There’s a steep learning curve when you set up your own blog but one of the most important areas you can focus on from day one is good SEO.
Search Engine Optimisation brings traffic and sustainability to your blog that social media traffic cannot necessarily match.
I’m a huge, huge fan of Pinterest traffic, because you can build it up so very quickly.
SEO takes time to see results. But when those results begin to happen, you can see an explosion in your blog traffic provided you have picked a niche where you can realistically get results.
For this reason it’s a really good idea to pay attention to good SEO practice right from the start, so that your blog has the best chance of ranking on Google as soon as possible.
So if you’re in the process of starting a blog, it’s worth arming yourself with information about SEO for your site from day one.
This post contains affiliate links.
What is SEO
As I’ve said above, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, But what does that mean?
SEO is work done to your website to help it to rank well on Google and other search engines.
No one knows for sure, apart from the people at Google, exactly how the Google algorithm works.
But from a lot of experimenting and work to understand what makes a blog post or website rank on Google, people have learned a lot about how to make their site hit page one on the search results.
SEO doesn’t happen just because you do just one thing. There are a series of things you will need to do on your website as a whole, plus a checklist of things to do on every blog post to help your site to rank on Google.
There’s always new things to learn, so be open to keeping up to date with new best practice.
You can take courses in SEO, and while some receive rave reviews I suggest that a lot of what you need to know about SEO can be found for free online.
I myself have invested in a couple of reasonably priced (under £50) SEO books and this for me has been sufficient so far. I’m not ruling out investing a larger amount of money in SEO courses in future, but for now I have other things I want to invest my money in for my sites.
Why SEO matters
SEO matters because it increases your chance of ranking well on Google. This matters because if you’re going to make an income from your website you need web traffic!
Whether your site is a blog which you hope to earn money from advertising, sponsored posts or affiliate marketing, or a place for you to sell your products, visitors are what you need!
Visitors from search engines tend to be more valuable to your site because you can get them in greater volume and they will be more intentional. If they have taken time to type their search query into Google, and then land on your site, they’re more likely to stay on your site for longer, buy your products or click on your affiliate links. This means more money for you.
How does SEO work?
SEO doesn’t simply work by using an SEO plugin such as Yoast. There’s a little more to it than that, both in terms of on-page SEO and off-site SEO.
Google wants to direct its users to reliable, trustworthy websites that fully answer the user’s search query.
It places the authority and trust of a website above its ability to answer the question, especially in areas involving health and money.
So if your website is about cancer treatment, you can put in years of work and get all the green lights from Yoast in the world, but the odds of you ever outranking the NHS website are zero.
Your first goal then is to make sure Google recognises your website as a source of good, reliable information in your niche.
This is why in my starting a blog post, I outline how important it is to choose a niche right from the beginning.
Next you want other relevant websites to point to your website. This tells Google that your information is worth referencing, and therefore more trustworthy.
Finally you want great on-page SEO in every one of your blog posts so that your individual posts rank on page one of Google, giving them a better chance of getting clicks.
We’re going to look at ways you can make these things happen in this post!
Important SEO tips for beginner bloggers
Submit your site map to Google
Step one for getting your site optimised for search engines, after having set it up and got some content on there, is to submit your site map to Google.
This means Google will start to crawl your site to look at your content. You can submit your site map to Google via Google Search Console.
There’s a brilliant step-by-step guide over on the Yoast website.
Write great content
For all of the tips and tricks out there involving the technical side of SEO, really it comes down to having amazing content for your readers.
If your content is super relevant across the site, clear, concise, helpful and thorough, you will have done the most important work towards great SEO.
When writing a blog post about anything, from upcycling furniture to a toy review, you should aim to answer every question a reader may have about this topic.
Be thorough, with great tips, insight and detailed instruction laid out in a easy-to-read fashion (using tools such as bullet points, sub-headings and numbered lists).
There are lots more tips about writing great blog content over on this post.
Research your keywords
There are many ways you can research keywords to use in your blog posts.
You could spend money on a keyword research tool, which many larger bloggers do invest in.
I am now using Keysearch – having spent years using the free options out there! It’s great used in combination with the free options.
For free options, I use a combination of research on Google itself and the Google Keyword Planner.
You can also get free keyword searches on SEMRush.
When I first start researching my keywords, I may already have a blog topic in mind.
Otherwise I will go to Google and type in the general topic I want to write about and see what results Google comes up with. If you scroll down to the “People also searched for” section you can get great inspiration for keywords, blog headings and sub-headings.
Spend some time Googling some keywords related to topics you want to write about and the inspiration will come.
The Google Keyword Planner is also a great place to discover keyword combinations. Simply search for your blog topic and see what combinations of keywords come up.
I suggest you try to target long-tail keywords, rather than shortened ones such as baby clothes which will be impossible to rank for due to competition. Also go for keywords with a search volume of at least 1k or more to make it worth your while.
Otherwise try Answer the Public and Also Asked which are both great for offering inspiration on what people are Googling.
Edit your hyperlink
When I first launched my blog I had the settings so that the blog URLs all had the date in them. Total rookie mistake!
