As a blogger, SEO can be a very foreign and difficult concept to master. It is for this reason you may decide to ignore SEO altogether. And this is the biggest mistake you could ever make. Your blog needs SEO, without it how will people ever find your website and read your content?
Trying to implement SEO tactics to your own blog without preforming the necessary research can lead to pretty costly mistakes. It is important that you do your research about the best SEO tactics for your blog. As well as this, it is a good idea to understand the most common SEO mistakes bloggers make and learn from them.
If this is what you are looking for, then you have come to the right place. This blog will list the 4 most common SEO mistakes bloggers make. It is hoped that if you understand these common mistakes, you will have the ability to create a better, more SEO friendly blog.
Mistake #1: Not Preforming Any Keyword Research
Keyword research is incredibly important to your blog. Keywords are terms that users input into search engines that help them find your website. Before you even start writing a blog it is important to conduct proper keyword research.
By doing your keyword research you can determine how popular a keyword is. There are two kinds of keywords, short and long tail. Short tail keywords tend to be more popular; however they are harder to rank highly for. Long tail keywords aren’t as popular but you are likely to jump up in the ranking for this type of keyword when other SEO tactics are used.
Each type of keyword has positives and negatives. Therefore it is recommended that you choose a mixture of short and long tail keywords. If you are unsure where to start when choosing the best keywords for your blog, then you should enlist the assistance of some online tools.
One of the best online free keyword tools is called Keyword Tool. Using this tool, you input a keyword and then you are shown other similar examples. This will help to get the ball rolling with keyword ideas.
Mistake #2: No Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the easiest SEO strategies, but many bloggers forget about it. By linking to your other blog posts it helps to show search engines that your content is relevant and valid. It is important to ensure the previous blog post you are linking to is actually relevant to what you are blogging about currently.
For example, if you are blogging about “how to throw the best summer BBQ” and you have written a previous blog about “summer cocktails”, then it is a good idea to link back to this post. When you link internally there are 3 things you are achieving:
Helps to define the hierarchy of your website
Assists in user navigation of your website
Aids ranking power and page authority throughout your website
Mistake #3: Keyword Stuffing
Any reputable SEO agency knows that keywords are important. Keyword stuffing is where you use a keyword too many times in one piece of content. Search engine giant, Google, is cracking down on this and if you are caught keyword stuffing you could be hit with a penalty. Sometimes keyword stuffing is intentional and something it isn’t. However, Google doesn’t care if you unintentionally keyword stuffed, you could still receive a penalty.
Therefore it is important that you understand what keyword stuffing is and are always aware of this when writing your blog. As a guide, you should be looking to include your keyword between 3-5 times in your piece (this obviously depends on how long your blog is).
If you find you have accidentally keyword stuffed, ensure you go through your work and change the words. For example, if your keyword was “SEO company” and you found to have used the word too many times, you could change some of the words to “SEO service”, “SEO agency”, “SEO business” or “SEO professional”, etc.
Mistake #4: Forgetting to Optimise Images
Your blog needs to include images (you probably already know this). But what you may not know is that these images need to be fully optimised. When search engine “bots” crawl and index your website (i.e. read your website and give you a ranking accordingly), they cannot read the actual image.
Therefore the text and description needs to be completed and optimised so that search engines can understand the image. This refers to the “alt text” of your image. It is important to give a short yet accurate description so search engines can understand and give you a more suited ranking.
Also, when writing your alt text you should look to include a keyword as this will further assist with your SEO. On programs like WordPress, it is incredibly easy to add in the alt text when you are including and editing an image.
Final Thoughts
To a blogger, SEO can seem like a foreign and confusing topic. The worst thing you can do for your blog is to ignore SEO altogether. Using the correct tactics, SEO will help boost your blog and give you more traffic. There are a lot of ways that SEO can go wrong, therefore it is important you understand the most common mistakes made by bloggers and learn from them.
Approaching SEO Like the Dating Game
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