Blog seo: 14 ways to optimize your posts for maximum traffic

Do you want to drive more organic traffic to your blog? who do not! As a blogger, you want your blog to rank high on Google and appear in the results for every relevant search.

With sometimes changing algorithms, search engine optimization (SEO) can be difficult.

But not impossible! It does not have to be time-consuming or super technical, as long as you are doing the basics for each post that you write.

In this article, I have put together 14 quick optimization tips that will help you get Head Start, even if you are completely new to blog SEO.

By the end of this post, you will learn some invaluable tips so that you can stop guessing and start spending your time and resources to actually work.

Quick SEO Optimization Tips For Your Blog

Okay, now we can meet in the real tofu and potatoes of the post.

And, as always, if you reach the end and think we’ve missed something important or have a question, please leave a comment and let us know!

1. Target the right keywords

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO. This is the first thing you should look for when planning to start a blog. It loses the foundation of your adaptation and you should not get it wrong.

By targeting the right keywords, you can help GOOGLE understand what your content is. Tweet it

By targeting the right keywords, you can help Google understand what your content is. This increases the chances of your articles popping up in response to the search.

Here are some tips for targeting the right keywords

Focus on one keyword per article : Focusing on only one keyword helps you to target your article for that keyword.

The Yoast SEO plugin requires you to choose a focus keyword when you are publishing content and then make sure that you use that content appropriately.

Understand User Intent : To be successful in SEO, you have to understand user intent and target keywords based on it.

What does "user intent" mean?

Simply put, it refers to what the searcher is searching for in Google and hoping to find those words.

For example, if you sell cat t-shirts on your blog, then the term will require some keywords for purchase cat t-shirts, buy cat t-shirts, etc. In this way users who will be likely to buy your product Looking to purchase See your store

On the other hand, if you are an affiliate marketer, you can focus on keywords like best cat t-shirts, compare cat t-shirts, etc.

To read more about keyword research and user intent, check this guide on choosing the right keywords for SEO.

Observe the intent of the search results and see if the results are included.2. Focus on low difficulty keywords

Keyword difficulty is an important metric that you need to keep in mind when choosing keywords for your blog articles. The higher the keyword difficulty, the more difficult the competition is and the harder it will be to rank for it.

When choosing keywords, the general rule of thumb is to find people who have a decent traffic volume with little competition.

To find keyword difficulty, you can use either a free tool, such as the AdWords Keyword Tool or a premium tool, such as Aherefs.

For keyword research, I prefer Aharefs because it shows me the low-hanging fruit among my keyword ideas, which are easy to rank. It also gives insight into the estimated number of clicks for keywords.

Ahrefs gives each keyword a difficulty score on a scale of 1 to 100.

For example, Ahrefs told me that the Keyword Difficulty (KD) for a keyword link building is 77, which is quite a competitive keyword to rank for. But if you click on the Question tab, you will get a list of low KD keywords.

For example, the keyword Best Link Building Tools has a KD of 30, which is relatively easy to rank for.

3. Focus on long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are three or four phrase keywords that are very specific to the things you sell. They are usually easy to rank due to their low competition.

Whenever your potential blog readers use a highly specific search phrase on Google, they know exactly what they are looking for. And if you can create content that matches the intent of that search, you’ll be sure to rank higher!

You need to use these tools in the right places on your content, for example, in the title, description, and sub-coding of your content.

You can use Ahrefs to find possible long-tail keywords. All you have to do is enter your keyword and then on the left panel, click on Questions. This will give you a list of queries / long tail keywords that are being searched related to your keywords.

The second method is to look for related queries on Quora that are being ranked in the top 3 on Google.

If there is a Quora thread on Google it means that there is less competition in the keyword and it is easier to rank for.

To find these threads, go to Ahrefs, Site Explorer »Quora.com» Enter organic keywords »Filter by keywords related to your niche» Filter by posts 3 and sort by volume.

You will get a list of keywords that are being ranked in the top 3 of Google. All you have to do is cover these topics and look at that traffic roll.

Now that you have a list of keywords that you can target, let’s go to the on-page optimization section. This is where you will put the keywords that you have found to be of good use.

4. Use your keywords in titles and subtitles

There is some correlation between title tags and keywords in Google rankings.

Along with this, I recommend you to use different variations in the title tag of your primary keywords and your content.

But do not put your keywords in an attempt to manipulate your site ranking as this can have negative effects.

5. Write a compelling title and meta description.

Did you know that clicking rate (CTR) for your page in search results is also a ranking factor on Google? For example, if your article is listed in the third position for a keyword and you are able to get more clicks than before, you will eventually reach the second or first position!

To achieve a high CTR and ensure that you remain in the top position, you must write titles and descriptions that attract the attention of the searcher and entice them to click.

