7 Simple Tips for Good SEO on Your WordPress Blog
Use these simple techniques to make your blog post more visible to search engines
Have you ever wanted your blog to rank well when it comes to search engines?
When I first started blogging, I ranked well quickly for many keywords. The internet was not as competitive then. Today, we’re in competition not only with hundreds but with millions of websites. In fact, according to Internet Live Stats, there are now 1.5 billion websites around the world!
Out of those websites competing for keywords, how would you rank well?
When this happened, I felt that SEO had suddenly become so complicated.
Should I even need to become a programmer or IT expert to do this? Or should I hire a professional to do it for me?
Hiring experts may help us gain that competitive advantage over other sites.
But we must also consider the cost.
Can we afford it? Are we willing to include that in our budget now? Or do we want to start in a simpler way and see if we can do it ourselves?
If you’re a solopreneur like me who is used to doing things by yourself, you may want to look at the simple tips below to help you when it comes to the SEO of your blog posts. (Note that I use WordPress and also the plugin Yoast SEO.)
Tips to help your WordPress blog post rank better on search engines:
1. Include your keywords in your blog title
Make sure that your title reflects the keywords you want to rank well for in search engines. Even if you want your title to be interesting, you should not forget that you also need to be noticed for your keywords.
2. Don’t make your titles too short or too long
The suggested length of headlines ranges from 60 to 160 characters only. Don’t make your titles longer than that.
3. Choose relevant tags and categories
The categories and tags you use for your blog post should be relevant to your keywords.
4. Optimize your images by using alt text
An alt text describes your image through written words. This helps make your blog more accessible to search engines. To add alt text in WordPress, simply click on the photo and edit it by typing the words describing your image.
5. If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, provide a focus keyphrase.
The keyphrase is similar to your keywords. Enter these relevant keywords so that Yoast can help evaluate whether your post is already SEO-friendly or not.
6. Provide a meta description for your blog post
Sometimes, we want to provide an interesting introduction to our post. However, that doesn’t necessarily include the keywords we want to rank for.
To solve this, type the meta description with your keywords using the Yoast plugin so that search engines can detect them. At the same time, you can retain your interesting introduction for your human readers.
7. Mention your keyphrase in the subtitles and body of your post
Yoast SEO counts your keyphrase density such that it counts the number of times your keyphrase appears in your article.
Follow the plugin’s suggested number so that you have enough related keywords in the body of your post.
Conclusion
SEO need not be a very complicated and expensive task that always requires the services of experts. As a freelance writer, you can follow the above tips and accomplish simple techniques in making your blog posts more SEO-friendly.
Always write for human beings, but don’t forget to do your part so that search engines can also find your posts.