Podcast Episode 42 – SEO Strategies for Bloggers

Boost your blog’s visibility with the latest “Website Success” episode on SEO Strategies for Bloggers. Join Chrissy Rey as she demystifies SEO, guiding you through effective keyword research, content optimization, and much more. Tune in to transform your blogging journey with expert insights on SEO!

Listen to the Episode

Show Notes

Dive into the world of SEO with Chrissy Rey in this insightful episode of “Website Success.” Focused on SEO strategies for bloggers, Chrissy covers everything from keyword research and on-page SEO to backlink building and the importance of regularly updating content. This episode is a treasure trove of tips for bloggers looking to boost their online visibility.

Timestamps

  • [00:00:09] Introduction to SEO for Bloggers
  • [00:00:49] Demystifying SEO
  • [00:01:11] Cornerstones of Keyword Research
  • [00:02:35] Using SEO Tools for Keyword Research
  • [00:03:34] Creating Quality Content with SEO in Mind
  • [00:05:21] On-Page SEO Techniques
  • [00:06:51] Technical SEO Overview
  • [00:08:07] Building Backlinks
  • [00:09:40] Importance of Regular Content Updates
  • [00:10:26] Tracking and Analyzing SEO Efforts
  • [00:12:02] Conclusion and Call to Action

Key Takeaways

  • Gain a comprehensive understanding of SEO and its importance for bloggers.
  • Learn how to conduct effective keyword research and use SEO tools.
  • Discover how to create engaging content with SEO in mind.
  • Understand the significance of on-page SEO and technical SEO for your blog.
  • Explore the role of backlinks in enhancing your blog’s visibility.
  • Recognize the importance of regular content updates for SEO success.
  • Gain insights on using analytics tools to track and optimize your SEO strategies.

Resources Mentioned

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to Website Success. I’m Chrissy Rey, and in this episode, we’re going to dive deep into search engine optimization, or SEO, specifically for bloggers. This is the third part of my blogging series, so make sure you go back and listen to the first two episodes about getting started with blogging and writing engaging content for your blog because this episode will make a lot more sense if you already have the info from those episodes.

Understanding SEO

First up, I want to demystify just what exactly SEO or search engine optimization is. It involves understanding how the search engines work or at least the basics of it, figuring out what people are searching for, and then optimizing your website and your content to make it easier for search engines to offer it when people are searching for it.

The Cornerstone of SEO: Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the cornerstones of SEO. It’s all about identifying the words and phrases that your target audience is going to use when searching for content like yours. And keywords are those words and phrases. If you listened to my first episode in the blogging series, getting started, then you learned about choosing a niche and target audience for your blog, and then coming up with some topics for your blog posts. And those topics are a great place to start with your keyword research. In fact, there is a really good chance that you wrote your list of topics as words or phrases, AKA keywords. So you’ve already got your list of keywords! You’re ready to go.

Using SEO Tools for Keyword Research

After you have a list of 10 to 20 keywords or 10 to 20 topics for your blog, then you can use tools like Google’s keyword planner, SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs to research those keywords. Google’s keyword planner is free if you have a Google ads account, which is free, you just need to add a credit card in case you do run some ads. But it is geared more towards cost per click or CPC instead of SEO . But you’ll still get some good search engine optimization info from it. The rest of the tools do have limited free accounts that you can use for some basic research, but you will need to upgrade to a paid account to get the most out of them.

Creating Quality Content with Keywords

Once you’ve got your keywords, it’s time to create some quality content using a couple of keywords proposed. So, if, for example, my post is about basic RV maintenance tips. Then that’s going to be one of my keywords, and another keyword might be RV travel or something along those lines. So once I’ve got those keywords, I need to use them in my content. And that doesn’t mean just stuffing my post with those keywords. Instead, you want to naturally incorporate the keywords into well-written informative and engaging articles. So, in other words, if I’m writing a post for RV maintenance, I’ll use that phrase where it makes sense in my post, but I won’t use it in every sentence, and I won’t use it in every heading. I’ll use it where it’s natural, and it makes sense.

On-Page SEO

Next up, I want to talk about on-page SEO. And that is all about optimizing the individual web pages, or blog posts in the case of a blog, to rank higher for the search engine result page. And that’s going to include using things like title tags and meta descriptions effectively. And the reason that you want to add those is because some search engines are going to use the title tag and the meta description for the text that’s going to appear on the search engine results page. So, it is important that they reflect the content that’s in the post. And if you listened to my last episode about writing engaging content, you’ll know that I talked quite a bit about creating those titles, and all of those things that I mentioned in that episode also apply to the title tags. Now, one thing I do want to add is that you should try to put your keyword in the title tag and the meta description for your post. Again, just make sure that it’s in there naturally.

