When I started out as a blogger I barely know anything about SEO or its importance to be on the top rankings in the Google and Seach engines.
Being Mompreneur, and having your own business, it is important to know the basics of the search engine optimization.
I know many mompreneurs afraid of the name of search engine optimization or they feel like they cannot do it by themselves.
but SEO is nothing but a set of rules or matrics which you need to follow on each of your blogs. If you are an entrepreneur small or big, search engine optimization is inevitable.
without optimizing your blog, it is not possible to rank in the search engines, and if you are not on Google, your business is going to suffer heavily.
And if I can learn it, every mompreneur can.
So the first basic thing is that whatever your niche is you need to write about it often and consistently. so to start with it is important to do keyword research. keyword research is the most important and keyword you are choosing is going to be used for optimizing your entire blog post. so it is important to choose the keyword very carefully. Once your choose the keyword, now we are going to optimize your blog post.
choose a keyword with low hanging fruit, which means having low competition on google, so that you have a better chance to rank on google.
let’s say I have chosen “SEO checklist for mompreneurs” is the keyword for my blog post. now while optimizing your blog post you need to put this keyword in different places.
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Post Title
- You need to put the keyword in your post title like I did the Free SEO Checklist for Mompreneurs. you can add some attracting words before and after your keyword to entice readers to click on your link and read the content.
There is no limit on how many characters you use for a post title, you can have a long title if you want but in meta title and meta description, you have limited characters. For meta title, you can use 60 characters and for meta description 160 characters.
2. Meta Title
your blog post title and meta title is different. the meta title is particularly for search engines and its limited to 60 characters. you can add meta tags to your post below your blog post. If you have installed AIO or Yoast plugin then you will find that there is additional space where you can add all these meta tags.
It is important to add the keyword in your meta title as close as possible so that Google bots can easily notice it. It is your meta title that shows up in the search engines, so it is important to write eye-catching meta title
3. Meta Description
Meta Description is the summary of your blog post, but you should write it carefully so that your reader will relate to it and click through the link.
A meta description is limited to 160 characters so try to summarise your blog post here. Add the main highlights of your blog post in the meta description, also try to write as relevant as possible.
Stick to the subject of your blog post. A reader clicks through the blog post because he finds the meta description and the blog post title relevant to his problem. If he did not find relevant information on the blog, chances are he will leave the blog within seconds and your bounce rate will go up. Same as meta title it is important to add your keyword in the meta description.
Read More : 10 Tips On How To Write Good Meta Description
4. Internal Link
An internal link is one of the important matrices to rank your blog post higher in the search engines. The internal link means linking one page of your blog post to the other blog post on your website. Google bots find your other pages through internal links so it is important to link each page of your blog post to another blog post.
From your readers perspective also it becomes much easier to navigate through different pages of your site. From user experience, internal links play a major role. It also helps to navigate through your website, and help reader to easily navigate through your site.
You can create an internal link through anchor text which means highlighting a particular word and add a link to it.
5. External links
External links mean a link on your site guiding to another page, outside your domain, which means you are directing your reader to another website.
When you add relevant external links, it helps your readers to find related useful resources.
If you are adding affiliate links, just remember affiliate links are not the external links though they are technically external links.
For e.g. If you click the above link “External Link” it leads you to Wikipedia, which is an external link, outside this domain, so it is called external link.
6. Alt tag in Images
We all add images to our blog posts for beautification and for an aesthetic look. But after Google added search by images, the images on your blog post need to be optimized. First of all, it is important to add the keyword in the alt tag of images.
Images on your blog also rank in Google, and when someone clicks on an image it leads them to your website. So alt tag in images can increase traffic to your site.
At the same time, it is important to compress your images before adding to your blogs. Images are an important part of any blog post, and a relevant and meaningful image can increase the click-through rate of your blog post, it can increase the load time of your site.
Compress your images with tinypng, a free tool.
It is also to alt tag your images and describes what they are all about, so the people who can not read or visually impaired. alt tag description helps to understand it. Google now have included alt tags in ranking metrics, as it improves user experience.
Google bots can not read images, so the description in the alt tag, also helps them to understand the images.
7. Add a video
We all know the importance of video today, people like to watch videos rather than read a blog. So whenever possible add your own youtube video or find some relevant video on Youtube.
So adding a video to your blog post, also attract visitors and even if they watch a video for 2 or 3 minutes, it will help your rankings go up. Because when people engage with your content and spend more than 3 minutes on a website, it is a positive matrix for Google, it indicates that people are engaging with your content.
8. Submit to URL inspection
Once you publish the article, submit your URL into search console for URL inspection. It is an additional way to let Google know that you have published a new blog and by doing so, your blog posts get indexed easily.
The same way it is important to submit the URL to Bing, Bing also holds good searches as it is a default browser for Microsoft. So there is a percentage of people who prefer Bing. So to cater to these people, it is important to submit URL to Bing.
It is a very basic checklist for your blog post, As I said earlier also, it is important to have your keyword in the meta tags and heading of your blog post i.e.blog post
Conclusion:
Every day, a ton of content is published on Google, so how to rank your content on Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
If you optimize your content for search engines, chances are your content get ranked easily. There are some specific led down rules or guidelines by Google, which if you follow you will get ranked in the Google.
Keyword Research and choosing the right keyword, especially a low hanging keyword, which means having low competition in the Google SERP.
Using Keyword in the post title, meta title, meta description, alt tag, if you are creating your own videos, then add the keyword in YouTube heading are some of the good SEO practices, which you must follow to get higher ranks in the search engines.
After publishing the blog post, it is important to submit the URL to Search console, to let Google know that you have published a new blog post.
Additionally, you can also submit URL to Bing also, as Bing is one of the important search engines.
Optimizing blog posts is important from an SEO point of view and it is quite easy if you apply these methods to all your posts.
Friends, which SEO tips you can share with readers so that we all benefit from your tip, pl leave your valuable SEO Tips in the comments below.
I hope this SEO checklist helps you rank better in search engines, if you have any questions pl let me know, I will be more than happy to answer all your queries.