6 Simple SEO tips for blogs and bloggers.

Blogging. Everybodies doing it whether it’s just for personal pleasure or as part of a business strategy. Some people love it and some people see it as a terrible chore but either way I’m always surprised at the number of people I meet who aren’t confident about the content and structure of their blogs, where their blogs are going and how to make sure they get seen. So over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting some simple, easy to follow tips to help get your blogs in order and off to a flying start and to kick off this week, here are my basic rules of SEO for bloggers:

1. Before you start, spend some time choosing your keywords and key phrases.

There are lots of free (and paid) keyword search tools online which are easy to use and should form part of your essential blog writing kit. Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Wordstream, Wordpot to name but some can give you keyword and alternative keyword suggestions and some great stats’ about how frequently those words are used.

Make sure you have more than one keyword, check out (but don’t necessarily copy) what your competitors have used and don’t forget to think about how specific you want to be with your keyword. A general, catch all keyword can be tempting to catch a wide audience but can also be counterproductive. Above all else make sure your keywords are really relevant to the subject matter of your blog.

2. Meta tags, Permalinks and Alt tags.

If you don’t know what these are yet, you need to spend time exploring your blog or website and finding out. Every blog page you write has Meta Tags and you need to make sure your keywords are in the Meta Title and the Permalink. If you’re using images, then read up on Alt Tags and make sure your image title and tags also contain keywords or phrases. Don’t ignore your Meta Description either – this not only tells your readers there in the right place but should entice them to click in. Sounds technical but it’s quite straightforward once you know how and it’s very important.

3. Titles, heading and sub headings.

Apart from giving structure to your blog, headings are also really important when it comes to your keywords. Make sure you have a keyword in your blog title and then use relevant keywords or phrases in your headings and sub headings. But don’t necessarily stick with the same keyword. Your headings are sign posts to both readers and search engines, make sure they reflect the content.

4. Keyword placement.

Apart from in your title, try and make sure you have a keyword in the first line or paragraph of your blog. After that, space them out naturally, roughly with one in the middle and one at the end. Whatever you do, do not try and pack in keywords in an obvious way or repeat content just to get more in, it’s a sure way of finding your blog penalised by the search engines.

5. Density.

The general consensus is that you should have keyword density of between 1 – 2% (i.e. the percentage of how often your keyword appears in your blog) but it’s important not to get hung up on this. If you write well, your blog is informative and more importantly if you write naturally, your keyword density should take care of itself.

6. Links.

There is a lot of debate surrounding the power of links at the moment but at a basic level it’s worth remembering they can be a great way of generating traffic to your blog and for you to point your readers in the direction of other relevant content. Paid for links, follow links and non follow links are outside the scope of this post but if you’re going down that route, make sure you spend some time understanding them.

Basic SEO for your blogs doesn’t have to be complicated but it is important if you want to be seen, so get into the habit of thinking about some basic SEO as you blog and ensure your blog attracts more attention.