Keep in mind that for the title, you only have 55 characters, so you need to give some thought before writing it.

There are some things that you need to keep in mind while writing an SEO title and meta description for your post.

• Do not cut your title and description in Google. You want the searcher to have complete information about your content.
• Add your keyword to the title and description.
• Never keep keywords – make sure your writing is natural.

You can easily add meta descriptions and titles if you have Yoast installed on your WordPress.

6. Make your blog responsive

Google uses mobile-first indexing. This means that it determines on your mobile site how to rank it in search results, even if the search is on the desktop.

This means that it is important that your site works well on mobile devices, even if most of your traffic is on the desktop.

To ensure this, you need to choose a responsive WordPress theme.

There are many WordPress responsive themes available on the market. You can like it and install it on your blog.

7. Optimize for Featured Snippets

If you want to get the most from your content, it is smart to optimize your blog to be featured in select snippets.

Featured snippets are shown before the first position, usually with an image, video, or a table in a box. They stand out in search results which help you get more clicks.

Here’s what a snippet looks like:

There are 4 different types of featured snippets that you will come across:

1. Article
2. List (both numbered and bulleted)
3. The table
4. Video

Optimize your content for select snippets and you will be able to drive more traffic to your blog.

8. Optimize your images to drive more traffic

Here’s a secret most bloggers don’t know about: Google image search can send a lot of traffic to your blog if you optimize your images properly!

All you need to do is add alt text to your images. To do this, click on your image and specify alternative text as shown below.

Add an appropriate description in the optional text box so that Google can identify what the image is and help your potential readers find out when they do a Google image search.

In addition to having a suitable alt text, make sure that your image loads fast. You can ensure this using a WordPress plugin called ShortPixel. This will compress your images and load them faster.

9. Make sure you have user friendly URLs

To ensure that you have user-friendly URLs, you need to make sure that your URLs are short and descriptive.

If you’re getting started, be sure to change the default Permalink structure, so that your URL looks short and beautiful.

Never use URLs that have special characters or dates in their URLs. They make them unnecessarily tall and ugly.

10. Improve your site’s load speed

Page load speed is a ranking factor, meaning that if you want to get out of your competition you will need to load your pages faster.

Even if page load speed was not a ranking factor, it is still important if you are serious about providing the best quality to your readers.

To optimize your page speed, you must go to Google PageSpeed??Insights and enter your URL.

Go through the recommendations and implement Google’s suggestions. This will help you improve the page speed of your website.

You can also install a caching plugin on your WordPress to improve your page speed. We of WPRocket use and recommend you do, which is one of the best available caching plugin.

See our guide to speed up your WordPress site for more suggestions.

Now that you have the right set of keywords and optimized pages for best results, let’s take a look at some technical SEO tips.

Technical SEO is done when you want to make sure that your blog is set up for success.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a coder to do technical SEO! You just need to keep an eye out for errors and make sure things are running smoothly.

Here are some tips to help you.

11. Create a Proper Content Hierarchy

By a proper content hierarchy I mean that you need to build your content in a way that is easy to navigate for your visitors, and shows Google the relative importance of each page.

Make sure that every page on your site is just a few clicks away from your home page, especially your important pages. Such as landing page, column content, etc.

Use your header and sidebar to add your important pages.

12. Install an SSL certificate on your site

I strongly recommend you to move SSL as soon as you launch your blog. Moving to SSL will make your site accessible over HTTP. In fact, Google prioritizes sites with SSL even for those who do not.

If your site does not have SSL installed, an alert website secure message will not be shown on the left side of the search bar in your browser.

You can read more about how to get SSL on your site in our guide.

13. Submit a Sitemap on Google Search Console

Submitting a sitemap helps Google understand the structure of your blog, and it also helps Google crawl all your pages.

Google will eventually find any site that is linked to other sites across the web. But submitting a sitemap can help your site rank faster.

If you are using the Yoast plugin, it will generate a sitemap file for you. You can follow this guide to submit your sitemap to Google.

14. Remove Thin Materials

Thin content is classified as any material that has 300 words or less. This type of content offers very little value and Google prefers more lengthy content.

To cure this, either beef the ingredients or remove it.

Getting around

We hope you find our SEO guide useful. Now it is up to you to execute these to the best of your abilities.Paragraph

Keep in mind that by applying these tips you will not reach overnight in the first place. You have to be patient when it comes to SEO. Just make sure that you record every change you make and measure the performance of your SEO strategy.

Things change a lot in SEO, but as long as you keep the basics, you can still get results!

Well, this is all SEO knowledge we have to share for now. If you want a more in-depth guide, check out our Ultimate SEO Guide for the next beginner.

If you have any SEO suggestions that you think we have missed, give a shout in the comments section below.

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