This post was created as A Bloggers SEO Checklist. With any advice in regards to SEO, take it with a grain of salt and then test the recipe yourself. There is no longer any “Secret Sauce” when it comes to blogger SEO tips. I hope this comes in handy as source for some basic “Best Practices” for optimizing your blog posts.

Search engines don’t look at websites the same way we do. They use a lot of different factors to determine what website is most relevant to the users search topic.

One of the first signals Google uses to determine if a website is relevant to a users search is the, URL and Page Title. The page title and url of your post should be the main search term you are attempting to rank for.

Take This post for example:

www.motherhoodandmerlot.com/a-bloggers-seo-checklist/

You will also notice the top tab in your web browser has the post title     (A Bloggers SEO Checklist | Motherhood & Merlot)

H1 & H2 headers are html codes or formatting that search engines read and use as a minor ranking factor to determine the topic of the page. Again, there is no one single thing that you can do to transform your post into a top ranking post on Google, but if you do your best to make sure all the important steps are completed you will put your post in the best possible position to succeed.

Make sure your first two Headings are relevant to or a variation of the topic/keyword you are wanting to rank for. This organizes the post with relevancy signals for search engines that are crawling.

Using H1 Header To Optimize SEO

Front Loading your “keyword” means adding the keyword or topic that we are looking to rank for into the first sentence or at least the first 100 words of the post.

NOTE: Take a look at the first paragraph of this checklist. You’re going to see in bold the keyword right away “A Bloggers SEO Check”

This is just immediately reinforcing that the content on this post is about the same topic the post is titled for. The Theme if you are noticing is relevancy… and this is just the beginning.

Adding different forms of multimedia doesn’t directly effect the rank of your post or websites. However it does help with your readers interaction with your post. If you give folks different ways to consume content they are likely stay on your post longer because of visual value.

Google is starting to pay more attention to “user interaction” and “time on page”

Since search engines do not directly see the pictures the same way youadding alt text for blog post seo
and I do, you can use “Alt Text” to tell Google and users what the content of the image is about. 

Meta descriptions will be displayed whether or not we write them or not. It is typically best practice to write them using good ad copy containing the main keyword the page is intended to rank for. If meta descriptions are not written the search engines will automatically scrape the page and display 150 to 160 characters from the web page. It is however important not to use duplicate meta descriptions.

***Keep in mind the meta descriptions is whats displayed in the SERP page and it was the user sees when results are displayed. It should be compelling and relevant to the search query that has been done.***

There is a ton of information and strategies built around internal linking. It’s really quite complex. To make it simple stick to these 3 easy steps. If you keep these in mind every time you write a blog post from this point on you will be helping Google spend more time on your website while also building trust.

  1. Add two external links out from your post to another related and relevant website. Try to find most authoritative or popular website with relevant information to your post. I did it above in start of step as an example.
  2. If possible try to include a contextual link or anchor text link to one of your previous published posts.. Only if they are related and it seems natural to do within your content.
  3. Once you have your new post ready to publish using this SEO checklist for new blog posts, go back through to some older posts you wrote that are on a similar topic and link to this new post your publishing.

Take a look at Wikipedia.com they do a great job with internal linking in each of their pages.

I hope this all wasn’t overwhelming and that you can use this post as a resource for optimizing your blog posts for seo. Below are a couple more things to consider when using these tips for SEO.

Consider The Following:

  • Loading Speed – It effects the SEO of your website more then you know. If it takes to long to load a post or a page readers won’t wait and they will click the back button, killing your bounce rate.
  • Bounce Rate – How fast and often people “click back” or leave your website once clicking on the link to your post.
  • Social Sharing – Social media and social influence are a big part of SEO, especially these days. If readers are sharing your content, site, and multimedia google sees that as a positive sign that what your producing is quality and relevant.
  • Write Longer Content – Its proven that content or posts of over 1500 words rank better then the shorter posts.