Your Blog SEO-8 Essential Tricks to Page Ranking

Your blog SEO is critical to people finding you on search engines. In a previous post, I talked about the importance of finding a good keyword phrase for your blog title. In this post, I want to reveal the eight essential tricks to search engine optimize your blog content.

As you probably know, search engine optimization or SEO, is the process of making your blog content Google-friendly. That means that there is a greater likelihood that someone with a problem, searching for a solution, will find your blog.

When you are writing, remember that you are writing for the Google algorithm and your reader. You have to satisfy both needs and sometimes they are inconsistent.

A lot of people think that SEO is some mystical, voodoo stuff that only techies understand.

Not true.

SEO is really quite simple if you just understand a few basic tricks.

8 Blog SEO Tricks

Trick #1: Keyword in Title
Put your keyword phrase in your blog title, preferably at the beginning of the title. Since your title announces what your blog is all about, Google will obviously look to your title to see what relevance it has to searchers.

Trick #2: Keyword in First Sentence
Make sure your keyword phrase is in the first sentence of your blog and is bolded. Google wants to know that your content is what the searcher is looking for. Putting your keyword phrase in the first sentence is therefore a critical step to blog SEO for the search engines.

Trick #3: Internal Hyperlink
Somewhere in the middle of the blog, make sure that you have a hyperlink to the blog URL. So if your blog URL is something like https://stupidinternetmarketers.com/how-to-make-your-blog-SEO-friendly, be sure to place your keyword phrase in the body of your blog and hyperlink it to your URL.

Trick #4: Keyword in Last Paragraph
Use your keyword phrase in the last paragraph of your blog and put it in italics. Again, you’re making the keyword phrase stand out for Google so that Google knows your blog is really about what you are talking about.

Trick #5. Include At Least 1 Image with ALT Tag
Make sure your blog has at least one image, preferably two, and an infographic. The images and the infographic will have an alt parameter in WordPress. Put your keyword phrase in the alt box. Infographics are simple to make in Microsoft Word using the Smart Art tool found in the Insert menu.

Here’s an example of a Smart Art infographic:

This took me about two minutes to create, save as an image, and insert it into this blog. You can find free images online, being careful not to infringe on copyrights. Pixabay and Unsplash are two of my favorite free image sites. I might also use Canva.com to create my own images.

Trick #6: Embed a YouTube Video
If you are good at producing YouTube videos, inserting one of your videos into your blog is a great way to help your SEO. Since Google owns YouTube, it makes sense that Google likes to see YouTube videos in blogs.

Blog SEO Trick #7: Keyword in Headlines
Use your keyword phrase in your H2 and H3 headlines. Don’t overdo it. Twice should be sufficient.

Trick #8: Keyword in Meta Title and Description
Be sure to use your keyword phrase in your meta-title and description.

If you are like me and want to make sure that you got it all right, install an SEO plug-in to your WordPress site. Currently, I’m using the Rath SEO plugin because it works well with my WordPress Theme. Yoast is excellent as well. Both will give you guidance on improving your blog SEO and readability.

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This is a guest post from Doug Noll, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.