SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which basically means “How I get my blog post/webpage to show up on Google.” Having a website is essential to a writer, but what’s the point if your website isn’t noticed?
I’ve been writing blogs for a very long time, and reading about Social Media and blogging is something of a hobby, but every time I read about how important SEO was, my eyes glazed over.
My curiosity eventually got the best of me and I waded in. It was ugly. Tech talk, tech talk, and more tech talk. Finally, I broke through. I got it! It’s not hard. In fact, it’s kind of fun.
1. Keywords are the key to effective SEO.
Give some thought to what your keywords will be.
To find keywords that are most often searched for on Google, use Google Adwords.
Type in the keywords you’re thinking of using, and click. A chart will come up showing variations of your keywords, how often they are searched for on Google, and how high the competition is. It’s great if there are a million searches a day for your keywords, but not so great if there are ten million other listings.
A high search number and low competition is ideal. For this post, I decided simply on “SEO,” which has quite a high number of searches (673,000), and only medium competition.
Another useful tool, by the way, is Coschedule Headline Analyzer, because headlines are so important.
2. Use your SEO keywords in the first few sentences of your post.
The closer to the beginning the better.
3. Make headlines in your post that contain your keywords.
Not every headline, of course, but at least one.
4. Put at least one illustration in your post, and use the SEO keywords in the alternative text (“alt text”) description.
This is so that Google will know what the illustration is about.
5. Use your SEO keywords a few more times throughout your post.
But don’t make it look forced. Content is key.
6. Before you press “publish,” make sure that your keywords are in your URL.
And that’s it! Other factors that help a blog post rank on Google—in addition to headlines and illustrations—are good content, links and short paragraphs, but the most important thing is your selection of keywords.
If you use WordPress, I highly recommend the plugin WordPress SEO by Team Yoast. It makes this process very easy.
I hope that this post didn’t make your eyes glaze over! Please leave a comment if this helped you, or if you have a tip to share.
