Search engine optimization is incredibly important for marketers.
Optimizing your web pages and blog posts can make your website more visible to users of Google, Bing and other search engines. Even small changes can have a huge impact on your organic traffic and including SEO friendly content can be both easy and cheap.
And yet, Google’s copious algorithm updates can make this task tricky. SEO is both an art and a science and knowing how to best optimize your site to succeed can make a huge difference. If you’re curious about how to organically grow your blog and become an SEO master, read on.
We’ll Discuss Seven Easy Ways to Create SEO Friendly Content and Increase Your Google Ranking
#1. Focus on One or Two Keywords
Optimizing your blog posts for SEO is not about incorporating as many keywords into your posts as possible. Nowadays, this actually damages your SEO because search engines consider this ‘keyword stuffing‘– shoving in keywords to increase your ranking instead of creating actually helpful content. Search engines can see right through that, and your Google ranking might actually decrease.
You should do the opposite. Make sure the use of keywords in your post don’t feel forced or strange, and that your content is actually readable.
A good process is to focus on one or two long-tail keywords per post. While you can use more than one keyword in a single post, attempt to keep the focus of the post narrow enough to optimize for just one or two keywords.
Why? These longer, often question-based keywords keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. It keeps your blogs focused on the intent of the browser, and what they came to your page to find out.
Web browsers searching long-tail questions are more likely to read the whole post and then continue to read more information from your site. In other words, you’ll generate the kind of traffic and consumers that you actually desire.
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#2. Place the Keywords with Strategy
Once you’ve chosen your one or two keywords, you’ll need to deploy them properly. There are four important places where you should include your keywords: title tag, headers, URL, and meta description.
The title of your post will be a reader’s first indication that your post answers their question. Therefore, it is essential that you include your keyword here to incentivize clicks. Including the keyword in headers, URL, and meta description will help you to show up higher in Google search results.
#3. Is Your Blog Set Up for Mobile?
If not, it needs to be. Google actually has begun to discriminate against showing websites in their results that are not optimized for mobile users. Mobile web use is overtaking desktop use in consumers around the country, so even outside of your need for SEO, you really should have a mobile-friendly version of your website to score the views you desire.
You can make your website mobile-friendly by using “responsive design.” Websites that are responsive allow blog pages to have just one URL instead of two — one for desktop and one for mobile, respectively. This greatly helps your SEO, as all inbound links will direct back to the same URL instead of two separate ones.
If you have trouble optimizing your site for mobile or for SEO in general, you could always work with an SEO service.
#4. Use Meta Description Wisely
Outside of your header, your meta description is what your potential readers will scan before clicking into your page. It’s an important place to make a good first impression.
The maximum length of this content is now an increased 300 characters, giving you a better chance to offer info to browsers before they click. As discussed before, your descriptions should be reader-friendly but also include your focused on one or two keywords.
By creating reader-friendly content with natural keyword inclusion, you’ll make it easier for Google to prove your post’s relevancy to web browsers.
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#5. Use Simple URLs
You might not think about the string of numbers and words that make up your web URL, but you should. Simplicity and reading ease of website URLs actually matters quite a lot to search engines.
Google and other services want browsers to be able to easily navigate sites and understand their structure. Having a simple and straightforward indication after the “/” in website’s address can greatly increase your SEO.
If you have a blog for marketing suggestions, for example, you’ll want your URL to read something like YourWebsite.Com/Marketing-Suggestions, and not a long indiscernible string of words and numbers.
If you can keep your URLs simple and straightforward, search engine results should reward you for your efforts.
#6. Link Internally When Possible
If you’ve written about a topic that’s mentioned in your blog post on another blog post or web page, it’s a great idea to link to that page within your post.
Why? Inbound linking gives an indication to search engines that you have more valid and relevant content on your page. The success of one blog post can then elevate others on your website.
Even outside of this push, inbound linking is a great way to keep visitors on your site, sending them to other pages with further helpful information.
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#7. Don’t Overuse Similar Topic Tags
You may use topic tags on your blog or website to help organize content. This is a great practice, but if not used responsibly, it can actually cause damage to your search engine optimization.
If your website has too many similar tags, search engines may actually interpret this as duplicate content and penalize you. Tags can be helpful, but make sure to differentiate your tagging system to avoid penalization.
A healthy blog should have 10-15 tags that each feel discernibly different from one another. Stay far away from variations of the same word and stick to the 10 or 15 tags that you’ve created on all of your posts.
Add Some SEO Friendly Content to Your Blog
Optimizing your site for SEO can make a huge difference in your rate of organic traffic. The best part is that all of the above suggestions are easy and free to implement.
Need more help making money online? Check out our blog for more advice.