SEO for Bloggers: The Comprehensive Guide for 2024

Are you struggling to bring traffic and readers for your blog? For beginner bloggers, it can be challenging to rank in search engines. However, by implementing SEO strategies, you can improve your search engine rankings and increase traffic to your blog.

SEO for Bloggers: Free SEO Guide for Beginners

SEO, or search engine optimization, for bloggers. Blogging is a serious business, and those who want to succeed need to work on their blog’s SEO. Search rankings and organic traffic can bring tonnes of valuable visitors, and that too for free.

Here is a list of SEO tips for blogging that can help bloggers rank in Google and drive free organic traffic to their blogs.

1. Keyword Research: Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing relevant search terms for your niche or topic. This involves using keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to identify relevant keywords to target for organic search rankings.
2. Optimize Your Titles: Your blog post title is the first thing readers see when they come across your content. Optimize your title to include your target keyword. An attention-grabbing title can increase the likelihood of readers clicking through to your blog.
3. Use Heading Tags: Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) help to organize your content into easily digestible sections. Heading tags help search engines understand the structure of your content, and improve user experience.
4. Optimize Your Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions are the content summary that appear below your title in search engine results. Optimize your meta descriptions to include target keywords and encourage readers to visit your blog.
5. Write Quality Content: Quality content is essential for building an audience and improving search engine rankings. Your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. It helps establish you as an authority in your niche.
6. Optimize Your Images: To optimize images, use descriptive file names and alt tags so that search engines can understand your content better. Optimize image file sizes and use modern image formats such as webP to reduce file size and improve page load speed.
7. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly: With the increasing use of mobile devices, it is essential to make your blog mobile-friendly and improve user experience. Search engines now prioritize mobile-friendly sites. So, a mobile-friendly site can also improve your search rankings.
8. Use Social Media: Social media can help you promote your blog, increase your reach and visibility, and drive traffic to your site. By sharing your content on social media, you can build an audience and engage with readers who are interested in your niche.
9. Use Google Analytics: Website analytics allow you to track and analyze your website’s performance. It provides valuable insights into your audience’s behavior and identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize your site.
10. Use Internal Links: Internal links are links that point to other pages on your own website. When used properly, they can help keep readers on your site longer, decrease your bounce rate, and improve your search engine rankings.
11. Use Outbound Links: Outbound links are links that point to external sources outside of your website. By linking to relevant and authoritative sources, you can add credibility to your content and provide readers with additional information that may be of interest to them.
12. Use Schema Markup: Schema Markup is a structured data vocabulary that can be added to your website’s HTML code to provide search engines with more information about your content. It may help your website stand out in search results.
13. Acquire Backlinks: Writing guest posts for other blogs can be a great way to increase your exposure and build backlinks to your site. By writing high-quality content for established blogs in your niche, you gain authority and drive more traffic to your blog.
14. Use YouTube: YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and creating videos can be a great way to increase your reach and drive traffic to your blog. Informative and engaging videos help you reach a wider audience and promote your blog.
15. Optimize Your Blog’s Speed: Website speed is a crucial factor in user experience and search engine rankings. Target for a page load time of 3 seconds or less. A fast website can lead to improved search engine rankings and increased traffic to your blog.
16. Use SSL: SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security protocol that encrypts data transmitted between a website and its users. It improves the security of your website and protect your users’ sensitive information. SSL also a ranking factor used by Google for search results.
17. Use Google Trends: Google Trends is a free tool to explore the popularity of different search terms over time. You can use it to identify popular topics and keywords in your niche and create content that is relevant and timely.
18. Monitor Your Competitors: Monitoring your competitors’ content can help you identify opportunities to improve your blog. By analyzing your competitors’ content, you can learn from their successes and failures and create content

SEO for Bloggers: 2024 Guide

Let us now discuss about SEO for bloggers in detail.

In bygone times, it was easier to start and establish blogs. One could start ranking in search even with zero effort. You could get noticed as a blogger with a lot less blogs on the Internet. Today, there is a lot of competition and you cannot expect to get traffic without conscious and active effort in SEO for blogging.

How to SEO a blog? How do you rank your blog in search results? Learn how to improve your blog website SEO to rank #1 in Google, Bing and other search engines.

