Many people start their blogging journey without considering the importance of SEO. They spend hours upon hours on content creation, only to find that it’s not getting enough traffic to generate sales or leads.
This is where SEO comes in! There are many different aspects and strategies when it comes to optimizing your blog posts for search engines, but some of them are more important than others.
SEO optimizing your blog posts in WordPress is a simple way to start generating more traffic and ultimately, sales. Without SEO, you might as well not even have a blog.
In this post, we’ll be discussing 8 steps you can take right now for a better chance at ranking well in Google.
Step One: Give each post a unique title that will entice readers and search engines alike.
The reader should be able to understand what the post is about by reading the title. It’s important not to make it too long or too short, but also that they are catchy and enticing enough for readers. The shorter your titles, the more often you can publish a blog post without wearing out any one particular keyword phrase in Google search results pages (aka SERPS). This will help with rankings since keywords in headlines tend to have greater weight than those further down on a webpage.
You may find yourself writing many different titles before deciding which one suits your needs best- this process of elimination isn’t as daunting as it might seem at first glance! Once you’ve narrowed things down to just two possible posts, start running them through these next steps.
Step Two: Include keywords in the title and throughout the article.
No, this doesn’t mean you should just go through your content and add keywords wherever they fit. This is about quality over quantity- Google looks for optimal density of key phrases throughout the article to rank it higher in search results pages on their site.
This step will require a bit more time upfront, but those precious few minutes now could lead to better rankings tomorrow! If you’re not sure where or how many times to include keywords within your blog post, think about what words are relevant to what you’re talking about in the post itself. Try using synonyms when possible as well; if “blogging tips” would work well with your content, try other phrases like “tips for bloggers”, “how do I blog?” or “blogging advice.”
If you’re struggling with how to find the right keywords, free tools like Google Adwords can be a life-saver. You’ll be able to use their Keyword Tool for suggestions based on your topic and then see which of those words are actually used in search queries within the US over the last 12 months. This will give you keyword phrases that fit your content as well as ones that people who might also want it are searching for!
Include synonyms and related keyphrases whenever possible throughout your post. Keep these points in mind when writing titles: headlines should have between 60-80 characters (with some exceptions), they shouldn’t include any stop word phrases such as “the” or “and”, and they should be as catchy and enticing as possible to entice readers.
Step Three: Add a keyword-rich meta description to give readers an idea of what they will find inside the post.
A meta description is the snippet of text that appears beneath your title or URL in search engine results pages (SERPS).
This is what’s going to entice people who are browsing through Google and other search engines- it should be keyword rich without being too long so as not to scare potential readers away! The length should not be more than 160 characters or less than 40, so be sure to keep that in mind when writing your meta description.
Don’t forget about those synonyms!
Step Four: Focus on quality content that is interesting, informative, and educational for your readers.
We could all probably use a reminder of the importance of quality content- it doesn’t matter if you have 50 or 500 posts on your blog, readers will notice when they click through to see what’s inside and find nothing but fluff.
This is so important because Google looks at how many people are linking back to your site as well as where those links come from. PageRank is based in part on whether other sites think your content is worth reading (which also means that Google may not even crawl every page) and this can be impacted by writing high-quality articles with lots of information for readers instead of just filler words!
Step Five: Use images within the article to break up text and make it more visually appealing.
Google likes to rank sites higher that have images on them, so it’s important to include those whenever possible.
You can use your own photographs or find free stock photos through a quick Google search. Be sure they are relevant and interesting for the text you’re writing about; this will keep readers engaged and stop them from hitting the back button out of boredom! Stock photo sources like Unsplash offer beautiful pictures with no copyright restrictions for blogs looking to add some visual interest without spending money.
It’s also worth noting that WordPress automatically generates titles for any images included in a post- these should be keywords rich as well (keep in mind what we mentioned earlier about synonyms!). This means all you need is an image, keyword-rich text to accompany it, and a title- all in one!
Step Six: Format the Content for Readability and SEO
It’s important to format your content for readability and search engine optimization (SEO) with things like headings, subheadings, bulleted lists, bolded or italicized words.