You definitely want to avoid having dates in your URLs.
You can stop this from happening by checking your settings in WordPress. Just go to Settings > Permalinks to change your link structure.
I suggest setting it to post name, and then you can edit the hyperlink when you’re getting ready to publish a new blog post.
It’s important to use your key words in your hyperlink, and to keep it short and sweet too. I tend to make the hyperlink quite similar to my blog post title, but take out any numbers (for example if it’s a list post) and remove small words like “a”.
Use H2 subheadings with relevant keywords
Your H2 subheadings will be scanned by Google as it searches your site, and so it’s important that A you use H2 subheadings and B they contain keywords relevant to your blog post.
Ideas for your H2 subheadings may come from the Google searches I mentioned above. When you Google your blog topic keywords, look at the results for what other people also searched for.
It usually reveals interesting questions related to the topic that make for great subheads.
If you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin on your website, then one of the things it will check is your use of H2 headings, spaced out through your blog post.
Try to one at least two H2 headings to break up your text, and have them spread out through the main body of the blog post.
Add correctly sized images with alt text
Images that are huge in terms of file size will slow down your website, which isn’t what you want!
You can use a plugin that minimises your file sizes for you, which is really handy. But I think you should also be resizing all your images yourself anyway.
There’s a handy guide for resizing images for your blog here.
Once your images have been added to your blog post, remember to edit the alt text, as well as the caption!
Google will be crawling details such as the alt text for key words that are relevant to the topic, so make sure those are included in your alt text.
An alt text is a detailed description of what the image shows. If you’re using images relevant to your topic of your blog post, then you will be able to insert keywords into the alt text in a natural way.
Link to related content
Before hitting publish on any blog post, make sure you are linking to other relevant content.
This includes content on your own website, as well as content on external websites which are trustworthy and super relevant to your blog post’s topic.
I suggest with external links that you aim for websites that are bigger than your own. For example on a post about babies I often will link to the NHS or to the NCT websites which have more authority in Google’s eyes than my own site.
It’s also important to show you are linking to content between your own pages.
Don’t add the link on the words “click here” or “read it here”. Instead place the link on keywords relevant to the blog post you are linking to.
Create a meta description
Your Yoast plugin makes it really easy to add a meta description at the bottom of the WordPress post editor.
It will tell you if it’s too long and offer you feedback on whether you have included your keywords.
I suggest making your meta description to the point, but natural so it doesn’t read like a robot has just stuffed the keywords into the description.
Make sure your site is speedy
A fast site will be more attractive to Google when it comes to pointing people are your website.
Your site speed depends on a whole bunch of factors including:
- File size of images on your site.
- Number and quality of plugins operating on your site.
- Your host.
- The WordPress theme you choose to run on your site.
There are great tips on how to speed up your WordPress site over at WPBeginner.
BONUS TIPS
Get an SSL certificate
I remember when I first heard the term SSL certificate. My heart sank because it was yet another technical issue I had to get my head around!
I’ve always prided myself on being pretty tech-savvy but blogging has thrown a lot of new challenges at me that, to be honest, just got in the way of the writing I love doing sometimes.
But if you want to work for yourself and set up a great site, you absolutely have to have an SSL.
So what is an SSL and how on earth do you get one? Don’t panic, this tends to be something your website’s host can sort out for your pretty pronto.
The SSL certificate provides encrypted connection for your site, and Google wants you to have one! It secures information on the website and protects the site from hackers.
My host Siteground offers free SSL certificates with its hosting packages. You can also ask them to install it for you if you don’t fancy trying to do it yourself.
Check for broken links
If Google is crawling your site and finds links that go nowhere, this counts as a black mark against your site.
You can use plugins to check your site for broken links and get rid of them. I suggest trying to do this one every couple of months to keep on top of it.
Action plan for SEO
So putting all of this together, here’s a handy checklist from the big stuff to do on your site to the little stuff to do on individual posts:
- Get an SSL certificate
- Check your site speed – speed up your site by optimising images, deleting excess plugins and having a theme built for speed.
- Be an authority in your niche – Google loves sending its users to the best sites. Explain in your about me page why you blog about what you blog about, including an relevant qualifications. Focus on creating content within that niche rather than loads of different topics.
- Do keyword research – don’t write like a robot, but sprinkle your keyword in your headline as well as variations of it throughout your blog posts.
- Use H2 headings with keywords
- Add alt text to images
- Create a meta description in Yoast
- Add internal links to your blog content throughout your blog
- Add links to external sites that are relevant with good authority
- Edit your URL to ensure it is not too long and does not contain any numbers
Final thoughts on SEO tips for beginners
Understanding SEO is an evolving process.
You won’t learn it all in one day, and it is changing all the time! So try to read up on good SEO practice as much as you can, and apply what you learn to your site religiously.
This SEO checklist should help you when it comes to publishing a post!
Working hard on SEO from day one can mean that your site thrives as it becomes more easily discoverable for the keywords you want to target on Google.
If you have any questions at all, just drop me a message in the comments.