Are you confused on how SEO works? Wonder how other blogs and websites boost their organic traffic and show up on search results?
Well, if you are you’ve come to the right place! In this post, I’ll show you how you can make super simple changes to your blog and get serious results, because SEO is not as complicated as you think it is.
8 SEO Tips To Boost Your Organic Traffic
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of maximising the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
1.Install the Yoast SEO plugin
I’ve talked about the “most useful” plugins every blogger or biz owners must have last week and of course, this bad boy is included there. It makes your life so much easier and it’s free! This plugin allows you to do a lot of stuff that will help in search:
- You’ll be able to create an XML sitemap
- You can modify whether your categories and tags are crawlable
- You can verify social accounts for additional social exposure
- You can install breadcrumbs
2. Nail every URL for every blog post
Did you know that your URL is actually as important as your title? Your URL should contain keyword/s regarding your blog post. Take note that only “words” to get the maximum effect.
http://beautyandcherries.com/seo-increase-organic-traffic
But if I used this one – my blog post will be entirely invisible!
http://beautyandcherries.com/best-ways-to-use-seo-to-increase-organic-traffic-to-your-blog
BONUS TIP: Go to your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks > Choose Post name
This will help your posts generate better URL’s going forward.
To update your old post permalinks, simply click on the ‘edit’ button next to the URL below your post title in WordPress.
3. Install the Redirection plugin
Don’t go crazy and change every URL in your blog without this plugin. This will automatically 301 redirect your old post to the new address whenever you change it. This plugin will help prevent annoying 404 “page not found” errors.
4. Add Image ALT Tags
I’ve preached a lot on why you need to stop being lazy when it comes to your images because it actually makes sense!
Do you remember when WordPress prompts you to add a text after you upload an image but because you don’t understand it, so you simply click away and leave it blank?
Yes, don’t give me that look..I know. 😛
Google cannot understand your images alone, so you need to describe it using the Alt Text. But please don’t just throw away some random words, be sure to add descriptive words to the images you uploaded, otherwise people can’t find them when they search.
5. Speed Up
Mobile browsing is definitely the new thing. In fact, it accounts to whopping 70% of daily searches.
And if you’re site loads after 48 years no one will have the patience to wait for it.
It’s even crucial for Google ranking. If you’re site loads between 8-12 seconds you need some serious help.
BONUS TIP: Go ahead and check the speed of your site at Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
You are targeting the score of 75 or above both on desktop and mobile. Don’t worry too much about making any gigantic changes in your site as this is a good score.
However, if you’re site got a score below 75, you may want to consider making improvements based on the tool’s recommendations.
BONUS TIPS:
Need to compress the size of your images? Try the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin.
Need to enable browser caching? Try installing WP Super Cache.
Want to find out which plugins are slowing your site down? Install the P3 Plugin Profiler.
6. Give it space
Seriously, white space is your friend. No one (yes, even you!) wants to read huge chunks of paragraphs.
When your readers stay longer, this signals Google that you’re producing high quality content compared to other online creators. Which in turn, they will reward you with higher rankings in search.
7. Increase Internal Links
When you’re creating a new blog post, its always better to link a few resources that you already have.
Like what I did to items #1 and #4 since it is a related topic.
Not only will it benefit the reader, but it will also benefit the site’s search rankings.
Finally, you have to take note that you can also link to other high quality external resources. This will show Google that you’re a trustworthy site. Again, this will all boil down to the “benefits that you give to your readers.”
8. Update Meta Titles & Descriptions
If you already installed the Yoast SEO Plugin, this step will be a piece of cake! So here’s how you do it.
The Meta title and description is what shows in Google’s search results.
Instead of showing your entire content they show your title and a brief snippet of text.
By default, Google will grab your blog post headline and a some text from your post to use in its results.
So if you have truncated headlines and unoptimized descriptions it will NOT tempt anyone to click on it.
Here’s an example of a truly optimized URL + Headline + Meta title and Description.
BONUS TIP:
If you need to check out how your Meta information will look in Google, you can make use of Portent’s SERP Preview Tool
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