SEO for blogging. You’ve heard of it, you’ve been confused by it, and you’ve been put off by it. We’ve all been there.

If you want to become an expert in blogging SEO, this post isn’t going to cut it. I’m here for the people who want to know just enough to get by because they aren’t quite ready to dive into all of that yet. Once you are though, definitely look into an SEO course. There are a bunch out there that will help you really dive into the nitty gritty of all things SEO, but for now, we’ll stick to the main points.

I’m going to do my best to make this big, bad monster a little more approachable by giving you a basic checklist to reference when you’re writing and posting blogs to make sure you’re not just tossing these beautiful blog posts into an internet black hole, unable to be found.

First, we have to start with a definition. What even is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it’s making sure you’re serving up the information that search engines like Google are looking for to be able to index your content, and share it with the people who are looking for it. There's more to it, but for a beginner looking for just the basics, that’s really all you need to know!

This checklist will cover the main things to pay attention to when crafting your blog posts.

Keywords

Using the right keywords and including them throughout is the bread and butter of this whole checklist. Do some research to figure out what your ideal audience is searching for, and use those keywords and long tail keywords. You’ll want to make sure you’re repeating these keywords throughout the body of your blog post, as many times as you can while still sounding normal. Don’t shove it in places that don’t feel natural just to up your keyword number. Don’t be weird!

There are different tools that can help with finding keywords, like the Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest. We’ll be referring back to keywords throughout this list, so keywords are definitely the first step in making sure you’re on top of your blogging SEO.

Title

There a few different things you want to make sure your title or headline has. It should include your primary keyword, it should be under 70 characters (so it doesn’t get cut off in searches), and it should be enticing! If you don’t have an appealing title, even if it shows up in someone’s search, they may not click on it.

Meta description

Every blog hosting site has a different place to access your meta description, and you should definitely figure out where it is. If you don’t write your own meta description for your blog post, Google will extract a snippet of your post to fill in for you, but it’s better to have it optimized. Include your keywords (make sure to use those long tail keywords!) and express what benefit readers will get by consuming your blog post.

Headings

Use the H1, H2, H3, H4 headings in the formatting of your blog post. Only use one H1 heading, and make sure you’re using those long tail keywords in these headings.

Include images throughout your post, and add alt text to them

The alt text of images is another place you can put your keywords. The search engine crawlers are looking everywhere, including the images, to figure out what the content is about. Make sure you’re utilizing all the places you can give the search engines information!

Internal and external links

Linking things within your post adds to a reader’s experience. It also can increase the amount of time someone is on your site when you use an internal link to another blog post of yours or another relevant page of your site.

There is so much more to blogging SEO that one could learn, but these are the main points to be sure you are not missing when you’re posting something on your blog. I always find that breaking difficult and confusing things down into smaller chunks helps, so hopefully this post and list is helpful to you!

I’ve had blogging clients (I’m a blogging manager, did ya know? Check out my services HERE) that have told me the reason they don’t blog is they are intimidated by the whole idea of blogging SEO and don’t even want to have to deal with it. This is something I totally understand. It is a big reason why blogging management is something I offer to my clients! So next time you’re fed up with SEO and don’t want to have to think about it anymore, shoot me a message on Instagram. I’d be happy to help! ☆