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Last Updated on October 26, 2020 by Yovana
You just started your website or blog but can’t seem to see your content when searching for it on google? This is because your Google rank is low due to poorly organized blog content. It isn’t your fault if you never heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before now and know nothing about it. That is why I am here, to make life easier for you in this blog eat blog world. After reading this, your Google ranking will improve with this Idiot proof SEO tutorial.
If you aren’t a web developer, designer or content manager, odds are you never heard of SEO in your life before you decided to start a site or blog. Well let me make something clear, get to know it well. If your content isn’t optimized for search engines, how will anyone ever find you? Well unless you are actively sharing all of your content, odds are it will be difficult to get anyone to find your online project without implementing SEO into your posts.
Google rank, however, takes some time to acquire but if you consistently implement effective SEO strategies in your posts and throughout your blog or site, you will get there.
First off, you need your own domain and hosting. Having a free blog setup that is not self hosted will not do any favors for you and your SEO efforts. This is where you might have some arguments.
If you sign up for Bluehost with my link you get a free domain, free site builders, free 1-click WordPress install, 24/7 support and all for only $2.95 a month! You really can’t beat that deal. I have already made $3000 from affiliate marketing alone after only 6 months of blogging, thanks to the Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing course.
Here are some free blogging resources that have helped me on my blogging journey. Maybe they can help you too?
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Table of Contents
Here are some idiot proof SEO tips to improve your Google rank.
It may take time, but it is totally worth it.
Install an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate on your site or blog.
After you get your domain and hosting package set up with Siteground, grab your free included SSL certificate and install it on your site. The Bluehost support team can do this for you if you have no idea what to do, since support is also included for free. Site’s with SSL certificates get a higher ranking in Google than those without, since they are more trustworthy.
Related:
How To Secure Your WordPress Blog From Hackers
How To Boost Your WordPress Blog’s Speed And Performance
Write original content.
Original content has a deeper meaning these days than just original posts. The best kind of content is original content from experiences that will help others solve problems. This can be in a number of ways that are not just words on a post. Original content should go farther than just an original post, it should include original photography, videos or podcasts, tools, plugins, code, or themes.
To check your content for any plagiarism or grammar errors, check out Grammarly. Grammarly is a popular tool among bloggers due to how useful it is for improving the quality of your content.
Include 1-2 keywords in every post.
Research and choose 1-2 keywords for each post you publish. To research your keywords, search actual terms that people enter into search engines or think about what you would put into a search engine.
YoastSEO can help you with establishing the keywords for each post and guide you in where to put them in the post.
Place your keywords wisely in your posts.
There are key areas throughout your posts that your keywords should be places. These include the title (it is wise to place the keywords towards the beginning of the title), the headers, the body (your keyword must be mentioned once in your first paragraph), meta description, and the URL. Be sure to not include too many instances of your keywords because then Google will think you are keyword stuffing.
YoastSEO will also help with covering all these bases while you are writing your post.
Use SEO plugins.
My favorite and has saved my butt more times than one with optimizing my blog content, is YoastSEO. It is free and perfect for beginners. It also has a premium version for professional bloggers.
This is how YoastSEO will look like at the bottom of the ‘Edit Post’ page, where it gives you lists of how to improve the SEO quality of the post as you go along.
Related:
21 Top Tools To Help Boost Your Blog
Boost Your Blog’s Traffic With WordPress Plugins
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Sign up to get this master list of the top freebies for bloggers; free stock photos, checklists, courses, guides, planners, etc.
Make sure your theme is SEO optimized.
Optimizing your theme and site will give the go-ahead to Google indicators that your site is trustworthy. As discussed above, your site must be original. Your theme should load quickly and be responsive as well as being cleanly coded with no broken bits or modules.
There are plenty of free themes that are SEO optimized but sometimes you might get more out of purchasing a theme. Creative Market, Elegant Themes, StudioPress and iThemes are known for their state of the art themes and security.
Check out Genesis from StudioPress, one of the most popular among professional bloggers due to how many benefits it provides, SEO being one of them!
