Blog Tip Tuesday: Simple SEO Tricks to Increase Blog Traffic

With Google changing it’s SEO algorithm every other day it makes bloggers’ jobs even more difficult. The last thing we need to worry about is whether Google is crawling over our pages and whether our ranking is tanking or not. If you incorporate these simple SEO tricks to increase blog traffic you could increase your pageviews by thousands, yes thousands. 

Long tail words

Long tail words are 3-4 specific keywords related to the topic of your blog posts that you want to plug in several times. I say several times because you don’t want to overdo it.

If you throw in “simple SEO tricks” 10-12 times throughout your post, Google will think it’s spam and you definitely do not want your blog to come up as spam.

For example, my long tail words in this blog post are “SEO tricks to increase blog traffic”. I’m not specifying these tips are for beginners, because they’re not. These SEO tricks are for mid-level bloggers.

Using Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress really helps in letting you know if your blog post SEO is good or not.

Image titles

I’ve seen a ton of bloggers and businesses mistakenly leave a random .jpeg title for their images. Don’t do this! Rename any .jpegs you’re uploading to your blog with a related title, preferably one that goes with the title of your blog post.

Once you’ve uploaded the image into WordPress, (or any other platform), there will be an option to add a “title” and “alt text”.

Your .jpeg, title, and alt text should all match. This helps Google identify your pictures for when someone Googles “SEO tricks to increase blog traffic”.

Inbound links

You want as many inbound links as possible. Inbound links are links that go from an outside website to your website giving it credibility. So, when I post on Zanita and add my blog on every post I write, that’s an inbound link.

You’ll notice a lot of fashion bloggers who do this with other fashion bloggers. Everything in the digital world is strategic…

Minimum 300-word blog posts

Ideally your posts should be between 800-2,000 words according to Blog Tyrant, (a great resource for bloggers). A minimum post of 300 words is just enough for Google to crawl your blog for keywords. Any less and your blog isn’t recognizable to Google and any more than 2,000 words, you’re better off making an eGuide.

You want your blog posts to have beefy content, not just filler words or nonsensical information. So, if you’re going to go for the full 2,000 make every word count!

Internal & outbound linking

Including internal linking is what makes your blog “crawlable” to Google… and your visitors. Your blog posts should be linked together in some way that Google easily recognizes your Homepage, About, Features, Contact, Shop, etc. so it ranks your site as reliable.

Internal linking is also a great to keep visitors on your page longer.

When you outbound link on your blog you increase the chances of your blog being picked up when people Google the particular site or article you made an outbound link for.

For example when I wrote a post about making a difference from your couch, I linked various charities to my blog. So, if my blog post got a lot of views, people who Googled one of the charities might end up on my page because it ranked so high. Get it?

It’s confusing but I promise it gets easier.

Ask me your questions about SEO below and I’ll answer them all!

xx