1. SEO-Optimized Blog Website

Most bloggers focus on keywords for on-page SEO. Don’t go there yet. Start with optimizing your blog, and also hosting. From the perspective of SEO, the best blogging platform is self-hosted WordPress. It’s absolutely free, and can be easily customized to suit your needs.

Start with good web hosting if your current hosting service is slow. You can use our recommended hosting for your websites and blogs.

Once you have installed WordPress, use the Appearance > Themes menu in your WordPress site dashboard for free themes in the official repository. Install any clutter-free theme.

Check that the theme uses H1 heading tag for titles on blog post and pages. No webpage should have more than one H1 title tag.

Also, install plugins for SEO, contact form, and other essential features that you need. For example, you will need recipe plugin for food blogging or Schema plugin for business blogs.

2. Organized Blog Content

Structure your blog content in clearly organized categories. Ideally, you should have 3-5 main categories. If you need more categories, make them sub-categories or child categories of the main ones.

Keep a long-term vision when deciding on categories.

Add the main categories in the header or primary menu for easy navigation. All your sub-categories should be added as sub-menu.

Why are we even discussing it as part of SEO? Content organization and easy navigation are among the factors affecting website usability and, hence, Google search rankings.

All your content should be easily discoverable by both visitors and search engine bots. You should have a website XML sitemap too. If you use Yoast SEO, Rank Math or SEOPress plugin, enable the sitemap feature. Else, check your SEO plugin for the support or add a sitemap plugin. Add the sitemap URL in the footer menu or secondary menu.

3. Index Your Blog in Google

If you are just starting our or your blog does not appear in Google, you need to submit your website sitemap.

Registering for Google Webmasters / Google Search Console. Verify your website ownership and then submit the sitemap URL.

For new blogs, you should start sharing your website and articles in social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Why? Social media is scanned by Google more frequently. Hence, your blog website will get noticed and indexed by Google in a matter day or so.

How to see if your blog is indexed by Google? Search for your website using “site:example.com” or “info:example.com”, of course, after replacing your actual site URL.

4. Set up Social Media for Blog

If your blog doesn’t have its own social media accounts, you need to set them up.

Try to get all the social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, YouTube, etc. If possible, get one common username or handle across all sites for better branding.

Keep posting frequently on social media accounts.

5. Keyword Research

Now, let’s actually work on the on-page content SEO. Don’t write articles randomly. Research and find what are the things that people search for in your niche or segment.

Don’t just start writing about the most searched keywords. As a beginner, your should work on low-competition keywords.

For example, when you find a keyword with 100,000 search and lots of reputed websites in search results, stop. Look for variants of the search phrase with lower search volume (say, 5000), and also less competition. When you focus on low-competition keywords, your chances of ranking improves.

In a nutshell, you need to discover the main keywords with lots of traffic. Create content around that search phrase, but optimize it for another low-competition search variation. You need to deal with the high volume keywords after gaining some traffic from easy keywords.

Here’s an illustration of how to find long tail keywords for your blog:

• Niche: Select the main niche for your blog. Eg: home and garden.
• Narrow down: Identify sub-niches within your niche, where possible. Eg: home decor, vegetable gardening.
• Main keywords: Within the narrowed niche, you need to find the main keywords that align with your business goals and have substantial monthly search volumes. Eg: How to grow vegetables in your garden?
• Long-tail search keywords: Around your main keywords, discover long-tail keywords. Eg: How to deal with insects eating your spinach leaves?

Why optimize content for low-volume keywords?

Easy to rank: By entering the big league game, your chances for winning are slim. You will end up with ZERO organic traffic from search engines. When you focus on low-competition keywords, you start ranking on page #1 easily. Thus, you start getting traffic to your website. It helps establish your blog and also builds your confidence with measurable results.

Build topical authority: When you have lots of posts focusing on long-tail search keywords around a certain keyword, you establish your blog as an authority on the topic. It serves as the foundation to rank for coveted keywords with high search volumes.

6. On-Page Content SEO

Make sure to optimize your content for SEO, based on your primary and secondary keywords. Add media videos, images , etc to make it rich.

When optimizing a blog article for multiple keywords, your primary keyword should be in the title. You should use the high-volume keyword, or your primary keyword, in the URL slug too.

Your primary keyword should appear in the first sentence. Try to place it as close to the beginning of the article.

You should break your article in sections. Ensure that your target keyword keywords appear in the headings. Semantic variations of your primary keyword should also be used in headings.

