I've been learning a bit about SEO lately, and I thought I would share some help and tips for beginners! Are you ready to learn? Grab your favourite pen and notebook and lets get started!
Lets kick off with the basics shall we? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Basically we are talking about what you can do to each of your blog posts, in order to make your blog rank higher on Google searches (or any other search engines for that matter!). It might sound complicated, but it's really simple once you know how, then it's just about getting into the habit of it. Here are my 7 top tips for optimising your blog...
1. Decide on your key words, I'd pick about four or five. What are the most important things about your post, and what would people search for? For example, in this post I have chosen the words SEO, help, tips and beginners. You are going to use these words as much as possible throughout your post.
2. Make sure your key words feature in your title, and that the most important words come first. For example, I titled this post 'SEO help and tips for beginners'. I could have written 'Beginners help and tips for SEO', but I think SEO is the most important part of this article, so I chose that to come first.
3. Rename all of the picture files that you are going to include in the post using your key words. Put a hyphen in between each word when doing this. The reason for doing this is that Google and other search engines will find it easier to read. For example I have named the picture above seo-help-and-tips-for-begginers.jpg.
4. Use your key words in the very first paragraph and the very last paragraph. Take a look at mine. Obviously it is great to use them as frequently throughout as possible too, but these are the most important places.
5. Write at least 300 words per post. If your blog is quite picture heavy, and your posts are constantly under 300 words, you might want to think about how you can include posts with more writing. Google likes lots of content!
6. Use Alt tag/Alternative text on each of your pictures. Again, use your key words. If you have more than one picture you can chop and change each one, for example one might be 'SEO for beginners', another might be 'tips and tricks for SEO' and another might be 'beginners guide to SEO'. The title of the picture should be the same text as the Alt tag, so just copy and paste it. Since I am only using one picture in this article, I chose the same words as my title 'SEO help and tips for beginners'.
7. Make use of your 'search description box', and you know whats coming... Use your key words! However, you will want to write this in a more conversational tone. But still use your most important words fist! For example, for this post my search description was 'SEO help and tips for beginners - In today's post I teach you some of the basics of using SEO to make your blog rank higher in Google.' You can use more words here, so by all means, use them if you need to!
Thats it for today. I hope you enjoyed my beginners help for SEO! It's fun when you can share something new you are learning with others! Have you got any SEO tips that I didn't mention?
Also, I mustn't forget to mention the photo credit for the lovely picture at the beginning of this post which was taken by Rachel from Oh NO Rachio! Although I may have sneakily changed what the pennant says by the wonders of modern technology!
Also, I mustn't forget to mention the photo credit for the lovely picture at the beginning of this post which was taken by Rachel from Oh NO Rachio! Although I may have sneakily changed what the pennant says by the wonders of modern technology!
Laura xXx
