Search engine optimisation, or SEO, will help you connect with more customers, in particular those who are actively seeking what you have to offer.
But it’s hard to get a good search engine ranking and you need to rank on the first page of the search engine results if you want to build good traffic. Ideally, your site will rank in the top three for specific keywords or phrases that people are likely to search for.
SEO is a long-term project and you can’t expect to see results immediately, especially if your domain name (eg. www.mucho.com.au) is new or doesn’t have Google page rank yet.
If you’re patient and ready to learn about search engine optimisation, your site traffic will grow over time.
Each month around 80% of traffic to Mucho comes from Google, and we are always working to improve our ranking.
These search engine optimisation tips should make it easier for you to do the same.
Search Engine Optimisation Tips
1. Research your keywords and phrases
Use the Google Adwords keywords tool (it’s free) to learn what people are actually searching for before choosing your blog topics or naming your blog posts.
For example, I wanted to write about blogging tips for search engine optimisation and discovered “search engine optimisation tips” is a reasonably popular topic with around 12,000 people each month searching for it on Google.
2. Be realistic
Many search engine words or phrases are highly competitive so think of ways to qualify your content and focus on a specific area local to you (eg. Wedding photographer Westport) or a specific sub-niche such as (wedding photographer unconventional).
3. Name your blog posts and pages with search engine optimisation in mind
If you use those keywords as page headers it will also help you rank better with the search engines in the long term.
Well, named pages with keyword-rich permalinks will help improve your search engine ranking for those terms, especially if you fill them with related blog posts.
4. Give pages a short permalink
Make sure the website address (permalink) for your blog post contains the key phrase.
Remember to: choose the permalink before the page goes live.
If you change a permalink after a post has been published other blogs may have linked to it and you’ll need to put a redirect on your page so visitors don’t get a “Page not found” message.
5. Link to your own pages
Link to your pages and blog posts from other related blog posts using the exact keywords you want to optimise your post for. Internal links influence search engines.
6. Get incoming links from other blogs or websites
If you are writing blog content that is good hopefully other bloggers will link to your posts from their blogs.
You could also add articles to article marketing directories including the keywords. Include a link from your author biography and from within the article. Try to include one link that is your key phrase and ties in with your permalink.
Guest blogging is another great way to build incoming links to your blogs and help give you an immediate boost to your search engine traffic.
7. Be search engine optimisation smart in your HTML
- Use the meta description as a teaser for readers to make them want to click on your search engine listing and read more.
- Add a maximum of 10 SEO keywords or phrases.
- Name your images to include the keywords (eg blog-writing.jpg) and add ALT text to images with the keywords or phrase.
8. Use WordPress
We use WordPress because it makes search engine optimisation easier including all the points mentioned above.
9. Improve pages and blog posts that already rank well
Google Analytics lists the keywords and phrases people used to find your blog and ranks them in order.
Concentrate on optimising pages that naturally perform well by:
- Making sure the keywords appear near the beginning of your blog post and reusing them as often as you can without being repetitive.
- Work on your blog post layout and include your keywords in the blog post title, headers and sub-headers.
10. Never try to game Google
Focus first on writing useful information on your website that your ideal readers will be able to easily read and understand.
But remember, always write for people first and for SEO second. That way when those people who are actively seeking what you have to offer find your content, they’ll enjoy reading it and want to come back for more.
Read our DIY SEO Guide For Sunshine Coast Small Business or find out more about our SEO Services.
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Hi Annabel,
This topic always makes me want to hide my head under a blanket! You’ve presented it in a very accessible way. What I don’t get is how to select keyword phrases when you are in a very popular niche like personal development or writing about happiness or freedom since you can’t use those words in every post.
It was fun to see your wordpress.com site. Is it still live? I don’t really get how you are using it to link to the current site since your most recent article there is quite old. I transferred all my articles from my wordpress.com site to my new site and made it private so I wouldn’t get in Google trouble for duplicate content. So not quite sure if this idea can work for me.
There is a lot here that is simple though and I need to keep these points in mind! Thank you.
Hi Sandra,
It is tricky, that’s why I recommend writing the posts and then seeing what’s naturally a hit with the search engines. For example my post 101 Ways to be Happy (http://www.getinthehotspot.com/101-ways-to-feel-happy/) gets a lot of search engine traffic for the terms “How to be Happy”.
Although you can’t use those words in every post (and it’s the same for travel) you can optimise your home page for them and make sure you write about them regularly. I’d also quantify those words or niches as competition for happiness would be huge so you need to select a smaller niche.