Related:
How To Create A Beautiful Blog Using Free WordPress Themes
How To Boost Your WordPress Blog’s Speed And Performance
Optimize your images.
Alright so here is the deal, you need images to break up your content and keep your reader’s interest. We are visual learners…at least I am. Google searches for images with ‘alt’ text since search engines cannot see images the way human’s can. Add your keywords into your image’s ‘alt’ text for a minor SEO boost. It will not boost your SEO like some of the other things on this list, but it will at least help a little as the search engines will be able to ‘see’ the images this way.
Optimize your images for social media as well as for SEO with PicMonkey!
Related:
How To Create Stunning Images For Your Blog In 5 Minutes
The Top 11 Resources For Free Stock Photos
How To Create Your Very Own Logo For Free
How To Create Killer Blog Posts
Check your permalinks.
It is important to have a good permalink structure. Permalinks are how people find your site’s content. Look at this site’s permalink structure. it is simple and to the point without too many directories being listed for the pages. On this site, you see my domain name/post name. Simple as that, a root and then an extension.
Is your permalink structure maybe look different and a bit too complicated? Well, you can easily change that. In WordPress navigate to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Permalinks’ to tweak your permalink options. Choose either ‘Post name’ or ‘Custom Structure’ for your option for the best permalink setting.
‘Permalinks’ to tweak your permalink options. Choose either ‘Post name’ or ‘Custom Structure’ for your option for the best permalink setting.” width=”793″ height=”113″>
Install an XML sitemap.
You can generate an XML sitemap with Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google and Bing to better index your blog.
You can download and install this on your blog by going to ‘Plugins’ -> ‘Add New’ -> Search for ‘Google XML Sitemap’.
Comment on other blogs.
Commenting on other blogs will get you more traffic and exposure. It will also help in building new relationships and count as a backlink!
Keep in mind that it takes time to improve your Google rank!
Are you already implementing all of the above but still don’t rank very high on Google? That may be because your site is still fairly new. If your site is only a month old or so, you aren’t going to rank high on Google, for instance, the first page, for a long time. A successful site or blog in every aspect does not come overnight. Believe me! This is still very much a journey for me as it is for you!
Now tell me any SEO tips I may have missed and I will do another roundup! And go!
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Daniella is the creator and author of iliketodabble.com. When their wife Alexandra and them aren’t globetrotting or playing with their 7+ animals, they are dabbling and working towards a future of financial freedom.
Installing sitemaps, having robots.txt file, commenting on other blogs and resources, I’ve been doing these since i started doing SEO. The amazing part is, it gets better and helpful while ranking in any search engine.(My fav is google! though).
Amazing piece of content,thanks for the post.
yes yoast seo in the best plugin inorder to gain google rank
I had to laugh when I read this title! I wish I could say I have SEO down but I’ve still missed some stuff from your post! thanks!
These are some great tips! I have a few of them I am doing right now, but I really need to up my SEO work!
I’ve recently started a website, the info you provide on this web site has helped me tremendously. Thank you for all of your time & work.
This post could not have come at a better time. My first order of business is to check out Yoast. Thanks for your tips, I can’t wait to implement them,
I have such a hard time with what I should be doing for SEO because I am still on blogger – with my own domain name. These are great tips! I am still thinking about transferring to wordpress – but 7 years at my own domain on blogger is making it a little more difficult!
I think SEO is important because that’s how google picks up your content. I don’t use wordpress so Yoast SEO isn’t what I use, but I have helped some of my clients on wordpress, definitely a good way to rank 🙂
http://www.clairebearblogs.com
Excellent post, I completely agree. I’m also glad you put writing quality content first, since I believe this to be the most important thing for building your blog.
i am not see skilled at all so this helped a great deal
I have Yoast and can you actually believe I didn’t know what all that was about until this post! I feel like an idiot now!
I love Yoast. It helps me so much. Especially when you don’t have anyone helping you along the way.
These are great tips and advice for those wanting to build their blog. This can really help within the search engines.
Oh I need to be better about my SEO. I am book marking this post to come back to and read up more closely!
