Blogging for SEO – A Beginner’s Guide

Blogging is a key element of SEO, and if you have hired a search engine optimization company, they are likely to launch and develop your blog as well. That said, there will come a point where you should be ready to write your own blogs as well. To do this properly, you need to first understand what SEO is, and what your SEO company has done for you. After that, you need to follow best practices when it comes to blogging.

What Is SEO?

Very simply put, SEO is putting measures in place so that you tick all the boxes in the Google algorithms. Their spiders and crawlers look at every element of your website and cross reference that to what they are actually looking for. Of course, exactly what they are looking for is unknown to people, and changes regularly over time. However, certain things are known, that is what you need to target your blog towards as well.

Top Tips for Blogging

  1. Make sure you have your own domain and that it is properly hosted. Don’t expect great things by using a free blog with free hosting. That is because you will immediately show that you aren’t really serious about being successful, if you won’t even fork out the little bit of money needed to have your own domain and host.
  2. You need to use original content to solve problems. Think like your reader – why are they coming to your site and what are they looking for? That is what you need to offer them. Make sure your content is both relevant and original. Think tools and plugins, podcasts, videos, and photographs.
  3. Have natural backlinks to your website. Backlinks are links that come to your website from a different site. This link has to be relevant and from a high quality source. Remember that your anchor text matters, that your source matters, and that you should never pay for backlinks, as they won’t rank you any higher.
  4. Have an optimized SEO them. This includes it being fast loading, cleanly coded, mobile responsive, original, and without any broken bits.
  5. Make sure your permalink structure is in order on all your internal pages. Don’t change any old permalinks, however, as this will break the backlinks.
  6. Have a sitemap in place, Google loves this!
  7. Spend time going to other blogs to find out the things they are saying.
  8. Build a strong social media profile by Tweeting the big players, adding value to your own pages, and encouraging people to share your info.
  9. Use plugins specific to SEO. They will do things for you, which makes the entire process much easier.
  10. Learn about SEO, and work with a professional company so that you don’t make silly mistakes that could cost you dearly.

With the above 10 tips, you should be able to create the perfect blog. However, do make sure that you work together with professionals, whose knowledge is always up to date as well.