Also I doubt people search for “happiness” so you need to think about what they would seach for. eg. “How to be Happy”, “happiness tips that work” etc. The same is true for freedom so it would be fun to brainstorm the type of phrases people searching for your tips would actually use. They might not search for “freedom” but they might search for ” How to Control Your Emotions”. Many of your posts could probably be written or just have the headlines changed to make them more easily found that way. This might be a fun exercise for you and useful for your readers as I know you have fantastic tips and knoweldge to share.
I recommend in your popular posts list that you make sure 50% of them have the words happy or happiness – at the moment only two out of about 12 do:)
Yes, I’ve just left all my old blogs live. I don’t have anything to hide! Although I don’t update them that old link will still give some link juice to sites I link to and I could probably improve that by updating with a new post. On my to do list;)
You’re right, I don’t think the tip would work if your blog is private.
Yikes, Annabel – how useful! Thank you. That’s a great tip about updating my popular posts to be heavy on the happiness side. I’m going to get my brainstorming cap on. Thanks. You are the cat’s meow.
FYI, I do pretty well “true happiness”…. so there’s one!
This is brilliant Annabel!! I will be linking directly here from the post I write this week for my Swish Design blog!
Hi Kelly,
Thank you! A link in is the best recommendation for my blogging tips there is:)
Gah! SEO. So much to learn. Thanks for making the basics really clear and providing a check list for us to adhere to. I guess once you really get into it, the process becomes second nature. It’s remembering to do it in the first place and getting to grips with it which is the hard part.
I’m off now to redefine Zigazag’s keywords – and implement them in some older posts (but not the permalinks – which I probably would have done without your words of caution!).
Thanks, Annabel.
Hi Johanna,
You can change the permalinks as long as you put a redirect on them so the old link automatically uploads to the new link:) Hope that makes it clearer.
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HI Annabel,
Great info and lots of helpful tips for new and old hands! I’ve not tried the article marketing directories so far, but may give it a try now…have you had much success? And I suppose you write specific articles just for them, not reposts of your home site materials…..Thanks
Annabel,
This is a wonderful post, full of clear examples and easy to follow. I work on SEO all the time, but you’ve given me additional tips I can quickly use.
My newest blog (linked to my name) is moving way too slowly for me and I keep tweaking–this will help. I particularly love the idea that I can shorten the permalink for a blog post-I always thought it had to be the full title!
Thank you, thank you,
Walker aka The Diva of Dating
Hi there Annabel,
My Sydney site gets about 70% of visits from Google… people are always searching for good playgrounds, beaches etc etc to go with the kids, and very few people write about them. I guess that’s what’s so good about a niche, it’s so niche! But then it’s always going to have a relatively small audience.
The foodie blog is much harder to get traction on as there’s so much competition in that area. My best post so far is the chocolate and beetroot cake recipe… I did a keyword tool search on that and was surprised by how many people look. Early days, but good to use SEO a bit more with both now I know more about it. Thanks!
Hi Ananabel, excellent and well written post. Using long tail key phrases is often the best and easiest way to get high in Google, as is going with the localized approach.
Sometimes you will find that you suddenly rank high for words you didn’t try! I wrote a post (The Story of Ibiza Bob) about a guy who’s lifestyle was holding him back from getting anywhere in life, he wanted to go to Ibiza for a holiday but never had due to lack of funds, I called him Ibiza Bob. I started to get people coming to the site from the first page of Google for the keyword ‘the story of Ibiza’ As you can guess I wrote a post about SEO based on that story which is I believe still on the first page of Google for the same key phrase.
Even after the Penguin and Panda slaps, getting good rankings in Google can be done if you deliver good quality content based around a long tail key phrase that is natural to the post.
Cheers
Andi
Hi Annabel
Your A-Z series of blogging tips has been amazing. I am about to devour and digest the content and comments from this post one more time so that I can action some new ideas. This is an area I haven’t wanted to look at properly but it is time. Thank you. Jo
Annabel,
Thank you for this post! My background is newspaper writing but recently I’ve crossed over into SEM and now blog writing, which is still so different than print writing. I’ve found there are numerous plug-ins that help with optimizing the permalinks and meta tags. But even still, there’s no quick fix to actually writing the content and optimizing it. One of the biggest challenges I have right now is link building—getting more back links into my blog and web site. #5 and #6 are two tips I will definitely hone. Thanks!
Lisa
Annabel, thanks for your many tips about blogging. Just started mine, and still get problems in appearing in search engine :)
Reading your articles help me a lot and pull my motivation back.
Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with SEO?
I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m
not seeing very good gains. If you know of any please share.
Appreciate it!
Hi Desmond,
Yoast if the best WordPress plug-in to help with blog SEO. It take a lot of the hard work out of search engine optimisation.
realy interesting informations i think using that plug-in with wordpress will help in the SEO ;)