5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog


I will start off by saying that I don't claim to be an expert in SEO. What I will say though is that I've spent the last 2 years reading a lot about how to improve SEO on your 'blogger' blog and have put some of these techniques into practice. A lot of my blog posts now rank on page one of google for specific search terms (some are even the no1 result) and around 70% of my blog traffic for North East Family Fun comes from google. There is a lot to learn about SEO and I am continuously updating my knowledge. I thought I would be handy to share some of the basics today, as for my first few years blogging, I didn't know any of this and really wish I had looked into it earlier.

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog

Improve SEO on Your 'Blogger' Blog with Keyword Planning

The very first thing you need to do is plan and research the keywords for your post. The best way to do this is to use google keyword planner but to be honest I just don't have the time to do this most of the time. If you do have time - it is worth doing. If not, read on....

It is usually better if your keywords are 'longtail keywords' which are a group of words together. There is A LOT of competition on google so trying to compete for single words is almost impossible I would say. You need to tink about what would people google around your proposed topic.  One way to do this, is to use google autocomplete to give you a few ideas. For example, if I was planning a post about a trip to Flamingo land, I would type 'Flamingo land' into google.

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog including hints and tips - keyword planning using google autocomplete

One of the options on the drop down list is 'resort' so I might add that to my google search which brings up the following.....


Then I added 'Yorkshire' which brought up 'Reviews'.

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog including hints and tips - keyword planning using google autocomplete

Therefore I would plan my keywords to be 'Flamingo land Resort Yorkshire Review'

You can use this technique for pretty much anything and it pays to play around with the word combinations a little until you find a set of keywords you are happy with that will fit the nature of your article/post. 

If you have even less time to plan your keywords, you can try the really handy website called AnswerThePublic.com. I typed Flamingo land into this website and it brought up 71 of the most popular questions that the public have asked google about Flamingo land - You can write a blog post to answer one of these questions. Something like 'What age is Flamingo land for?' might work well as your keywords for example. 

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog including hints and tips  - keyword planning using answer the public




I will say that I don't plan keywords for every article I write, but most of the time, I do. Now that you have your Keywords sorted, you can now get to grips with improving your post's SEO.

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog

1 - Blog Post Title 

You need to include your keywords in your blog title so using the examples above, our blog post would be entitled ' Flamingo land Resort Yorkshire Review' or ' What age is Flamingo land for?'


2 - Change your Permalink

Your blog post permalink is automatically set to the first few words of your blog post - you need to change it to include your keywords. To do this, click 'Permalink' on the side bar of your blogger post editor, then select 'Custom Permalink' and add your keywords into this. The first part of your Permalink always stays the same (your main URL and then date) but you can change the second part. I separate each word with a dash. So the end part of our URL would either read 'Flamingo-land-Resort-Yorkshire-Review' or 'What-Age-Is-Flamingo-Land-For'. You then need to click 'done'. As long as your post will be published in the same month, you can now use the post URL to pre-schedule Social Media if that's your thing - even before the post is published (I do this if I'm on holiday and know I have a post that needs to be published). So the full URL of this post will be http://www.SamanthaRickelton.com/2017/01/Flamingo-land-Resort-Yorkshire-Review.html. 

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog including hints and tips - how to change your permalink or URL


3 - Search Description

You can also find the search description for your blog post on your post editor side bar. You need to have this switched on in settings (this post tells you how to do this). The search description is the little blurb you see under your post when you post it on Social Media and it also tells google what your post is about. If you leave this blank, the first few sentences of your blog post will be used instead. Don't fall into the trap of adding keywords with commas - eg flamingo land, resort, review, Yorkshire as this looks spammy and doesn't read well. A simple sentence or two will suffice. I usually use my blog post title with a few extras so it could be 'Flamingo land Resort Yorkshire - Review and Photographs from our day'. The key is to include your keywords in your search description but in a sentence form. 

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog - How to add a search description to your blog post on blogger



4 - Alt Tag All Images

I really hate doing this - especially if my blog post is image heavy. It's worth doing though. The Alt-tag tells google what your image is. I always include either my post title or search description first and then a dash followed by a short description of what the image is. So for the above image I will use ' 5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog - How to add a search description to your blog post on blogger'

To add the Alt Text and Title Text simply click on your image once it's been added to your blog post. Click 'properties' and then complete the two boxes. It's also worth noting that this is the text that will automatically show up if someone pins that image from your blog post. 

5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog including hints and tips  - how to alt tag images



5 - Use keywords throughout your blog post and in headers

If you can and it's natural, use your keywords throughout the blog post (but not in an excessive way so it reads spammy) and in headers - I have used 'improve SEO on your 'Blogger' blog' as a header and a few times throughout the text of this post for example. 

I hope you've found these tips handy - as mentioned, I'm not an expert and these are just methods that have worked for me. Follow my page SamanthaRickelton.com on Facebook here if you'd like to keep up to date with future posts like this. 

Pin Me For Later
5 Ways to Improve SEO on your 'Blogger' Blog including hints and tips and how to plan your post's keywords using google autocomplete



Comments

  1. I love this, such a help now I'm picking my blog back up

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bookmarking this, thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know it also takes time for Google to 'trust' you site but I'm assuming if I do the above then its will help the process along x

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ah good tips. I am going to check out ask the public. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks, this has been so useful. Mich x

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment