In this post, I will give you all my best blog SEO tips on creating content optimized to rank highly in search engine results. If SEO boggles your mind, strap in and get ready to learn everything that will take your blogging game to the next level.

This post builds upon SEO strategies spoken about previously, you may want to read about creating killer SEO content here as well.

Investing your time in SEO means you will finally start making money or getting tremendous search traffic if done properly each and every time you write a blog post.

Blogging is STILL one of the best ways to make a fulltime income online. Take my free course How to Start a Profitable Blog today to learn how to create a blog that makes money from the start. 

Good search engine optimization requires you to connect your blog to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These tools are free and help you to understand your traffic and see what queries people are using to find your blog. You NEED these tools.

If you’re clueless about how to install these tools and what you should be looking for in them, join my free 5-day blog traffic challenge where I use video tutorials to show you exactly how to get everything set up.

What is SEO Friendly Content?

SEO means search engine optimization. Simply put, SEO is a few steps you take when creating content to try and get your piece of content to show up on search engine results, ideally in the number one spot.

Studies show that the first result on a search engine result page (SERP) gets 33% of researchers clicks. Number 2 gets 17%, number 3 gets 11% and everybody else below grapples for clicks in the single digits.

This is important to us as bloggers because while Pinterest can be our number one source of traffic, search engines send us a tremendous amount more targeted traffic if we are able to land in the top 3 for a popular search term.

When we optimize for search engines, we want to rank high on the SERP for a search term that gets thousands of searches every month. Imagine if you’re able to accomplish this for a great number of your posts!

Why SEO for Blogs Matter

Diversifying your traffic sources means you’re always ready for an algorithm change on one platform at any point in time.

Over time, your pin may lose steam but as long as your article remains relevant to a search term with high volume, you will benefit from SEO.

In a previous article, I showed how to use Google keyword planner to find keywords to use when creating your content. In still another article, I broke down a better tool I use to take my keyword research to the next level.

Use Keysearch coupon code KSDISC to get 20% off this amazing keyword research tool

In this post I give you the whole picture, highlighting all the basic steps necessary to give you a chance to rank high on Google.

Before You Write Your SEO Blog Post

The very first step to making your blog post SEO friendly is to identify your keyword. You’ll want to find a keyword that has a relatively good amount of search volume each month and has fairly low competition.

To identify this, you can install this free browser extension. It’s free and works in Chrome and Firefox. When you plug a keyword into Google, you’ll be able to see the monthly volume for that keyword and an estimation of the competition or difficulty of ranking high for that keyword.

In the image above you’re able to see that the estimated search volume for the keyword SEO for beginners is 1900 searches per month. That’s a pretty low search traffic volume for one post, bearing in mind that at position number 3 at least, you’re likely to get only 11% of that volume of traffic.

It’s important to note here that we will be trying to rank for more than one keyword per post. Gone are the days when you had to pick one keyword and stuff it all over your page. Now, the opportunity is available to rank for a handful of related keywords, adding up to good traffic on every single post.

With this information in mind, I throw out SEO for beginners as my main keyword since the volume is fairly low, and head off in search of higher rewards. (I will keep it in the list of related keywords to use however!)

At the bottom of the SERP, Google gives us some suggestions. These are also keywords that we can consider targeting. The browser extension will give you the volume information for these keywords as well.

Here, it has revealed that the keyword what is SEO and how it works has good volume and SEO tutorial has even better volume! But can I rank for these keywords? What’s the competition like?

Keyword Research SEO Tutorial

My post on Keysearch shows how I use the tool to evaluate competition quickly. To evaluate the competition manually, I run through these things:

• Search volume of the keyword
• The content of the posts that currently rank for that keyword
• The Domain Authority for the posts that rank (you can use Moz to help you here) 
• My ability to create more content around this topic to position my blog as an authority on the topic

If that all seems like lots of work, Keysearch makes this really easy. You can do it at a glance while getting lots of suggestions for keywords that are lower in competition.

In this video, I fire up Keysearch to help a member of my Facebook Group, Help a Blogger Out, find a good keyword for a post that was not properly SEO’d. Start at around the 23 minute mark if you’re in a hurry though the video also gives good tips on finding content on Pinterest.

How to Optimize Blog Posts for SEO

Continuing on the topic of keywords, the suggested terms listed at the bottom of the Google SERPs are called latent semantic indexing keywords. These LSIs are keywords you will want to take note of.

In order to rank highly on the SERP, you should be covering most if not all of these topics in an effort to write an article that is as thorough and in-depth as you can.

Such an article is lengthy and indicates to Google that you have covered the topic completely and are worthy of a high ranking. 

Aim for over 1800 words as research shows that the average number one ranking blog post has over this amount of words.

Once you have identified your main keyword and all the related keywords that you will cover in your article, it’s time to write your post.

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On-Page SEO for Your Blog Post

Here’s where you begin to check off all the places where you want to plug your keywords. Ensuring that your keywords are scattered in all of these places signals to search engines that your article is indeed covering your topic of choice thoroughly.

• Place your main keyword in your blog post title (at the very front ideally) and in one subheading of the post.
• Ensure the URL of the post has the main keyword and little else. (Aim for yourblog.com/main-keyword-here)
• Place your main keyword in the alt text of your featured image in a readable sentence, not just keyword stuffing.
• Place the main keyword in the very first paragraph of your post so it’s clear immediately what the post is about.
• Place LSIs in other subheadings as relevant and natural as possible, as well as other image descriptions
• Use even more LSIs throughout the body of your article. There’s no need to use them more than once.
• Use your main keyword or a strongly related keyword in the meta description of your blog post (Install the Yoast SEO plugin to make this super easy to find and track)
• Link to authority sites as necessary, however not an article speaking about the same thing. (Link to an article on an authority site such as weather.com discussing weather conditions in Japan in July in your post about 10 things to do in Tokyo)
• Link internally to other posts of yours relating to the topic. If you’ve never written about the topic before, include a link that says something like: You May Also Like ___ or Other Posts to Check Out
• Make sure to have social share buttons installed so readers can pin, tweet, FB, and share your posts.

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Rank Brain: Understanding the Theory Behind Google’s Algorithm

While I was writing this post, I received an email from Brian Dean, who’s considered an authority on all things SEO. He doesn’t publish content on his blog very often but when he does, you can bet it’s a very thorough, well-researched piece with information coming straight out of Google itself.

In his new piece, he broke down Google’s Rank Brain, the machine that’s now responsible for whether your posts rank high or not. What does the machine use to determine this?

It’s paying very close attention to how you interact with the search results. Specifically, it’s looking at:

He has sections in the post that gives valuable direction for writing your headline and reducing your bounce time, and of course, he explains pogo-sticking. It’s a super-definitive SEO guide and well worth the read if you’re trying to learn all you can about SEO.

Off-Page SEO for Beginners: Sharing, Repurposing and Link-Building

When you’ve written your post and have published it, you want to move on to getting it out there in all the ways that work best for you. Backlinks are one of the best ways to get your content ranked high on Google if the backlink is coming from a blog or website with a higher domain authority than you.

Within your network of blogging friends, reach out and ask those more powerful to link to your content in a related post.

When your content has aged some, you may want to repurpose it into a video, podcast, Slideshare or republish it somewhere like Medium.com, breathing new life into your post and finding new traffic sources for it.

I speak more about getting traffic to your blog post in my post 21 Proven Ways to Get More Blog Traffic and I also share exactly how I do some of my SEOing in my free 5-day blog traffic course.

Related: How to Find The Best Keywords for Blog Traffic

I’d love to know if you found this post helpful! Please let me know in the comments and grab your free SEO checklist below, guaranteed to make your blog posts SEO friendly in a Google Rank Brain World.

Need more in-depth SEO knowledge? My 14-Day SEO for Bloggers Challenge is for you! 

One of the biggest mistakes that I find bloggers making is not using keywords for blog traffic. Blog traffic is elusive, we’re all trying to get more and more of it but lots of us are going about it without a clue.

In a past post, I broke down 21 ways to get more blog traffic but here’s the clincher, there are really only a handful of ways that you want to concentrate on.

If you’ve not yet started your blog, click here for a detailed tutorial on how to set one up properly and get it ready to make you some money.

And that handful will look different for you as a blogger than it might look for me. Bloggers generally start out trying their hand at all the trick and gimmicks and eventually, you stick with what works.

For me, that’s Pinterest and SEO. For you, it may be Instagram and Facebook. For others still, it may be Twitter, Quora and Medium. There’s no one way to be successful at blogging, but a common thread that will run throughout all blogs that make money is this:

Their content provides a solution that people are searching for.

This one small fact slips too many bloggers.

Blogging is STILL one of the best ways to make a fulltime income online. Take my free course How to Start a Profitable Blog today to learn how to create a blog that makes money from the start. 

Why Keywords are Important for Blog Traffic

So here’s the thing. You sit to write a blog post, pat yourself on the back for getting to 1000 words, hit publish, put it on Pinterest, Twitter and 10 different blog post share threads in Facebook groups for bloggers.

You spread the link around on social media for about a week and then start working on your new blog post. Your traffic dips after your stop promoting your last post and you’ll have to do this whole shebang all over again for your new post.

How do you get people to keep coming to those old posts that you’ve already written?

Sure, you can put them on a looping schedule with Tailwind so that the pins constantly go out to your group boards, and you should totally do that. But there’s a better way to constantly attract traffic to your posts other than a solid Pinterest strategy.

You can use keywords that people are actually searching for every single day in your blog posts. Add these keywords strategically throughout your posts and Google will begin to send those people who are searching for your chosen keywords, your way.

Isn’t that amazing?

Need more traffic to your blog? Are you using Pinterest to get massive traffic for FREE from the platform? Learn how to use Pinterest the right way in my Pinterest for Blog Traffic course! This course is only $49 and will become your best tool to increase your blog traffic quickly!

What Keywords Are and How to Find Good Quality Keywords

A keyword is a search term. The actual words that you type into Google whenever you’re looking for something is the keyword. So if today you’re looking for BOA locations then “BOA locations” becomes a keyword.

If you’re looking for ways to reduce belly fat then “ways to reduce belly fat” is your keyword.

As a new blogger, you’ll want to analyse your keywords to determine ones that make sense for you. There’s probably no way you’re going to rank for “how to bake chicken” as a new blogger because a quick search for that term will reveal that some very established blogs dominate Google’s first page results on that topic.

Can you compete against those very established blogs for that search term? Probably not. So you’re going to want to get into what’s known as long-tailed keywords.

This means you’ll add more words to the keyword to make it a little more unique. Maybe you’ll try “how to bake chicken legs” or “how to bake chicken korean style” or “how to bake a chicken in a toaster oven”

You get my drift?

A keyword research tool will tell you how many times per month your keyword is searched for. This is known as the keyword search volume. I use Keysearch to perform my research. It’s only $17/month and I’ve even got a discount code for you. Click here and get 20% off with coupon code KSDISC

It doesn’t make sense to target a keyword that no one is searching for. You’ll get no traffic from search engines if no one cares about that keyword.

Keysearch will also tell you what the competition looks like for your keyword and how difficult it will be to rank for your keyword. It will show you the stats of the current websites that rank for the keyword so you can see how your blog stacks up against theirs. It’ll also suggest some other keywords and show you how difficult these suggestions will be as well.

See why I use a paid keyword research tool and just how important one is to your blogging strategy?

You’ll want to target keywords that have a fairly high monthly search volume, around 1000 monthly searches. Remember that your blog post will rank for more than one keyword naturally so don’t be bummed out that the keyword you selected has only 1000 monthly searches.

As a new blogger, it’s going to be much harder to rank for anything with higher searches depending on your niche. Eventually you’ll write 30 blog posts targeting keywords with a search volume of 1000 and it all begins to add up for your blog.

You’ll also want to make sure that the competition isn’t too difficult for your selected keyword by checking out the domain authority of the blogs that already rank for the selected keyword. I explain domain authority in my blog SEO post.

How to Find Keywords Using a Free Keyword Research Tool

If you want to attract readers from Google to your blog, you have to start thinking like your readers. You need to be asking yourself what is it that they will be searching for that will bring up your blog post as a possible answer to their query.

And all your blog posts should be solving a query, otherwise, your blog is just an online diary. Keep your personal stories for your Instagram captions and stories if you want to make money on your blog. I spoke about this in great detail here about finding your blog voice.

This post shows you how to use Google’s own free keyword planner to find keywords. This post shows you how I use Keysearch, a paid keyword research tool to cut to the chase and find profitable keywords with low competition that will actually send me traffic. Yet another post breaks down how you can perform keyword research on Google itself paired with a Chrome extension that shows the monthly search volume for a keyword.

I write about SEO a lot on this blog because once you understand it as a blogger, you’ll get paid as a blogger. It’s as simple as that. I think it’s the most important thing any blogger can rely on for blog traffic. Below I’ll outline another tool that you can use to help with your blog keyword research.

My Manual Keyword Research Steps

Even with using Keysearch to find low competition, high search volume keywords, I still do a bit of manual keyword research to validate Keysearch’s findings as well as to prepare myself for writing the blog post.

Step 1, AnswerThePublic

Head to answerthepublic.com and put in your big search term there. The one that you’re probably not going to rank for. Hit enter and you will get a plethora of possibilities to choose from, all pulled from Google. These are searches people are actually performing.

Step 2, Analyse The Keyword Volume

Click on any of the results that pop up and it will take you to the search engine result page (SERP) for that query. If you have the Chrome extension installed mentioned in this post then you will be able to see the monthly search volume for that keyword and all the related keywords at the bottom of the page.

If your main keyword has good search volume, move on to step three. If not, see if one of the related keywords at the bottom of the post has better search volume or go back to step one and click on another term.

Step 3, Analyse The SERP Result

When you’ve found a keyword with good search volume, take a look at all the blogs that are on the SERP. This part is a little more difficult to assess without a keyword tool to tell you the domain authority of a blog, how many backlinks the blog post has and other things that determine just how difficult it will be to outrank that post.

But use your judgment to determine if you’ll be able to rank on the first page for the keyword-based on all the other listings currently there. In my Facebook group, I spoke about my content creation process and how I use the results on the first page to craft my own blog post. (If you’re not a member of my free Facebook group, you’ll have to request to join here first to see the video)

You probably cannot outrank the ones that are already ranking without looking through those posts for content clues.

Now that you’ve found the keyword you’re targeting for your blog post, the next step is determining how many to use and where to use them.

Download my SEO checklist from my Blogging Library for help with that and other blog SEO tips. One tip that I will say here is that your permalink for your post should be your main keyword and nothing more.

If you’re clueless about what I mean, head to this post about on-page SEO.

Keyword research is the most efficient way that you will attract traffic to your blog. Don’t get caught out there creating all this content that goes to your archives to die. You can document your keywords and other aspects of your content creation process in my free printable blog planner.

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Hopefully you’ve now seen how important it is to research keywords for use in your blog posts and not just create content by the seat of your pants hoping it will go viral or attract traffic. If you want to make money blogging then combining your keyword research with affiliate marketing is a powerful strategy. Learn more about doing just this inside my Facebook Group here.