Easy Guide to SEO for Beginners

I will be completely honest with you. I used to run the other way when I read that SEO was a must for a successful blog. I would do just about anything to ignore it! SEO just seemed so complicated and no mater how much I refused to do it I knew that it was a big part of making my blog successful. The right SEO can make a huge difference for your blog traffic. Every post I read about SEO only left me with a thousand questions and totally clueless about how to do it. After tons of research I decided to make an easy guide to SEO for Beginners. Hopefully this guide will help make this confusing topic a little less intimidating to other new bloggers.

Organic Search Engine Optimization is about maximizing the number of visitors to your blog by making sure it ranks high on the list of results rendered by a search engine.

This guide will help you get started with SEO. Getting started today will help your blog big time in the long run. Unfortunately SEO results don’t happen overnight but that doesn’t mean to just give up on it. It’s way too important and once it kicks in it will make a big difference in your traffic. Sometimes it can take a year for SEO to really kick in so get started today with these easy tips!

Do these quick and easy tips to help get you started in the right direction!

Step 1: Label your Images with Image Alt Tags

If your like me then this step was something you always just skipped. Oops!! I never realized that this was an important part but it really is! By labeling your images with descriptive words pertaining to the image/post in the Alt Text section will allow google and other search engines to understand your images.

Step 2: Long Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keywords are the phrases that customers type in when searching for what they are looking for. They are typically 3-5 words long and are much more specific compared to one word keywords. Phrases like, ‘best toys for one year old’ or ‘newborn must haves‘ is probably going to give you a better chance at showing up first. The more specific your long tail keyword, the fewer sites you are competing with which should result in you showing up higher in the rankings! Now that’s a win for sure!!!

Step 3: Valuable And Long Content

Search engines love long posts. We’re talking about 3,000 to 4,000 word count posts. Most of the time I don’t have the time to write long posts. After all as a busy mom of two littles ones I hardly have time to shower let alone write super long posts every day. There are tips to creating long posts but a favorite trick of mine is to focus on the commenting part of your blog. Be sure to reply to all of your comments and not with just one sentence. Try and aim for a few sentences. This all counts towards the word count and you will also be building a relationship with your readers. *Pro Tip* use your comments as a place to add you post keywords.

Step 4: Add Plugins

Add the Yoast SEO plugin. This is a free must have plugin. It will make your SEO experience that much easier. This plugin allows you to create a XML sitemap. You can also verify your social accounts for extra social exposure. And my most favorite, you can install breadcrumbs. Using Yoast is pretty easy too. They have a light system to easily see how well your post is regarding to SEO rules. If it’s red stop and see the suggestions they give you on how to make your post more SEO friendly. I usually get an orange but try really hard for that green!

Step 5: Responsive Website and Speed

Since more and more people are reading blogs on their phones it’s important to have a website theme that is responsive. A responsive website adjusts sizes depending on what device they are viewing it on. Also your website speed is very important. That also helps tell the search engine that you are a serious blog and you mean business. Check out my post on website speed to learn how to get your blog running faster!

Step 6: Internal Links

This is huge! You want to link to your other posts. Not only does it help lower your bounce rate but it makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and index your content. But don’t just add any links to just any post. They should relate to the current post.

Step 7: Keep It Going

If your like me you prefer instant gratification. Well SEO is totally the opposite. It can take google up to a year to have your SEO to really start kicking in. I know I’m not a fan of this either but it really is worth putting in the extra work now to see the benefits later. It took my blog exactly one year since I started working on my SEO to see the benefits. At the start I would hardly get any traffic from google and now it’s my second highest traffic driver right after Pinterest. I’m hoping that with time and some more effort it will pass Pinterest. So you put in the extra work now and then enjoy the benefits later. SEO really works. That’s why so many bloggers stress the importance of it.

With that said, staying consistent is key with SEO. Continue to regularly blog and update your blog. Remove old irreverent posts and old giveaways or contests. The goal is to show Google that you are always updating your blog.

Learn more about starting a successful blog. I share all the best tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way!

I hope you found these tips helpful! Please leave me a comment if you have any questions! Xo Vanessa