I love love love reading about blog tips & advice – especially SEO, it’s like my little crazy side thing that really interests me! I’m on Blogger so totally jealous of everyone who can use Yeost! haha
Ha this is exactly what I need! SEO has always stressed me out so I need it written out as plain as day!
So much great information here! Yoast is definitely my favorite SEO plug in and has really helped me improve my page rank!
These are really great tips. I never knew about the SSL. It is something I need to look into!
I love using the Yoast plugin. It is a great reminder when you don’t use enough keywords or forget to optimize your photos within the post.
My experience as a copywriter has definitely helped me when it comes to adding SEO to my posts. Paired with the SEO plugin I can ensure the SEO in any post I write is one par with google standards, while also ensuring my content still sounds like me.
I started using an SEO plug-in and find it so beneficial. I’m even more aware of my SEO and I definitely am noticing a difference.
Haha! You have a great title! Lol! This will be a big help. Just what i needed.
SEO is so important but I don’t know if I can do it myself. I have to try out some of these great ideas but I was considering hiring someone up until now.
This was a great explanation. Thanks for the share.
(I’m actually doing most of this- but it’s great to have a refresher.)
SEO is so imporatant! I use Yoast ant absolutely love it! It is also important to make sure your links, especially in sponsored posts, are all nofollow links or that can really hurt you when it comes to Google Ranking.
I’ve seen Yoast on the list of things to get but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I don’t SEO anything cuz I don’t know!!! This has been so helpful. My goal for today will be to SEO everything!!! Even my pictures!! Thank you so much!!
I like that this take you step by step on what to do. Google page rank can be a little confusing especially if you’re new to the industry.
It does take time. Some years ago google requires you to have at least more than 5 posts and to make sure that your blog is at least 3 months old. This is a pretty good guide!
Thanks for the useful suggestions. I really need to look into SEO and yoast especially.
Have a website http://speclabz.com and the associated blog is Blogspot.
YOAST is my lifeline!~ I don’t know where I would be without it. I love how your write for the “green” ..atleast that is what I tell myself lol I wish I had this years ago – such a quick, smart, and essential list. Fantastic tips, thank you!
yes! i love this post. demystifying seo!
Umm, excuse me! Did you make this post just for me? No? Well it sure feels like you did! This is literally everything I have been needing!!! Thank you!
Haha yep I wrote it just for you 🙂
Yes to all of this! I recently switched from Weebly to WordPress and have been so impressed with Yoast! What an easy way to make sure I’m thinking about SEO!
Thank you for the tips! I struggle with SEO quite a bit. I think my problem is trying to research keywords. I can never find recommendations to bookmark for keyword research when I specifically go to look for these resources.
Thank you for this! I am trying to learn SEO, but sometimes it feels beyond my grasp. It makes me feel better that I am doing most of what you suggest! I have YOAST and I choose keywords so that I get the little green dot (I love that!) However, I think I need to do more research on what keywords would be best for my post ahead of time instead of choosing keywords after the fact!
This is a fantastic resource! I learned everything I know about SEO optimization using Yoast. It’s very true that even if you’re doing everything right, it does take time for Google to trust your site enough to make it visible – but sure enough, after 4-5 months, all of my pages shot up to the top of page 1. So gratifying! Thank you for putting this post together, I wish I had found it when I was brand new last year, but there were a few tips in here that I hadn’t heard before!
Thanks a lot for this very useful guide! 😀 Perfect for someone like me who is not very SEO savvy and still learning! 😀
I have been learning more and more about SEO in the last year! Finally installed Yoast last summer and am glad I did! There are so many important things that I would be missing out on in my ranking if I didnt!
These are all great tips! Saved this to have for the future as well. Will be very helpful in building my blog!
I have Yoast, but I have yet to figure out how to use it to gauge the quality of my SEO. So much to do as a blogger!
Haha! First off LOVE the title! And,,,, yup I have to admit how much I needed this post! I did though! Thank you for all these awesome tips/tricks.
I would be lost with out Yoast. I thought I was a great writer before I had it, but apparently I was awful – yoast set me straight.
Haha same here!!