This is a guest post by Jeff Tripier. He is an experienced freelance writer with a background in SEO and web design. In this post Jeff offers helpful SEO tips for WordPress blogging for boosting your blogging success.
The SEO landscape is highly exposed to winds of change that sweep across it more often than not. Each year brings forth new trends and tactics that empower bloggers to move up in rankings and attract more visitors to their websites. Like it or not, SEO is the only way to improve the visibility of the pages for people who are looking for keywords associated with your blog. Capitalizing on it is no cakewalk, though. There are a plethora of SEO tactics under the digital sun and trends come and go at a rapid pace.
SEO tips for WordPress blogging: a list for 2017 and beyond
Hi Guys! Greg here saying welcome to another great guest post from Jeff. In this WordPress SEO blog post we’ll cover beginner SEO strategies you can use right away on your blog. Simply using a good SEO strategy here or there can result in 1000s more visits on your blog per month, which in turn can help you actually blog for a living and reach new blogging heights…as opposed to sitting in the same place.
I hope this makes blogging SEO a little easier, let us know in the comments!
Mobile optimization is a must: it’s our #1 SEO tip for WordPress blogging success
A bulk of visitors today utilizes mobile devices to access your blog and providing them with a seamless experience is paramount to success. The Google itself promotes mobile-first indexing and proposes Responsive Web Design as the most effective solution for optimizing your pages. You can also follow search engine’s instructions on how to create a responsive digital environment. Do not fail to make your blog mobile-friendly and you will be able to reap immense benefits.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg: Just find a reliable responsive WordPress theme you and your users enjoy. Don’t be like me and hang on to the old look for 2 years after mobilegeddon.
The need for speed: page load affects audience retention
Web page speed is another crucial element you have to consider. Namely, the time it takes for a page to load has a profound impact on retention and bounce rates of your blog. For better or worse, the attention spans are shortened and if the page does not load within a few seconds, the visitors decide to move on. To prevent this from happening, increase the speed by removing excess JavaScript, CSS, and media elements like images.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg: You can accomplish this with a cheap CDN, or at the minimum, WP super cache plugin.
Smooth operators: optimize your URLS and meta descriptions
Experts from Domains Index recommend bloggers to develop a deeper understanding of how Google bots crawl your pages. For instance, the first element that they factor in to discover what your post is the URL. So, optimize it and try to include a keyword in it. Meta descriptions have a huge role to play as well because they give both search engines and visitors valuable information on the content: They are widely used by search engines as telltale signs and they also appear in SERPs.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg: It takes a few more minutes, but it’s worth it. Just use Yoast WordPress SEO for their free SEO checklist.
Stellar content: content is always king
Content is hands down, the most vital piece of the blogging success puzzle. To stand out in the crowded blogosphere, one has to stand out with useful, original, and relevant posts. Therefore, come up with great headlines to grab attention right off the bat. Always include images to spark interest and drive more social signals and interaction. Include only links that make sense in the context and lead to quality websites or an internal page.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg: Long form list posts work great.
Smart use of keywords: popular phrases in Google
Figure out the best and most related keywords to deploy in the text. You can do this with the help of handy tools such as Adword planner. They allow you to gain insights into keywords that people search for. Just avoid going overboard with this SEO staple element because that could hurt your ranking. In general, the keywords density should not be higher than 1% of the total word content. Hence, it is a good idea to focus on 1 or 2 long-tail keywords.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg: Once you find a good 2-5 word keyword phrase, insert it a few more times than you would think necessary into your blog post content.
Visual storytelling: use real images with ALT text
It has never been more important to emphasize the visual side of things. Images are the crown jewels of your blog, but as people from Seomator point out, generic and unrelated ones do not cut it. They have to add to your storytelling and capture the imagination of the user, taking the whole experience to the next level. At the same time, to enable search engines to “see” what your images are about, you have to include alt text.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg:te to your other images, you’ll be fine. I still use Pixabay when I need a quick fix (which is almost always!)
Ramp up engagement: show off your social stats!
Make good use of topic clusters, never size enriching content, and keep things fresh and interesting. Always share your content across your social media profiles. Although social signals such as likes and shares are not officially ranking factor, they influence your rankings by boosting your authority. So, add backlinks from social sites and social share buttons to your blog. Engage and interact with your audience to nurture lasting trust and loyalty.
Additional Blog SE0 tips for WordPress blogging from Greg: If you’re out of ideas or drained from social media, just keep writing. Guest post and create new blog drafts in your dashboard. You’ll get there!
What did you think of these SEO tips for WordPress blogging?
To rise above the competition, bloggers have to keep up the pace with constant algorithm updates and dynamic SEO trends. Organic search is a humongous, invaluable source of traffic, social signals, and revenue. Thus, optimize your blog for mobile users, use visual media to your advantage, and let bots crawl your pages nice and easy. Fostering a good user experience and delight your readers. Stay on top of the never-ending game in SERPs to get ahead of the pack.
For further reading you might enjoy;
WordPress SEO: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Highly Optimized Blog Posts by Sophia Anderson
5 Beginner WordPress SEO Tasks After You Make a Blog by Greg Narayan
Jeff Tripier
Experienced freelancer with a background in SEO and web design. For a while, I also worked as a high-school teacher, which helped me understand how young people use and perceive IT. Besides that, I am a blogger and occasionally write articles on Marketing, SEO, Education, and Technology.
Thanks for sharing such a detailed article. in my opinion for blogging 1 very important point, one should consider is that whomsoever is writing a blog they must write for readers and not for the search engines; once this importance is realized your content will fall in place.
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Hi Jeff,
I liked the way you have phrased this entire post. This is a very helpful information, and all these are very useful techniques to optimize a wordpress blog.