Here are the basics of SEO to have those search giants pick up your blog and rank it on the first page! Keep these tips in mind when creating your posts so you have to spend minimal time going back and editing them.
It’s part of the reason how I grew my blog from $0 to over $20,000 per month. SEO is a slow process, but it helps your blog rank higher in Google and also makes it easier for others to read your blog. Think of SEO as an organizational system for your blog. It doesn’t make a big difference in the beginning, but as your blog grows, keeping everything organized and properly tagged makes it easier for Google and others to find your blog. And the more people find your great content, the more they’ll backlink to you, and these links back to your blog also rank you higher. Because it tells Google that other people like your content too!
SEO – Getting You to #1 on Google
Long-Tail Keywords
- Decide which long-tail keywords you want to rank for in each post. Optimize the post to include those long-tail keywords.
- Example of a long-tail keyword: Frugal Living with Children, instead of just the keywords ‘Frugal Living’.
- Trying to rank for long-tail keywords is easier than ranking for the higher level, less descriptive keywords.
Post Titles
- Insert your long-tail keywords into your post titles. This is the first thing people see in Google search results and it should match what they were searching for.
Headings
- Use your long-tail keywords in the headings on your post
- Use 2-4 headings (H1,H2, H3, H4…) and use your long-tail keywords
- Headings also make it easier for your viewer to read your post
Meta Description
- Your meta description is the few sentences of text shown under the main title link in a Google Search.
- Use your keywords again in your meta description. But don’t overstuff it. Always make it sound natural but enticing enough to have the person click through to your site.
Related Posts
- Make sure you have related posts under your article. This will help direct readers where to go next and keep them on your site longer.
Internal Linking
- Create links between your posts. This will show Google you have more authority on the subject and help boost your rankings.
- It will also keep viewers on your blog longer and create sticky traffic.
- Like these:
Images
- Make sure your images have ALT text. This makes them searchable for Google and they could show up in a Google image search. This could drive more traffic to your blog.
- The search engine can not view your images, it can only read the ALT text.
Anchor Text
- Use the right format whenever creating anchor text, either on internal links on your site or on other websites.
- Your anchor text should be descriptive of your post, and not a “Click Here” link.
Back Links
- These are links from other sites that link back to your blog.
- Write amazing content and others will link to it from their sites.
- Guest posting on bigger blogger’s sites will give you a few backlinks to your blog.
- Also, the nicer and more active you are in the blogging community, the greater your chances are of other bloggers back linking to your blog.
- This will boost your SEO because Google sees your blog as an authority in your niche when others backlink to you. This is super important for SEO ranking!
WordPress Plugins
- Yoast SEO by WordPress
- Yoast SEO is a great plugin that guides you through optimizing every post for SEO. It even has little lights (red, yellow, green) to let you know how you’re doing!
Permalinks
- Have pretty permalinks. This helps Google rank you for the right keywords.
- Here is how to change your permalinks easily in WordPress.
- Go to Settings > Permalinks and change it to Post Name.
Google Search Console
- Setup your site with Google Search Console to make it easier for Google to find you.
- Here are more reasons why you need to set up your site with Google Search Console.
Google Featured Snippet
I’ve found a few things that play into being featured on the Google Snippet. It’s all the same things that help you rank higher in Google overall, but below are the key factors.
- Make sure your blog post is detailed and has great headings for each of the steps. “How to” articles are great for this! Google can then easily grab the steps from your post to show them in the featured snippet.
- Keep your readers on the article for as long as possible. The longer someone spends on your post, the more Google sees it as important. So make sure to offer all the steps needed to complete the action from point A to point B.
- Have a high click-through rate. The more people click on your link, the more Google will like your blog. So use a catchy headline that uses the same words as your reader uses when they search for your information
