Last week the Louisville Bloggers Group held its first learning series workshop: Basic Blogger SEO, presented by Nathan Engels, Search Specialist with LEAP.
Nathan writes two very popular blogs, We Use Coupons and Wanna Bite, and he generously uses his blogging knowledge to help fellow bloggers grow their own blogs. Nathan’s excitement for blogging is infectious, and he has a talent for breaking down the technical jargon in ways that every blogger can understand.
What is SEO, and how does it effect blogging? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is knowing how to optimize your blog postings so that they are seen by search engines. Basically, it’s what brings readers typing search words into a search bar to your blog. Since most of us who write blogs actually want people to find and read our blogs, SEO is important to increase our blog’s visibility in search engines.
Once our group made introductions, socialized a bit, and filled our plates with delicious snacks, we got busy learning Nathan’s tips for basic blogger SEO.
Here are a few of Nathan’s Basic SEO Tips for Bloggers :
Be a blogger first. Write your blog content, and then go back and ask yourself What would I type into Google to find this content? Most likely it’s not just one word you would type, but a group of words. That group of words are your keywords. They should be specific, but not too general. For example: SEO is too general. SEO Tips for Bloggers is more specific.
Use your keywords as your title. Yes, this may make your titles boring and uncreative, but it is essential. Let your personality shine through the blog post writing.
Use your keywords every 100-200 words. Your keywords should be used throughout the blog post in a natural and organic way so that the blog post still reads coherently and doesn’t sound forced or weird. You can also alter the order of the keywords. SEO Tips for Bloggers and Blogger SEO Tips are interchangeable.
Write your own meta descriptions. A meta description is a snippet written to describe your blog and/or blog post. This description is the first few lines that show up under your blog post title and link in search results. You want searchers to click your link, so you want to describe your blog post and use your keywords to enhance that likelihood.
Rename your photos with your keywords. If you use photos in your blog posts (and you totally should), make sure to rename the photo with your keywords, and separate those keywords with dashes. IMG_1345.jpg should be changed to something like, blogger-seo-tips.jpg. Also add your keywords to the ALT field on your blogging platform.
There are so many ways to work on increasing blog traffic and readership. This was just the basics of SEO to get us started on creating good, searchable content for our blogs without being too overwhelming. Nathan did a great job of delivering this information. A big thanks to him and LEAP Agency for hosting this event for Louisville Bloggers Group.
Do you find the technical aspects of growing your blog a challenge? Would you benefit from more information like this to help you grow your blog?
Our group is working on future learning series and we hope to bring Nathan in again to share more of his tips for growing a successful blog. If you are a Louisville Blogger and would like to join our group for invitations to future events, please join our Facebook group HERE.
~julee~