Doing this will help readers understand the structure of a post and make it easy for Google to crawl through everything as well- you can even use WordPress’ built in formatting options if using other formats manually becomes too cumbersome! If you’re not sure what these are, here is an example: H tags should be used twice on each paragraph while I tags should only be used once per section/topic being discussed. Yoast SEO plugin can help with this as well.
When writing your headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists- it’s important to remember that they should be keyword rich! This is where we can synonyms come in handy again (remembering what we said about not repeating words too many times). It also makes the content more readable for readers who might skim instead of taking their time going through each sentence individually.
It may seem a little tedious at first but formatting posts like this will help you rank higher on Google SERPS so don’t skip over it or take shortcuts by copying and pasting from other sources without editing them yourself!
Step Seven: Include a CTA and encourage readers to subscribe.
If you’re using WordPress, there are plugins that will automatically generate a call-to-action (CTA) at the bottom of your post as well as include social media sharing icons for Facebook and Twitter!
These CTAs should be specific about what they want people to do next: sign up for notifications from your blog or newsletter, share with friends on Facebook & Twitter, follow you through RSS feeds or email lists, etc. You can also use these tools to create a sense of urgency by mentioning how many days left until an event starts or ends; this is helpful if readers need more time before deciding whether they would like to subscribe but it’s still important enough information that it needs highlighting in some way!
Step Eight: Optimize and Add Meta Title and Description with Yoast SEO Plugin
By using WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO, you can optimize your post so that it will rank higher on Google SERPS for the queries and/or topics you specified in the plugin!
Once the plugin is installed, scroll all the way to the bottom and fill in your meta title. This should be around 70 characters to comply with Google’s character limit; if it doesn’t fit, find ways of making it shorter instead of adding more words or cutting out important text!
You also need to add:
Meta Description: The one you already have generated. Fill up the section making sure it accommodates within 1690 characters.
A URL slug:
(a short string or phrase that best summarizes your post)
Focused Keyphrase:
Keywords and phrases to focus on with your content.
After filling out these fields, you can preview how the post will show up in Google SERPS by clicking Preview Results: this is a great way of checking for any errors or mistakes that might have been made while writing! It’s important to always double-check before publishing as it can be difficult to edit posts on WordPress once they’ve been published.
What About WordPress Categories and Tags?
I get plenty of questions constantly about WordPress categories and tags. Should you use them? If so, how many and which ones are best to use?
The answer is “yes”. Categories and Tags will help readers who want more information about a specific topic find your post quickly. They can also be used as keywords depending on the category you choose; for example, if I chose Pets & Animals > Cats then it would show up when someone searches for cats.
The number of tags to use is up to you and will depend on the topic: if I’m talking about dogs then “dogs” would be enough but if it’s a more broad topic like Dogs > Puppies, Cats > Kitten Care, Birds > Cockatiels then there are too many topics that are already in these tags and it might be too confusing for someone to find the right one!
This is why it’s best to select several, but not too many tags that are related to the topic of your post. Selecting just a few will ensure an easier search for readers while still giving you enough space to work with and create different types of content on that particular subject in future posts!
Optimize Your Blog for Social Sharing with Yoast (Yes, Yoast Does That!)
- In the Yoast SEO options, click on the “Social sharing” icon.
- Skip over the title and description fields – Yoast will pull the information for these from the main snippet fields you already filled out in step #7.
- Scroll to “Facebook image” or “Twitter image.” Upload your custom image here to make sure it’s shared with your link when people click one of your social share buttons.
- Make sure the image you use has an alternate text and a title specified. You can add these by selecting the image in your media library.
If you follow these simple steps to optimize your blog posts, search engines and readers alike will have a better chance of finding what they need. This is why it’s important not only to create quality content that people want to read but also to format the post for SEO so Google doesn’t overlook your work. Now go ahead and try out some or all of these tips in WordPress with the Yoast SEO plugin! And don’t forget to share back any difficulties you may find while trying them out below in the comments section; we are happy to help!
