Blog/ June 3, 2022July 29, 2022

You Need This Ultimate SEO Guide To Grow Your Blog

Are you a new blogger and have no clue what SEO is? Or have you been in the game for a while but struggle to crack Google’s algorithm? Whatever the situation is, after reading this post you’ll have a complete understanding of SEO and how you can grow your blog by implementing SEO. The world of SEO is ever-changing but if you understand the basics, you can easily make a big difference. In this post I’m sharing the ultimate SEO guide to grow your blog. On to becoming a savvy SEO expert.

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The Ultimate SEO Guide To Grow Your Blog

WHAT IS SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

A process of improving your site’s traffic and ranking higher on search engines such as Google. A strong SEO strategy is essential for improving the quality and growing organic search traffic to your website.

WHY DO BLOGGERS NEED SEO

1. Build a community

If you’re a blogger you’d know that the hardest part about blogging is bringing traffic to your website.

It’s a 20/80 rule. It means 20% of your time should be spent on writing the post and 80% to promote it. A common understanding with bloggers, especially when they’re starting out is to push out a lot of content to increase their traffic. This approach doesn’t work and will have your efforts go in vain. The goal here is to build a community of loyal readers that actually consume your content. If you’re not able to attract more readers through five to ten posts, you won’t be able to do it no matter how much content you put out there. It just doesn’t work like that. It’s about providing quality in your content and not just focusing on the quantity.

So how do you increase the number of readers on your website?

Promotion + SEO= increased readership base.

SEO for blogs is a process of writing and structuring your posts in a way that raises your search engine rankings. It allows you to bring traffic to your website without having to promote it.

2. Rank on Google

When you optimize your blog posts for SEO, Google starts to rank your site in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). As a blogger, your goal should be to rank higher on Google because its traffic is very targeted. If somebody comes to your site through Google, it’s most likely that they are looking for an answer to their question or a solution to their query.

When you’re able to provide that for your readers, they will form a connection with you helping in increased email sign-ups and affiliate product sales. SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy. Once you start ranking on Google, you won’t have to do much to get a consistent flow of traffic on your blog.

KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR SEO

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding which words and phrases your target audience is searching for and looking for answers on Google. If you’re successful in providing content in front of the readers for the keywords they’re searching for, you stand to gain more traffic. We don’t want to create content around what we want to tell the audience; we must create content around what the audience is searching for.

How can you conduct keyword research?

How to find what the readers are looking for? It all starts with keyword research. There are a lot of ways to conduct keyword research which involves using different tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. Both of these are amazing research tools but they’re a hefty investment every month. You can definitely use these tools when you’re ready to up your SEO game. But if you’re a beginner then I’d recommend trying other options.

Some of them are:

Ubersuggest

AnswerThePublic

Basics of keyword research for SEO

1. Know your niche:

It’s really important that you know your niche from the get-go. You don’t want to write about everything under the sun as it lacks expertise in one area. Google will know that you’re not a reliable source for the targeted audience as well as you won’t have a stable audience and certainly have no connection with your readers. This is why it’s so important to know your niche and have deep knowledge of it.

2. Know your audience:

Another important step is to know your target audience. If you have no idea who you’re trying to reach, it’d be hard for you to reach them. When you have an idea of your ideal target audience it will become easy to produce content that they’re looking for.

Types of keywords for SEO

There are three types of keywords.

1. Short-tail keyword:

Short tail keywords are one or two-word keywords that are generic and have high search results. For example:

Shoes
Cooking
Golf
Vitamins

These keywords are broad in results and super competitive at the same time. Not just that, people are looking for specific information on Google and these keywords are too generic to convert.

2. Medium-tail keyword:

These keywords are a sweet spot for your content. They are longer than short tail keywords and have less search rate, better conversion, and less competition. These are the type of keywords you’d use to build your SEO strategy. For example:

Vitamins for men
Pinterest marketing tips
Best budget laptop
How to sew?

These keywords are less generic and it shows that readers are going in the direction of taking action.

3. Long-tail keyword:

These keywords are four words or longer and very specific. Often times these are also called ‘buying keywords’ because when readers search these keywords, they are looking to take action. Long tail keywords usually have less traffic, less competition, but higher conversion rates. It’s your best bet to focus on these keywords more.

Here’s what long tail keywords look like:

Best hair straightener for curly hair
How to learn resin art as a beginner
Baccarat rouge 540 perfume review
List of best indoor plants

You can see that people who search for these words want to do something with the information.

4. LSI Keywords:

Latent Semantic Index are keywords related to your primary keyword. These should not be confused with synonyms. LSI keywords are different words related to the same topic.

For example:

The list of keywords you see at the bottom of the Google search page are the LSI keywords.

You can also see questions that readers are asking related to the keyword.

These are the most popular questions readers are looking answers for related to your keyword. You can get your topic ideas from here and rank on Google for them.

How to add keywords for SEO optimized blog posts

1. Find the right keyphrase for your blog.

2. Add your long tail keyword to your post:

Blog post title (H1)
In the first 100 words of the post
In the sub-heading (H2, H3, H4)
Add LSI keywords throughout the post
Add images
Enter alt tags in images

3. Install Yoast SEO to your site to produce SEO-optimized content every time.

Competitive analysis

When you’re doing your keyword research it’s important to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing as well. You get ideas of keywords, discover the areas they are not doing so well in, and learn from their mistakes. You can look at what’s working for them and use that in your own content strategy. As well as take note of what didn’t work for them and create something better than that to drive traffic to your site. You can take a piece of content that’s worked for them and add more to it.

For example, maybe your competitor has a list post of ‘5 Best Concealers For Brown Skin.’ You can go ahead and create a list of ’10 Best Concealers For Brown Skin.’

You see how tweaking things a little bit can give you a whole new piece of content.

On-site and off-site optimization

There are two types of SEO. On-site and Off-site. On-site SEO is a technique you use to control your site like keywords, page titles, images, metadata, blog content, etc. Off-site SEO is everything outside your website that improves your SERPs ranking like incoming links from other sites.

Fundamentals of on-site optimization

1. Fast Load Time

Google pays great attention to site speed as they perform better. The sites that take longer to load tend to lose a lot of readers. According to The Daily Egg,

“Even a one-second delay in page load time yields:

11% fewer page views
16% decrease in customer satisfaction
7% loss in conversions”

2. Responsive Site

A responsive site that is flexible to display on both desktop and mobile devices. More than 50% of Google searches are done on mobile phones so it’s super important to have a site optimized for phones and tablets. Another reason to know is Google has started to penalize sites that aren’t responsive so you want to avoid that for your blog.

3. Internal Linking

When writing a blog post it’s important to add internal links to other blog posts on your site. Add a list of recent posts at the bottom of your content and sprinkle links to related articles throughout your post. This not only increases traffic but also keeps readers on your site longer.

4. User Experience

Make sure your site looks organized and professional, making it easy for your readers to read and navigate through your site. A lower bounce rate tells Google that your site content is good and overall makes the experience enjoyable for your readers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

You might not have massive traffic coming to your site from your very first post just because it’s SEO optimized. It’s a long-term strategy but once you know these basic principles of SEO, you’ll have a higher chance of seeing your site rank on Google. I hope this ultimate seo guide to grow your blog was able to help you understand the fundamentals of SEO strategy for your blog. Let me know if you learned something new from this post. I’d love to hear your answers in the comments below!

You Need This Ultimate SEO Guide To Grow Your Blog

📌 SAVE THE ULTIMATE SEO GUIDE TO GROW YOUR BLOG FOR LATER!

The Ultimate SEO Guide To Grow Your Blog

WHAT IS SEO