We all have busy lives and, as bloggers, often that statement is magnified. To keep things simple, I’m sharing this 3-point SEO checklist that includes the steps you can take before you publish your post. It might feel strange to work with an SEO checklist at first, but once you make it a habit, the effort is sure to bring you lots of great traffic and new readers to your blog.
Related: 5 Ways to Improve SEO and Get More Traffic
3-Point SEO Checklist for Bloggers
- Search relevant keywords on Google Keyword Planner
- Select a specific 2-3 word phrase that relates to your post (ex. ‘social media marketing’)
- Select a keyword phrase with aprox. 5,000-60,000 local monthly searches
- Your keyword phrase should be one with Low competition
- Add your keyword phrase throughout your post
- Your post title should include the keyword phrase (shorter titles are better to create a higher keyword density)
- Add your keyword phrase to both one H2 and one H3 heading within the post
- Be sure to add your keyword phrase to the body of the article (see keyword density percentage and adding keywords the right way)
- One instance of your keyword phrase should be an internal link with anchor text to another related post on your site
- Your keyword phrase should also be added to the ‘alt’ tag feature of the first post image (related keyword phrases can be added to additional images)
- Add your keyword phrase to urls
- Before uploading, it’s best to rename images with each word in the keyword phrase seperated by hashes (ex. ‘social-media-marketing’) in order to create clean, SEO friendly urls on your images
- Customize your post urls (make sure your post url is short and contains your keyword phrase)
- Be sure to remove stop words like ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘of’, etc. from your urls, unless they are part of your keyword phrase
Don’t overdue it
Be careful also not to overdue it. Stuffed keywords and over-optimized content can actually make your posts less appealing to readers and search engines. If you’re wondering what bad SEO looks like, check out this post from ProBlogger: Is Your Blog Over-Optimized?
Bonus SEO Checklist Video
Here’s a great video from SmartPassiveIncome.com that outlines a few more great tips! It’s about 17 minutes long and well worth watching, especially if you find SEO confusing. This video simplifies it and breaks down the basics in a way that is great for beginners, but still offers something for those at intermediate level.
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Isabel Garcia says
Smart tips to always keep in mind when blogging!
Damien says
Excellent post! I'm a new fan.
Wonderful article! This is the kind of info that should be shared around the net.
Thank you =)
Annonymous says
Howdy are using WordPress for your site platform?
I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and set up my
own. Do you require any html coding knowledge to make your own blog?
Any help would be really appreciated!
Most modern websites are now on WordPress. You don’t have to know much coding to start your own blog, but it certainly is helpful. You’ll mostly want to spend time getting to know html and css. Php is more for functionality, which you won’t want to get into at a beginner’s level.
I would practice building html widgets on your blog and using css to edit the look of your site (custom colors, fonts, etc.).
Starting on WordPress.org will have a learning curve at first, but you can grab a month or two of lessons on Lynda.com and that should help you get started.
Otherwise, there are always ‘ready to go’ options like SquareSpace and Wix..but they may not let you customize your site to the same level that you can on WordPress. WordPress is the Gold Standard.