6 Easy Ways to Make Your Blog SEO-Friendly

February 22, 2011

While scrolling through my RSS feed, I often notice that bloggers who write about books or writing tend to miss opportunities to take advantage of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. I’m guessing that’s because a lot of us don’t understand it, probably because we’re focused on writing.

While I don’t believe in writing for SEO, I do believe in tweaking what I’ve written to make it more SEO-friendly. And while I’m no expert, I think a lot about SEO in my new job because I write for the Web.

What does SEO mean? Search Engine Optimization sounds all fancy, but it’s really quite simple: Helping readers find your blog through search engines. Think about your habits as a Google user. What do you type in when you’re looking for a certain website? Now, think about how other users might find your blog. If they couldn’t remember your name or the name of your blog, what would they type in to describe it? When you turn that on its head, and think about how, as a blogger, you can help those people find your blog in a Google search, you’ve got SEO.

We tend to think of SEO as all or nothing. Either we understand it or we don’t; either we consciously use it or we don’t. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, some experts know how to optimize so well that blogs practically float to the top of Google’s results. But even taking a few simple steps can significantly boost your blog’s visibility.

Here are a few easy ways to improve your SEO:

1. Use keywords in your post titles. This is the one that most makes me cringe. Why? Because several writers who produce what I consider the best blogs for our community consistently make the mistake of using a title that doesn’t say what the post is about. I do this sometimes too, for variety. Plus, it’s more fun to write a creative title. But SEO-friendly headlines will serve you far better in terms of getting readers. That means including the keyword that best describes your post in the title of that post.

Ever notice that newspapers use different headlines in the paper than on the Web? That’s because in the paper, headline writers can be pithy, funny and clever — but those qualities don’t work for SEO. What works for SEO is having your post’s most important word in the headline. Does that make your Web headline less exciting? Likely. But will readers be able to find it through search? Yup. And in an Internet-driven world, that’s what matters.

When you’re writing your headline, it also makes sense to think about adding an additional keyword you may not have included initially, especially if you’re looking to target a certain audience. For example, I could’ve titled this post 6 SEO Tips. But it would be smarter to title it 6 SEO Tips for Writers or 6 SEO Tips for Bloggers. We often shy away from specificity, worrying that we’re narrowing our potential audience, but sometimes being specific actually increases your audience — and this is one of those times. Think about it: Would you be more likely to ask Google for “SEO tips” or “SEO tips for writers?” (And should I have given this post that title instead?)

A bonus tip: Including “How to” in your headline works wonders. It makes total sense; we’re always asking Google how to do this or that. Examples: How to write a press release for your book and How to land an awesome job after your career break.

2. Use keywords for the title of your blog, too. A friend asked me why, when she Googled her name, her blog wasn’t appearing at the top of the page. This was a result of a combination of factors, but the biggest one was that her name isn’t in the title or tagline of her blog. How is Google supposed to know it’s your blog if you don’t say so? It’s not just for branding purposes that you should include your name in the title or tagline of your blog. It’s also to help anyone who’s searching for you find it.

3. Be smart about your anchor tags. When you link to another website, avoid making the link say click here. We all do this sometimes (myself included), but it’s lazy. Google likes descriptive words for anchor tags, like Peggy’s Pet Place and Alpha Consumer. For more examples, check out my Writers’ Roundups, and notice the words I turn into links.

4. Use Google Insights. You don’t have to guess which keywords are popular; Google happily gives that secret away. Google Insights is a tool that lets you see which search terms within your niche are most popular. For example, in my day job, I offer advice for job seekers. So I used Google Insights to see which term more people Google: job search or job hunt. Job search far outranks job hunt. So guess which term I use for blog post titles?

Another example: I like to write about career breaks, but far more people search for “quit your job.” I learned that just now, while writing this post. So from here on out, I’ll try to use “quit your job” rather than “career break.”

5. Name your images. Remember that friend who wanted her blog to rank higher when someone typed her name into Google? I also suggested that we rename some of the photos on her blog. She’d included several head shots — a great idea to help readers feel like they know her personally — but those photos all had names like “herfirstname.jpg” or “myhaircut.jpg,” whatever she’d named them on her desktop. We renamed those images to include her full name, so the images, which linked to her blog, were more likely to pop up when someone Googled her name.

