A great article doesn’t always equal great traffic. If you want people to read your content, you must make it easier for them to find it online. While you might believe SEO tactics slow down the creative process, they are essential if you want to run a successful blog.
You might be glad to know that search engine optimization has altered over the years. No longer do you need to stuff your content with keywords to rank highly in Google. You can now create relevant, compelling content, whilst driving a considerable amount of traffic to your website. Read our top tips on how to optimize your articles.
A Search-Friendly Platform
The content management system (CMS) you use can determine your blog’s success. Each platform is different, and some are much easier to use than others and can perform better in the search engines.
WordPress is easily the most popular CMS for bloggers, as it is user-friendly and features a search engine optimized design. In fact, it is so popular with bloggers that is makes up 26% of all websites on the internet.
Permalink Structure
Before you start writing your first article, we recommend reviewing the permalink structure with the search engine result pages in mind. The permalink structure is the post ID that follows your domain name, and some are more attractive than others. WordPress’s standard permalink structure is a little unsightly and not user-friendly, such as: website.com/?p=123
You must therefore use a URL structure that is not only easy for Google to understand, but will be simple for users to remember. Search engines will engage better with URL structures that align with an article’s target keywords, which can boost your place in the results pages.
So, if you do install WordPress for your blog, we recommend modifying the blog’s permalink structure, so it features the article titles within the URL, rather than using the publishing code. If you are unsure how to create a successful permalink structure, turn to a Jacksonville SEO agency to effectively optimize your website.
Image Optimization
You might be surprised to learn that images play an integral role in SEO. In fact, Google will rank blogs with images higher over text-only articles. To boost your online presence even further, you should optimize the images using alt tags and filenames, so Google can gain a greater understanding of an article’s subject matter. Keep the image name relevant to the photo, so add the filename “cookies” to an image of cookies. The alt text will also display the filename if the image fails to load.
Use Relevant Keywords
No longer do you need to create spam-filled content to rank highly in the SERPs. You simply need to focus on a relevant keyword, which you should use two to five times per five-hundred words. Consider using keywords in H1, H2, H3 and H4 keywords, which should be relevant to the article. This will allow you to naturally incorporate the keyword into your content, without filling the article with spam that is unreadable. Google’s intelligent algorithm can crawl a page and quickly identify the frequency of the keywords within the content, which can determine its rank in the search engine.
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