{Original image by Benedict Morgan}

Continuing the biz tips series today, and winging in a super cool blog whiz, Melyssa of The Nectar Collective. We will be teaming up for some helpful topics in the coming weeks, and so happy to have her as a guest today!

Hey blogger babe! I’m super excited to be joining you here today because I just adore Anna’s blog AND I love handing out blog and biz tips — match made in heaven, am I right? Today, I’m sharing some strategies on a topic that has majorly helped my blog and business: SEO. Want to increase your pageviews, be seen by more people online, and affect a larger audience? Then you should definitely be implementing some SEO strategies to make sure that your blog posts are popping up in search results on Google.

Before you start running for the hills, let me tell you — effectively adding proper SEO to your site is NOT that difficult. In fact, between you and me, it’s pretty easy to accomplish some basic SEO that will have a big effect. Ready to stand out? Here are 5 ways to instantly improve your site’s SEO:

Keywords

Keywords are essentially the search terms that one would use to find your post on Google. It may sound like it needs to be one word, but actually it’s usually best to use a short phrase. For example, if your post is about “How to Make a DIY Fall Wreath”, it’s not advisable for your keyword to be “wreath” or “DIY.” Imagine how many posts out there contain those simple words?

Rather, be more specific and try something like, “DIY Fall Wreath.” Imagine what someone might search on Google. For help selecting a keyword, try the Google Adwords Keyword Planner.

Once you’ve selected your keyword, infuse it into your post in several places. A few that you shouldn’t miss? The post’s title, the post’s URL, and the first few sentences of your blog post. You should also (naturally) weave it into your blog post a few times.

Use an SEO plugin like Yoast.

Yoast is available for self-hosted WordPress sites and helps you to make sure that you’re using keywords in all the right places. It also has a neat “page analysis” tab under each post, which lets you know what you did well and what you could improve. It basically makes SEO a cinch.

Don’t use text images in your design (wherever possible) 

I see a lot of bloggers and novice designers make this make. What I mean is, if it’s possible to use HTML or CSS, then you should use that as opposed to creating an image with text on top. For blog articles, it’s normal to create text images, but for things like your categories, navigation bar, and sidebar widgets, it’s optimal to create these with code rather than Photoshop. The reason being that Google can’t crawl those images, so you’re missing out on search engine traffic.

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Optimize your images

Make sure to include a description, title, and alt attribute for your images, which includes your post’s keyword in it. Also, before you upload them, name your images something that relates to your post, such as “where-to-find-vintage-telephones.JPG” instead of IMG_28945.JPG.”

Write clear, focused blog posts

Perhaps most importantly, you should create a focus for each of your blog posts. What exactly are your readers going to get out of it? What’s the main goal or takeaway? This is important because search engines are looking for the BEST content on a particular topic. If your posts are scattered or unfocused, Google won’t understand what they’re supposed to be about. Instead, be more specific so that Google can find your post and start ranking it in its top results. Woo!

Bonus! >> Combine your blog and business into one site. A lot of people worry about whether they should add their blog to their business website. It definitely depends on you business and the topics of your blog, but if they can be connected somehow (perhaps you run a handmade business and blog about DIY projects), then I definitely say, “go for it!”

Why? Because a business website only has a few static pages. That can make it really hard to appear higher in search results on Google, since Google doesn’t have much content to crawl. BUT! If you have a blog on the same site (must be under the same domain), then Google has tons of blog posts that it can pull up. If you’re smart about it, then when someone visits your blog, they’ll also see a link to your shop or services. BOOM!

I hope this helped, new friends! If you want to learn more about SEO, I actually have a free e-book for subscribers with my top 12 SEO tips. You can sign up to receive it right here. Woohoo!