6. Write awesome content. The best thing you can do for your blog is to write awesome content. If you write well for your audience, you’ll naturally include keywords that are important to them. And creating awesome content has another SEO-friendly side effect: Other bloggers will link to you. Each time another website links to yours, Google gets the hint that you’re pretty great, which bumps up your blog in search results. This is why, as your blog becomes more popular, other bloggers will write to you asking for a “link exchange.” They’ll link to your blog if you’ll link to theirs. Don’t do it. Instead, link to blogs you think are valuable and write good content, and sooner or later Google will be on your side.

None of this is rocket science. It’s not going to make your blog the most SEO-friendly site out there. (You’ll need Rachael Butts for that.) But the cool thing about SEO — at least for those of us who focus on writing — is that the big changes, like the ones we’ve talked about here, tend to have a more significant effect than the little ones. Which means that thinking about this stuff is totally worth your while.

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    18 Replies to “6 Easy Ways to Make Your Blog SEO-Friendly”

    • Thank you for posting these tips Alexis. They are very helpful for beginning bloggers like me!

    • Kristoffer says:

      These are all solid tips that I recommend anyone implement. However, when you are serious about SEO you’ll quickly notice that it’s a lot of work. That’s why I like to automate this kind of thing to WordPress plugins like SEOPressor.

      -Kristoffer

    • This is a great intro into SEO that I wish I would have read a year ago when I was new to the blogging world. 🙂

    • alisha says:

      I’m pretty crap at SEO optimization, meaning I don’t even try. But I read this as I was doing my blog post today and put your suggestions to work. I was trying to think of some witty title, but with my SEO hat on, came up with “How to write like Anne Lamott”. Hope it’s optimal! 🙂

    • Himu says:

      Recently I started blogging and know very little about seo. Thanks to you because I have learned something about seo from this post.

    • Peggy Frezon says:

      oh! I was trying to write clever titles that would attract readers….but you make a great point. I’m going to try it. I also like point #3 🙂

    • What an awesome post. You really made SEO sound simple…I’ve heard it thrown around for the past few years and attempted to look into it several times, but it always got all jargon-y and I gave up. Thanks for providing such an easy guide to SEO! I’m definitely going to try some of these tips…especially simple ones like renaming photos- who knew?!

      Oh and I love how you sneaked my link into this post 🙂

      Starred this one in my Reader and will come back to it when I’m working on SEO’ing out my site!

    • Nina Badzin says:

      I this on Twitter and it was SO helpful! Seriously, it was the best easy-to-follow SEO advice I’ve seen. I’ve only been blogging for 4.5 months, but I can see how doing a little SEO would help. I’m for sure guilty of the “click here” and not naming my photos very well.

    • adsloko says:

      Thanks for your post, this is so helpful for my blog too

    • Thank you for this informative post. I’m envious (in a good way!) of your solo adventuring. Before getting married and having kids, I traveled solo in Mexico, Spain and Italy. Could you hear the big sigh that just escaped my lips?!

      I see you have your name for your URL (your own domain). Do you recommend doing that for the title of a blog, then using your name for the header/tagline? I need to get a writerly blog going as I’m an indie writer w/ no site for readers to pop in and get to know me on. I am torn–use my name, use something catchy, use something with high-SEO factor that isn’t necessarily catchy!!!! Any thoughts on this would be gratefully received. Great blog!

      • Alexis Grant says:

        Hey Rebecca — Cool that we have some things in common 🙂 Yes, I’d recommend getting your name as your URL. That way, if you change the name of your blog or whatever, the URL is always your name, which always works no matter what you do. Best of luck!

    • Rebecca Burke says:

      Thanks for your swift reply, Alexis. That sounds like good advice. I assume that Blogger sells domain names and I can just buy one from them.

    • Cormel S says:

      The most important two things about this post is engagement and consistancy. Without the two there’s no drive to keep the blog going.

    • Hi there, nice post. I agree with you adding keyword to the heading could be a benefit for SEO, but at least under my experience it looks sometimes really spammy if you put keyword just in the beginning of heading. Regards, Matija, Slovenia

    • Gareth B says:

      Hey Alexis,

      Great post and a solid grounding here.

      I would also add the correct type of interlinking for any articles / posts created. I have pretty complex silo structures on my sites and it really helps flow link juice around.

      Thanks,
      Gareth

    • Wow! So much great info! I’m just getting started and your site has been a huge help. I will definitely be back. Thank you!

    • Scott says:

      Hi Alexis, really enjoyed the post – one thing as well about great content is the visitor will react “better” to it, for example if you have a great title and meta description, if that gets a better click through rate than others on the google search output, that will really help increase your rank, especially when you’re on page 1 as user metrics really count then 🙂

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