blocked by an unfriendly SEO permalink structure. Permalinks are the web address used to create a linkn to your content.

For example, if you own the blog: howtoteachadog.com and publish an article titled "How to Teach a Dog to Catch ", the resulting URL structure could be this:

howtoteachadog.com/?p=100

Or this:

howtoteachadog.com/how-to-teach-a-dog- to catch

In most cases, many blogs are blocked with the first version - which gives no indication of the topic of the article. The seco nd structure, on the other hand, is more deive and will be more efficient from an SEO point of view.

If you are using WordPress, this article will show you how to change the permalink structure of your blog. If you are using other CMS, they probably have an official tutorial on how to do this.

6. Install basic SEO plugins

plugins can give you a kind of superpowerwhen it comes to SEO for your blog. While you will want to be careful with the plugins you install (in order to avoid growling your site and slowing down), installing and using the following basic SEO plugins will give you an advantage:

• SEO All in One / Yoast SEO Plug-in : this you allows you to review each of your articles based on a number of factors until it is "perfect" from an SEO perspective.
• The WP Smush.it plugin : site speed is one of the ranking factors used by Google and other search engines, and images are often a major culprit when it comes to site load times. This plugin will compress your images and thus increase your site speed and help your SEO.

7. Get external links frome quality

It 's as easy as it gets. Google admits that links are one of the top three ranking factors it uses to rank websites. Effective blog SEO is not possible without external links.

Here are some ideas to help you get backs to your blog:

• Identify relevant and authoritative posts and become their guest authors . These posts will allow you to have a bio link and sometimes an in-content link to your blog posts. Where appropriate, these links can have a positive impact on your blog's SEO.
• Get relevant industry blogs and posts to introduce yourself - this can be in the form of an interview , a quote or as part of an expert review.
• Develop a strategic awareness campaigngie aimed at creating links between relevant blogs and the content of your blog .

Find out more:

• Blog
• SEO