Generally, SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, as you might have already known, is an acronym. In the simplest of words, it’s how search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com, and others present your page in users’ search results on their sites.
Well, they do that via sophisticated software tools called spiders. Consider the whole internet as an empty room, with air particles as websites. Now sneak a spider into that room. Each tiny step that this spider would take now is essentially crawling a website (as the room is dark and full of websites). This is how search engines crawl through the web, pick up site after site, study them, and rank them. This ranking is essentially significant. A higher-ranked website by Google will always be on the first page of Google’s search results for a related query compared to a lower ranked one.
So, to get ranked higher, you and I need SEO. SEO is like black pepper, without which fried egg might not taste ‘that’ tastier. In simple words, for search engines to find your site and rank it higher than others in your field, you need to optimize it. Let’s see how with these seven simple tips.
Ways to SEO Optimize your Blog
Before starting with our seven simple tips for a quality SEO, it’s essential to broadly classify those tips into two primary areas, based on origin:
On-page Optimization
Refers to optimization of your actual web content, including your HTML code, your text, as well as graphic content.
Off-page optimization
Off-page optimization, however, deals with things like backlinks (hyperlinks pointing to your site from other websites, apps, and networks).
1. Create SEO Friendly Blog Post Titles
Post titles are essential for SEO. They are since they are deal makers or breakers. Whenever you write something, make sure you give proper attention to the post’s title. Make your titles simple, intriguing, descriptive, and gullible so that people may know what this is all about and what to expect. An even better approach is to wear searchers’ shoes while giving a title and think how you would Google it if you were looking for content like this.
Also, don’t forget to include keywords in your title and keep it under 70 characters (or search engines would crop it before looking).
2. Improve the quality of your content
Think again if you think ‘content’ isn’t essential for SEO! Your content is an integral part of your site. While writing, don’t copy-paste from elsewhere, don’t stuff it with keywords alone, don’t bombard it with images and multimedia files, and don’t write any lesser than 300 words. These all would affect your ratings quite poorly.
So, write original, use keywords in scenarios instead of straying them around (like I didn’t use SEO here, SEO there in every following line), use images where they suffice and make sure you name them correctly to appear in image search results, i.e., a photo with the “img009.jpg” name would never appear in the image search results but “tips_to_success.jpg” would. The best would be to use text content and wrap them properly in HTML tags like etc. (search engines like content this way). Also, make sure your blog post’s length is somewhere between 300-500 words – crossing over is fine, but lesser isn’t.
3. Keywords are keys
Keywords are terms that others may use to search for your content. While keywords are important for SEO, don’t go on and stuff your site with keywords. This would make your content appear spam to spiders, who would neglect it henceforth.
The ideal is that once you have chosen your title (and included your keyword in it, as I have added keyword SEO in the header above), use it in page URL, in your starting and ending paragraphs, as well as in the article body where required without sounding awkward. Additionally, you may link it using anchor text to relevant resources in and out of sight.
4. Meta-tags are essential, but not ‘that’ much
If we lived in the early part of the 21st century, meta tags might have done all the SEO for your site. Unluckily, we aren’t. Google and other search engines have long left using meta-tags for finding site information. Hence, if someone tells you meta-tagging is all you need for your site’s SEO, tell them it isn’t.
Nevertheless, it would help if you used your keywords in your meta-data. Some themes already do that for you. Don’t sweat if they don’t (you can check that using page source or view source code from the browser). You can use 3rd party plugins like All in One SEO Pack and Scribe.
5. Socialize!
Make others talk about your site and share your content on social media sites or blogs. It gets even better if sites with high ratings somehow link back to your site. This makes spiders think that you are someone important that everyone these days is talking about, resulting in enhancing your ratings dramatically.
Guest posting is another good approach for that. Comment on other sites, make friends with bloggers (best in business), and make them comment at yours. These tiny little things matter a lot, resulting in enhanced SEO of your site.
6. Link in and Link-Out
Hyperlinks or Links are essential from an SEO perspective. You can use them to:
Link to other sites, networks, posts, or even to your previous posts (also called inbound or backlinks) using an anchor element with a keyword.
Or even better, make others link to you by sharing your content on their sites or social media networks.
As stated above, an even ideal strategy for building links is guest posting.
7. Write Often
Sites with new content every day, or twice thrice a week, have still far better ratings than those who post every fortnight. A better incoming content frequency makes spider come to your site regularly, resulting in better ratings and enhanced SEO.
Are we done then? Well, trust me – the rating of your site is in your hands, not in Google or Yahoo. SEO is just about doing things neatly and in a sophisticated manner. Walk your site these seven steps for a quality SEO, and you will witness the difference yourself at Google if no place else.
