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Is your SEO Failing your Blog Articles – an Inside Look from a Blogger’s Perspective

Is your SEO Failing your Blog Articles – an Inside Look from a Blogger’s Perspective

If you don’t think you’re getting the mileage you want from your blog articles, you might be right. The simplest SEO mistake can cost a website big. If your website’s failing and you’re not ranking where you want, from a blogger’s perspective, here’s where to start.

XML sitemap

The easiest instant change to make that will have a great impact on your website is to ensure you have an accurate XML sitemap set up. This is a roadmap of your blog, indicating to Google the structure of your site and the content ahead. Installing the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in is recommended as it will increase your post indexing rate, and make it easier for spiders to crawl/find your posts.

Relevant keywords

Don’t stuff in a bunch of keywords. Focus in on a select collection of keywords, relevant and specific. Incorporate a keyword too much or using too many keywords could get your site unfavorably ranked. In fact, Google’s algorithm will punish sites keyword stuffing. Don’t do it. Use keywords naturally and place your top ones in the appropriate headings used to separate your content.

Permalink structure

It’s important every aspect of your website is structured with SEO in mind. To this point, your link URL should have keywords and be specific to the post published. If your URL is using a bunch of random numbers, that’s not going to tell a search engine like Google very much about what’s on the page. If you haven’t yet, ensure every permalink is adequately structured with the right keywords and themes. Remember, the closer your permalink structure is to what’s on the page, the better the likelihood is you’ll rank high.

Using an SEO-friendly CMS

A content management system is a necessity when you’re posting regularly. A CMS is used to create blogs, add new content, and structure content within a pre-defined website page template. Some CMS software is more search-friendly than others. For example, WordPress is critically acclaimed, comes with a mass amount of support, and is believed to power more than 25 percent of all websites. There are other CMS programs less successful and unless you have reason to, the only one you should be focusing on is WordPress.

Titles and meta tags

Title and meta tags are big ranking factors. If you’re not using the right keywords or taking the right approach in these areas, your entire SEO strategy might be a complete waste of time. Keep your title mid-length, include the keywords you want to feature, and be specific to what’s on the page. Regarding your meta description you choose to write, this will be what search engines use to feature your site in query results. Keep it under 160 characters so it’s displayed in full.

Optimized images

The very last thing we want to mention is to ensure your images are identified in file-names and with meta description alt-tags in text identifying the content inside. This will signify to Google the content an image holds and advises a search engine on where to rank them.

Optimizing your content, images, and coding is a three-pronged requirement for excellent SEO results. As bloggers ourselves, we want to help. For a SEO audit and to find out how we can improve your SEO rankings instantly through simple changes, contact Unlimited Exposure.