How To Make Your Blog SEO Friendly: 10 Unmissable Steps

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Are you a blogger or small business owner looking to make your blog more SEO friendly so that Google will rank it higher when people search for the same topic? This is the post for you!

In this post, I’ll cover the basics to help you get started and do some basic SEO on your blog.

What is SEO friendly?

Being SEO friendly means that you have created a blog and its content to make it easier for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. to find your site when someone searches for the same topic or keyword phrase.

The purpose of doing this is so people who are looking for information on the subject can easily find your post related content instead of having to go through hundreds or thousands of results.

There are many ways that you can do this, and I’ll cover some basic ones for creating a blog post with SEO in mind below:

Step One. Pick your focus keywords

Picking your focus keywords is the first step in making your blog SEO friendly. Be sure to choose a handful of keywords that are relevant to the topic of your blog so that you can target these words throughout your content and link back to them in your URL. More targeted keywords will be found by more people who are searching for what you offer, and this will lead to higher rankings in Google and higher traffic for your site.

The goal is for the content on your blog post to be helpful and insightful so people will want to share it with their friends and followers through social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter.

Not sure what are your focus keywords? Check our SEO tips on keywords here.

Step Two. Optimize your on-page content with these keywords

Use all of those great keywords in headlines, subheadings, image captions, videos, descriptions, etc. Make sure you use some form of call-to-action as well and entice readers to click, subscribe or buy.

Step Three: Create XML sitemaps

I’ll assume that for most bloggers, it’s not enough to make sure Google can find your content because you want your blog to appear in Google’s search results. To do this, create an XML sitemap that will let the big G know about all of your content and where it can be found on your site.

Step Four: Generate blog categories using your keywords

As you write posts, categorize them with keywords that are relevant to the content. This will help Google find your blog and rank it higher in search results for those topics.

Step Five: Generate tags using your keywords as well

Tags work like categories, but they’re better because people who use Google’s site-specific search can find your content much more easily.

Step Six: Add social media buttons to your blog

One of the best ways to get people who are not on your site to visit and potentially share it is by adding these widgets next to each post. You can include options like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever other networks you use for SEO purposes.

Step Seven: Create backlinks

Finally, go out there and create some quality backlinks from other sites to your blog. This will help Google find and rank you higher for keywords that are relevant to the content of your site.

A quality backlink is one that comes from a site with a high domain authority.

Step Eight: Create content frequently

Hopefully, you’re already doing this because it will help your blog rank better and keep people coming back for more!

Step Nine: Promote your articles on social media

Sharing your articles across all the social media platforms will help you generate traffic to your website, plus you’ll have the chance to expand your content based on the comments from your audience.

Step Ten: Monitor your blog performance

Monitoring your blog performance is essential because you want to make sure it’s running smoothly and that Google hasn’t penalized it for any reason.

As a forensic marketer, I am always paying attention to metrics (as you may know). The following are trackers that your blog must-have, so you can run reports, check performance, and plan future content:

Facebook pixel. Make sure your blog has a Facebook Pixel installed, along with custom events, so you can see important metrics such as article views and clicks on your call to actions. You can even build a custom audience from your article visitors.

Google Analytics tracker. A tracker will allow you to gather information on your article visitors, the time they have spent reading, other pages they visited, and depending on your settings, you can set up goals and campaigns to find specific users’ behaviors.

UTM codes. This tool allows you to easily add campaign parameters to URLs so you can track Custom Campaigns in Google Analytics. Watch the video below to see a quick tutorial on how UTM codes work.

We’ve covered a lot of ground today. But don’t worry, if you feel like we missed something important or left anything out, just let us know! If you want to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to SEO and blog posts, be sure to give our free SEO audit a shot. We will send you a video with our findings and schedule a call where you can ask us anything.

Ready to boost your SEO? We are an Austin-based online marketing agency specialized in performance based marketing

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Empower your blog with these 10 simple steps to make you the most search engine friendly blogger on the web. No matter what kind of content you are blogging about (health tips, business hints etc.), following these 10 steps will catapult your traffic and see a major rise in ranking.