Maintain a hierarchy with heading tags. H1 for the blog post title, H2 for all main section headings, H3 for sub-sections within the main sections, and so on.

How long should a blog post be for SEO?

Content length is also one of the ranking factors. Try to write comprehensive articles with all the information. In general, top ranking articles are 1000-3000 words.

Check the top 10 results for your keyword. What is the word length of the top result web page? What is the average length of content in top 10 results? Ignore any outlier web page, with too little or much longer content. Your content word count should match the word count of the top result page or the average word count of top 10 results.

Write long articles. However, you also need to ensure that your articles are scan-able. Break the content in small sections for easy readings. Add relevant images, or even better, infographics or text-based images.

How often should you blog for SEO?

Google loves fresh content. You need to post new articles on your blog often. One blog post each week helps keep readers engaged and your blog active. There’s no fixed rule for frequency of blog posting. You can choose your own blogging schedule. Do make it a point to post regularly. If you stop posting regularly, it often seems to have a negative impact on your search rankings.

Also, make it a point to update your old articles. Don’t let your content become stale with obsolete content.

When creating blog content, you should consider linking to useful resources on the web. Don’t be afraid of linking to relevant blogs, websites and resources that add value to your readers. Outbound links can also be a good SEO indicator of relevance of your post.

You should also link to your own website pages and articles. Internal linking, or linking to pages within the website, helps in creating a better navigation structure.

7. Schema for Content

Based on the niche of your blog, you should implement Schema tags.

Schema tags are must for certain type of content articles such as recipes, reviews and products. You can easily add Schema to your website and articles using WP plugins for Schema. Check the plugin section within your WordPress site dashboard to search and install plugins.

8. Off-Site SEO Backlinks

Once your on-page SEO is fully optimized, you need to get relevant backlinks to your own blog. Don’t build poor quality links from bad or unrelated websites. You need good links with right context only.

Links are “do-follow” (by default) or with “nofollow” attribute added. A nofollow link tells search engines not to count the link or give any weightage to the linked page. Google says nofollow links are of no value to SEO. However, don’t just build links for SEO. Diversify your link-building.

Guest blogging, or providing blog articles to other bloggers in your niche, is a great way to start. Reach out to other bloggers in your niche. Build and grow contact without any expectation. If possible, try to get to know them personally via phone, social media or any other manner possible.

Crazy SEO linkbuilders send out cold emails soliciting guest posts. You must stand out as genuine blogger and initiate a more personal relationship. Don’t send template emails. Instead, reach out in a more personal and genuine manner.

Before sending out an email requesting guest post, start by leaving comments on the blog where you want to get published. Do this for a couple of posts to get your name registered. Then send them an introduction email. Offer your guest post contribution in later mails or calls.

Web 2.0 platforms are also great for building backlinks.

• Use PDF & document sharing sites to publish files with link to your site in the content.
• Add your site to relevant directories, such as local city directory & trade directory.
• Post articles on platforms that allow user-generated content, such as Quora and Medium.
• You should also use video sharing sites such as YouTube, and other sharing websites.

If you have in-depth understanding of the subject, reach out to local media and online websites. Introduce yourself as an expert and see if they would be willing to publish your article.

In the online space, join and participate in forums in your niche. Provide value to the platform. You can then add your own link in signature or profile section.

Don’t forget to be active on social media too.

9. Google Maps & My Business

If your blog can be added to Google Maps (Google My Business) as a valid business, you should do that too. You can add your blog as a local business or service, if it qualifies. Adding your blog to Google Maps will get it some advantage when people around you search for the keyword.

Listing on Google My Business or Google Maps plays an important role in local SEO. For instance, if you are looking to rank for local SEO in San Diego, you must get your business listed and verified. With an active Google Maps listing, your website ranking also improves. Of course, you tend to benefit by appearing in the Map pack too.

10. Local Keywords & Trends

Think locally for quick results. Publish blog content that people in your city or country search for. Why? Less competition and easy traffic.

Take the most popular content in your niche and see how people are searching for it in your location. Google will often show you suggestions with local versions of the keywords searched.

Being local with your content approach improves your success rate. If there’s something trending in your niche, you can publish content on that too.

Also, use Google Trends to check the latest search trends.

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Do you think I missed anything important in SEO for blogging? If you have something to add, don’t feel shy. Share your inputs, and I will update this article with due credits to you. 🙂