Have you ever wondered why online stores rank higher in search engines than blogs? If you have then you are not alone. Many bloggers struggle to get a high ranking for their websites. Why? Because blogs are not structured in the same way as online stores. A blog is not a business. It does not really have the same purpose.
A blog is just a place to put your words on, where people go to connect with you. It is not about the money.
Because of this, SEO for bloggers is quite different to SEO for online stores. It is going to depend on what type of blog you have.
General Blogs:
A general blog will usually have a lot of pages, but each page is usually short, covering a single topic. These pages contain a lot of keywords, but not too many. There are usually a lot of images, many short posts, but each one is of quality.
During each post, you will include keywords at the beginning and end of the post. You should also ensure that you write unique content every time you write a blog post.
There are some blogs that are incredibly difficult to rank well for. These follow none of the basic rules which we have covered in our SEO for blogs, however, there are some factors that you can do to further develop your blog.
Affiliate Blogs:
An Affiliate blog is different to a general blog, they have pages, but they are short. These pages are short posts. They provide direct answers to questions that the blog’s target audience may be asking.
For Affiliate blogs, include a lot of keywords on the first page of the site and also include a lot of unique images with your posts. You can read more tips on our sunday best blog.
Niche Blog:
A niche blog is targeted at a specific audience. These blogs follow all of the rules and there should be nothing preventing you from ranking well for your niche blog and being found easily by people who are looking for the information your blog is giving them.
If you provide the information requested by Google, you should rank well. SEO for Bloggers is often an overlooked aspect of running a blog, however, it is important for the success of your blog. We will write more on this in the near future.
If you have a blog, you want to rank high on the search engines. Not ranked high on Google obviously means your blog will never reach its full potential and it will never be seen by the people that most want to read it. That is assuming you are getting any readers at all!
To be successful at blog SEO, you need to follow a few simple rules. The following guide will help, but will not ensure your position on the first page of Google. However, if you follow these guidelines religiously and work upon them regularly, you will start to see success and be in the right position to improve your search ranking. You can read more about SEO tips for blogs.
Building Links:
Link building is still the best way to improve your ranking on search engines. Links are an important part of any SEO strategy. Google looks at many different factors when ranking websites. They look at back-end SEO, off-page SEO, and onsite SEO. You know what they say about all the best things in life, they don’t come easy.
Building links is an essential starting point to a successful SEO strategy. So which websites should you link to?
Blogs and websites in the same niche:
Link building between your blogs and websites is a great way to start. The relationships you build between blogs and websites help Google understand that your blogs are relevant to each other.
If you have a blog on nutrition, link to other nutrition blogs. If you have a tech blog, link to Tech-related blogs.
Blogs and websites in completely different niches:
It is never wise to link to a single blog and a single website. Things become tricky in this scenario. Google will see this as spam. Never link to a blog or website that is not relevant to what you are doing.
Your content and keywords:
The better your content, the better your ranking on search engines. You want Google to crawl your site and index the pages so that Google can rank them on their search results.
Make your blog posts and your keywords match. I remember not too long ago, Google would rank blogs that were keyword stuffing. However, Google’s algorithms have evolved and they realize the value of relevant content. This is why you should look for the keywords that your target audience is looking for. You can read more about SEO tips for content writing
Catchy Headers:
Your headers tell Google what is the most important info on your page. By correctly using headers, you tell Google that your content is relevant to what the searcher is looking for.
Use keywords in the headers
Use keywords in your header tags
Use relevant keywords in the headers
Use keywords in your image alt tags
Use keywords in your footer tags
Anchor text:
Anchor text is the text that is clickable. Anchor text is what users use when they are browsing the internet. It is very important to use relevant anchor text where relevant.
Image Alt text:
Image Alt text is what is used when an image is not displayed. Image Alt text fields are also used by some search engines as another way to rank websites.
Use keywords in your Image Alt text:
On a side note, I recommend using keywords in your image file names. For example, if I take a photo next to a box, I would name that photo “great product photo”.
Now when you say relevant, what do you mean?
Relevance is what Google is looking for. They want to ensure that users are finding websites that are relevant to what they’re looking for and not the other way around.
Keep relevant links
When building links, try to keep them relevant. It does not matter how many times you have linked to your relevant websites.
Now, for links that are not relevant, it doesn’t matter how many times you have linked to these sites because Google knows that these links are not relevant. These links will have no impact on your ranking.
Avoid duplicate content issues
It is really important that you do not use duplicate content. This is important if you are linking out from other blog posts.
Make sure that any links you can use are not duplicated.
Conclusion
SEO for blogs is slightly different to SEO for online stores, but the principles are the same. Your blog should add value to your readers. You should use keywords effectively and your blog should be organized in a way that allows for Google to scan your site easily and rank you accordingly.