Do you want to get noticed by search engines (like Google or Bing or MetaCrawler or a couple or three dozen or lots more other options), and have your website/blog rise up in the rankings to end up on that coveted first page of search results (without having to pay for the privilege)? Do you want readers to easily find your site and posts? Well then, you’ll want to learn the basics of SEO—Search Engine Optimization.

The following are the topics I’ll be covering more indepth in separate posts in this series; I’ll add links as I post them:

1. Is Author Blogging Dead?
2. Blog or Website or Both?
3. Social Media
4. Author Blogs
5. Connections and Audience
6. Content Tips
7. Goals
8. Layout
9. Types of Posts
10. Specific Pages
11. Promoting Your Blog
12. SEO
13. Ideas for Posts
14. E-Mail Newsletters
15. Author Blogs: My personal conclusions – and series resource list

SEO—SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

I will assure you right now that I’m not an expert on SEO – but I can share some of the basics … and if you want to get into details, there are plenty of good posts to be found out there using, well, search engines of course! An example of a good post that provides up-to-date information on search engines, and analysis of 27 of the best ones (used for various purposes) is this post on search engines. But do feel free to do a search using the keywords “SEO” or “search engine optimization” or “search engines” or … well, you get the idea! And say, maybe that’s a good place to start my list of SEO tips:

• Keywords!
  • Create a list of keywords you want your site to be known for (think future as well as present). And do the same for particular posts.
  • Use those keywords in your URL, website title, blog post titles, headings, subheadings, and text (develop post content related to your keywords, of course) … and include the keywords in captions for images, charts, etc.
  • But don’t overdo it—don’t “stuff” your site with keywords. Search engines like keywords … but they don’t like you overusing them either.
  • Also test your keywords by doing searches for them in various search engines … and in places like online bookstores as well. Analyze what people are looking for. What search phrases are they using that contain those keywords? What alternative keywords (synonyms) are they using in searches?
  • Check out popular sites that use your keywords. What can you learn from them (but don’t just copy … learn from them and adjust to really fit your site specifically). What unique approaches and perspectives can your site offer, based on those keywords? What niche can you cover that doesn’t have so much competition?
  • Choose a few main keywords. Include one or two broad ones, but also include a few narrower ones (niche ones) that make your blog unique compared to other ones. And then make sure you include niche content related to those niche keywords.
  • Use keywords as hyperlinks. For example, look at the link in the introductory paragraph above. Notice that I used a keyword for this post—which happens to be “search engines”—and set it up as a hyperlink to a useful article. Click on it and see what I mean.

• Search questions … and linking:
  • When people are doing searches, they don’t just use keywords or key phrases. They often ask questions. Think about what kinds of questions people might ask that your site—and particular posts in your blog—could answer. Then include some of those kinds of questions in your headings and text. SEO will pick up on questions in your site that searchers are asking.
  • Ask some questions of your own in search engines, related to content you are creating. See what other bloggers are talking about. If you find really good blog posts related to your post, consider including external links to them. And look back through the posts you have already created. Have you made other posts on the same topic, but perhaps from a different perspective or angle? Make internal links that show you have other related content. Search engines like links, too.
  • Consider using up to 3-4 internal links per post and about 1-3 external links per post. Choose your links carefully; make sure they add to your post content. “Clicks” on links count for SEO, but don’t link just for that reason; link, more importantly, to provide helpful information for your readers.
  • Pick a single focus for each post. Don’t ramble. If it’s a broad topic, write several different posts on specific sub-topics, and link them as a series.

• Other useful SEO tips:
  • “Content is king!” Make sure your content is interesting, accurate, up-to-date, and useful to readers. Search engines look for superior content! Besides using keywords, key phrases, and even questions in your titles, make sure they are descriptive, making the post topic clear.
• • Think of titles of about 4 to 13 words in length. For the longer titles, start with 3 to 6 words that describe the topic in general, and then add a subtitle that provides a specific, niche description. BUT do NOT use titles that are only intended to grab attention. “Clickbait” titles are not appreciated by readers nor by search engines!
• • With your images, include a caption, source information (author and/or stock image site you got the image from), and even a description of the image which can be accessed by people who are blind and are listening to the post rather than reading.
• • SEO isn’t only about the words and graphics (and other media) on your site. Page performance and layout is important too. Search engines look for readable layout (see the layout post in this series for details). And they also take into consideration how fast your page loads. Avoid large images or lots of widgets or too many ads that slow down your page loading.Search engines prefer shorter sentences and paragraphs. Long, uninterrupted blocks of text or long, complicated sentences decrease readability. Keep in mind that different readers have varying reading ability, and also that online writing (websites, blogs, news sites, social media, etc.) favors shorter, easier writing.
• • Remember that “a picture says a thousand words”—especially in this day of emphasis on lots of graphics. Use photos, clip art, artwork, and other kinds of graphics—both to provide information and to break up blocks of information. (But make sure that the graphical items you include are related in some way to your topic—and that you’ve acknowledged the source.
• • Grammar counts! It’s an important part of readability and understanding. Double check your spelling, punctuation, and other aspects of writing quality.
• • Don’t plagiarize. Put commonly known information in your own words; if you’re using original ideas or quotations from other sources, acknowledge the source. A blog isn’t (usually) an academic paper in which you must use academic bibliographic format, but search engines do not like it when you plagiarize! (And you can get in a lot of trouble, obviously, if you copy posts from other sites without permission from the site owner.)
• The information above is basic SEO and may be all your need to know if you are blogging on a platform and aren’t interested in the more technical aspects of website and blog creation. But if you want to get deeper into SEO, search engines do have sites which explain more technical aspects of SEO such as meta description tags, heading tags, site hierarchy, what pages you want/don’t want crawled by search engine bots, markup, navigation, etc. For example, you can find out Google’s SEO guide here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide and Bing’s guide here: https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a  Another good reason to check these out from time to time, even if you don’t want to get into “techie” SEO levels, is that search engines change, from time to time, what they are looking for, so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on that.

WHAT’S NEXT? Why not use at least some of the above SEO ideas in your next blog post, and see what happens? …..

Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments: And let us know how it has gone for you!