How do I Optimize My Blog for SEO?

Becoming a blogger means you need to find ways to get traffic to your blog. Optimizing your blog for SEO is one of the best ways to grow your traffic over time.

SEO isn’t a short-term strategy, however. Many new bloggers don’t have the patience to wait for blog posts to get listed in the search results. You must find the patience if you plan to be a successful blogger.

Yes, you can get traffic from Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other sources. While this traffic is great and you should certainly use social media, SEO will become the backbone of your blog, if you write high-quality content.

Even if you don’t do anything to create better SEO within your blog posts, the search engines will rank you based on what they believe the content is about.

If you want a better chance of gaining a higher ranking on Google, Bing, and other search engines, use the following five tips to optimize your blog posts for SEO.

1. Know Your Keywords

Before you start writing, it’s vital to know which keyword phrase(s) you want to target. I like to start with one main phrase and three to five related phrases.

Ubersuggest is one of the best free tools you can use to find great keywords for your blog posts.

2. Use Keywords Naturally Throughout the Post

If you install an SEO plugin, such as SEOPressor (my favorite), you’ll have help with how and where to use your keywords. The main places you want to ensure you use your main keyword and some related keywords include:

• The Blog Title
• Headings and Subheadings (not all, but some)
• Introductory paragraph
• Meta Description
• Blog Tags
• ALT Image tags (some, not all)

You don’t want to overdo it, however. Usually, I try to use my three to five related phrases once, if they fit naturally. My main keyword, I try to use where it fits naturally, but I don’t try to shove it in at every opportunity.

3. Add Links

You won’t hear me talk about backlinks as I believe in building backlinks naturally. However, you still want to add links to your blog posts for better SEO.

First, you want to link to any other posts or pages you have on your site when it makes sense. About two links per 500 words is a good average, but it should vary from one post to another.

Read the full post, “How do I Optimize My Blog for SEO?” from the original source, BenjaminEhinger.com