SEO can be a very confusing and intimidating topic. You may have heard the term SEO thrown around but have no idea what it means. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Without getting too involved, it is basically how well your website/blog will rank in search engine results. Theoretically, the better optimized your site is for SEO, the higher you will rank. I say theoretically because there are many different contributing factors to search engine results rankings, but that is for another day. Today, I want to teach you 3 small things you can do that will help you with your SEO.
These tips are all very easy and are something that you should be doing every time you write a new blog post or add new content to your website.
Relevant Content
Content is the bread and butter of your website or blog. Your website can be the nicest looking one in your niche, but without great content you will not get any traction. You may have heard the saying “Content is King.” This is partially true. It should be “Relevant Content is King – or Queen :).”
If your website is for your cat breeding business, you should not write content on the rise and fall of the Roman empire. It does not matter how well written and researched the content is if it does not fit what your website is about; thus, it will not help your SEO.
Bonus tip – The length of your content can also help your SEO. It used to be that posts between 300 – 500 words were ideal. This is no longer the case. Readers are more apt to read longer articles and over 1000 words is rumored to be getting a little bit of preferential treatment in regards to SEO. This does not mean that you should stretch your posts with filler just to hit the word count, but if you tend to write a lot it will not count against you.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the (if not the) most important aspect of SEO. Since this post is about basic SEO optimization, I am going to keep it very simple.
When you insert a word or a phrase into a search engine (such as Google or Yahoo) the search engine will return a list of websites. These results are based on keywords (amongst other factors). The word or phrase you inputted into the search engine that matches your results is called the keyword.
There are many advanced ways to perform keyword research, but let’s KISS (keep it simple stupid). If you are a vlogger or have a blog that does very well on Pinterest, go to the social media site that is already bringing you traffic and find out what the users are looking for.
For example, Pinterest is our number 1 referrer. If I was to write a post on banana bread I would put the words banana bread into the search bar. Below a stream of other words that are searched for in conjunction with banana bread are also shown.
Using this example a title of “Healthy and Easy Banana Bread Recipe” will show up in more search results than “My Super Awesome Banana Bread Recipe You Will Love.”
Optimizing Images
I have previously written a post about alt tags and why they are important. This post is well worth the read. Alt tags are important to your SEO and for social sharing. Your readers can easily share your content on image social sharing site like Pinterest if they are filled out properly.
Do you have any other super easy SEO tips? I would love for you to share.