Optimizing Images for SEO

Another thing that you can do for on-page SEO is optimize your images. And this is a little bit of technical SEO, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, but it’s also going to be the on-page SEO. You want to resize and compress your images before you upload them, and also make sure that they have alternative text when you insert them into your blog post. And if you can try to include your keywords in that alternative text, but again, only if it makes sense to do so.

Technical SEO

By the way, I do have a free on-page SEO checklist that you can download at websitesuccessacademy.com. You can just go to the resources section, and you’ll find it in there. It covers a few more things than I mentioned in this episode, so make sure you have a look. Another thing to consider when it comes to SEO is something called technical SEO, which I mentioned with the images. It’s pretty technical, as the name implies, but two things that you should at least be able to get started with on your own are going to be making sure that the website is mobile-friendly and also making sure that it loads quickly. And you can check both of those things using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool at pagespeed.web.dev. The PageSpeed Insights tool will give you scores from zero to 100 for performance, SEO, and accessibility. You want to try to get each of those scores as high as possible, and the tool’s also going to give you some suggestions for fixing any issues that it might find. Unfortunately, a lot of those suggestions are going to be pretty technical, so you might need to work with a web developer to fix all of them, but at least you’ll know what the issues are, and you might be able to do some of them.

The next thing I want to talk about is backlinks, and backlinks are going to be links from other websites to your blog, and they are SEO gold. They let search engines know that other people value your content. So you’re not going to be the only one that’s sharing this information. Other people are sharing links to your blog because they find that information valuable. It can help to boost your credibility, your authority, and that in turn can help to boost your ranking on the search engines, results page to build some back links. You want to create high quality content that other people want to share. Guest blogging can help with this, collaborating with influencers in your niche, and actively participating in online communities related to your topic can also help to build your backlink profile. And you may be wondering “What about links from social media?” In a lot of cases, those are going to have something called a no-follow on them. So they don’t necessarily count as far as backlinks.

Regular Content Updates

Another thing for bloggers to consider when it comes to SEO is that search engines favor websites that are regularly updated with fresh content, which is great. If you’re a blogger, you’re probably publishing content on a regular basis. Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to post every day, but having a consistent posting schedule does let the search engines know that your site is active and up-to-date. And regular updates also give readers a reason to return. Which is going to increase the traffic to your website and also the engagement.

Tracking and Analyzing SEO Efforts

The last thing I want to talk about is tracking and analyzing your SEO efforts. You can use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to get insights on how your blog is performing, not just as far as traffic, which is what you’re going to get from the analytics, but also how it’s performing in the search engine results page. You can see what keywords are driving traffic to your website, where you’re ranking for specific keywords, and then you can also see how users are interacting with your content. And I do want to give a special shout-out to Google Search Console because you can get ideas for additional topics or keywords that you can use for new posts based on what kind of traffic you’re getting from different keywords on your existing website.

Conclusion

SEO for bloggers requires a willingness to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of search engine algorithms. Once you’ve got everything figured out and you’ve got your SEO awesome, the search engines are going to change the algorithms. And you’re going to have to adjust accordingly. So keep that in mind. One thing to remember is that SEO is not a one-time task but it is a continuous journey. You’re going to have to keep doing it on every post that you create. And you’re also going to have to sometimes go back and re-optimize posts that you’ve already published. So just embrace the process and you will see your efforts pay off in increased traffic. Thanks a lot for joining me in this episode of Website Success. We have covered a lot of ground in our blogging series. So again, if you didn’t already listen to those first two episodes, go back and listen to them now. Each of the steps in this series is really important for creating a successful blog. And I do hope that these episodes have given you the tools, and the confidence that you need to excel in your blogging journey, or at least get started in it. If you have any questions, success stories, or challenges that you’d like to share, I would love to hear from you. Join me in the Website Success Lounge on Facebook. The link to that is going to be in the show notes. And also, don’t forget to check out the resources at websitesuccessacademy.com. I’ve got some in-depth guides and tips. And if you’re listening to this episode when it’s first published, which should be in the beginning of 2024, then make sure you go to websitesuccessacademy.com and sign up for the February Blog Hero Bootcamp. It’s a live three-day challenge where we will cover lots of really great information about blogging. So make sure you sign up for that. Stay tuned for the next episode. And until I see you, then keep optimizing, keep writing, and happy blogging. Thanks for listening.