Managing a successful blog is about much more than strong writing.
Although this skill goes hand in hand with publishing web content, there are other factors that play into blogger SEO. Some include research and analytics, others are about web design and branding.
Together, all of these tools create a blog many people know and easily recognize.
Not sure what SEO strategy you need to focus on first?
Here are 8 ways you can start working on building your blog traffic.
1. Know Your Audience
Before you start figuring out what you want to say, you should know who you’re talking to.
Create a detailed description of your ideal audience member. Identify if they are male or female, their age, the kind of work they do, and their income.
All of this helps you establish a buyer persona.
Your buyer persona guides the content creation. You should use each blogger SEO strategy with this character in mind.
If you have a large following or offering, you might have a primary and secondary persona. This helps you reach more users because two personas can better represent a large audience.
2. Do Keyword Research
Once you have a clear idea of who your audience is, figure out how to best get in front of them.
In the world of blogger SEO, a lot of your reach will come down to the keywords you use.
General terms in your industry may not be enough to make the cut because you’ll be competing with large, established companies. Keywords that are too specific may not have enough people searching for them to be relevant, either.
How do you find the right mix?
With the help of short and long-tail keywords.
These will be common terms found via keyword research. Some will be general, while others will be detailed – without putting you in a box.
If your blog is part of a brand with a brick and mortar location, be sure to incorporate local terms. These can be as simple as “nearby” and “near me”, or use the name of your area like “Brooklyn” or “Beverly Hills.”
3. Use Optimized Visuals
As you’re putting content together with your new keyword strategy, don’t forget to add some visuals too.
You can choose between photos or videos. But, be sure whatever you use is high-quality and SEO-ready. This means you can’t just slap a visual on your blog post and call it a day. You have to name it first.
Give your visuals a title that is in-line with what your post is about. For the best optimization results, use a keyword in the title.
4. Have a Link Strategy
If you want more people to click on your blog’s link, consider adding a few links to your posts.
This is called link building, which works in one of two ways.
The first is using links to guide readers to other landing pages on your website.
These may be pages that are deep-rooted and usually get lower traffic. But, by incorporating a link in your post, you can expect to see traffic go up on certain pages.
The other way to use link building is to guide users to pages of reference outside of your website.
This gives you credibility when quoting research or statistics. It shows you are actively involved in your industry, which is a sign of commitment to excellence and innovation. Remember not to link to direct competitors, though.
5. Customize Your URLs
On the subject of links, do you know what your URLs look like?
If the link to your blog is just a bunch of mixed-up letters and numbers, you’re missing an SEO opportunity.
Take the time to go through your posts and edit the URLs.
Name them something that reflects the title and add a keyword somewhere in there, too. This will help users understand what your post is about before they even make it on your landing page.
More so, it will make your blogger SEO strategy more appealing to Google bots as they search the internet.
6. Fix Your Meta Descriptions
Once you have your URLs in line with your titles, make sure each meta description is up to par as well.
A meta description is a short summary of your blog post. It appears under the link (title) that comes up in a search engine results page.
This is a blogger SEO tool not to overlook.
Users will appreciate the sneak peek of what your post is about. This could even be the extra line of copy you need to convince them your blog post is better than others.
Plus, search bots will better find you when you create the description with SEO in mind.
Add a keyword in these lines of copy. Get right to the point, too, since there isn’t much character room in a meta description.
7. Be Careful of Duplicate Content
Think you’ve covered all these blogger SEO tools properly?
Make sure you aren’t producing posts that are too much alike. Also, don’t just copy and paste content from another landing page into your blog.
Such strategies are considered duplicate content and they can hurt your SEO efforts. This is because a major part of SEO best practices is to create new, relevant content.
You can’t just optimize your site and leave it alone.
You also can’t pretend content is “new” if you’re re-posting something you’ve already written. You have to make each blog original and in-line with your products and industry.
8. Design for Mobile
When all your posts are ready to go, give them a look over on your desktop. Then, do the same thing on your smartphone or tablet.
Are your posts still easy to navigate? Can you understand the layout from a smaller screen?
If not, you need to focus on a mobile-responsive website design.
This should be your top priority before you do any other blogger SEO improvements.
In fact, 83% of users say a seamless experience across devices matters. When you put off creating this experience for them, you risk losing a big part of your audience.
Keep readers coming back by changing how you present yourself on mobile.
Upgrade Your Blogger SEO Performance
Wondering if you can keep up with all the SEO tools you need to have a successful blog?
Don’t worry, you don’t have to do everything on your own.
Consider hiring an SEO management service to pick up the slack. This helps you focus on other parts of your business, or at least make more time to write your posts.
Contact us today to discover how we can help your blogger SEO efforts.