How To Improve The SEO of Your Website!
Being a blogger is great fun especially if you have a popular blog. But if you are a beginner blogger, it can be frustrating especially if you don’t have that much traffic.
It can be difficult to find out how to improve the SEO of your website to attract more visitors when you don’t know how. The solution is to have a kickass checklist of tips that will improve your SEO in content writing.
My “45 Kickass Tips: How To Improve The SEO Of Your Website” post will give you a clear picture of all the steps you need to take. This will skyrocket your website’s SEO (search engine optimization).
45 tips may sound a lot. But it’s the little details that can mean the difference between a website that gets thousands of visitors and one that doesn’t! You already put in a huge effort to write your post, so why not take your post to the next level!
The good news is that none of the things on the checklist take that much time. You just need to be reminded to do them to get the job done right. Because ticking off each tip before you publish, beats getting your post ticked off by search engines later!
Kickass SEO Tips Before You Publish
1. Identify Your Audience.
To improve your SEO in content writing you first should identify exactly who your niche target audience is. Your niche target audience the typical person who would buy your product, or sign up for your newsletter.
When you identify who your audience is, you can use Quora to find out all about them. You can learn about their problems, goals, and aspirations.
2. Know Your Searcher’s Intention.
You will also need to know what your audience’s website searcher intent is. Are your audience looking for information, solutions, entertainment, or are they wanting to make a purchase?
Know exactly who you are writing for and what they are searching for! Knowing these 2 things will make it so much easier to write your blog content. Because when you create content that your audience wants to consume, this will in turn will increase your search engine optimization!
3. Find Relevant Keywords For Your Content.
You now need to find relevant focus keywords for your blog post. To know how to improve the SEO of your website, use the same keywords that your audience use when searching the internet. Using the same keywords makes it easy for your audience and search engines to find your content.
The best keywords are the ones that get a high amount of traffic. At the same time, the amount of competition from competitors for chosen keywords should be small! Using these kinds of keywords will increase your search engine optimization of your website.
The only sure way to find the best keywords for SEO is to use a keyword research tool such as Jaaxy. Use Jaaxy to choose your main focus keyword phrase. Roughly 2% of your text should contain your focus keyword.
Use Jaaxy again to choose another 3-4 secondary keyword phrases. Your secondary keywords should be used a few times throughout your content. Don’t engage in keyword stuffing!
4. Headlines Should Contain Focus Keywords For SEO.
Your headline and sub-headlines are viewed by search engines as being important! Headlines and sub-headlines tell search engines what your content is about. It’s therefore important that your headline contains your focus keyword.
Using the right keywords will get your content found by both search engines and your audience. So, it’s in your interest to utilize this strategy to increase your search engine optimization.
5. Headlines Should Be Interesting.
There are millions if not trillions of posts, blogs, web-pages, and websites on the internet. In order to attract your audience’s attention, you need to have an interesting or provocative headline.
Your headline is the first thing that your audience will read and acts as a lead-in for your content. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make it count! If your headline isn’t interesting, persuasive or doesn’t stir up emotions, people won’t read the content.
Stir up their emotions with power words to create a title that is interesting and captivating. Power words are sensory or emotional words that attract the readers’ attention. Power words make your headlines stand out from the crowd! Use “The #1 Free Headline Analyzer” to see how your headline rates.
6. Use Active Voice.
Using an active voice in your writing makes your content sound more interesting. It also makes it easier to read. An active voice is where the subject is followed by the verb/action, which is then followed by the object. An example would be “The man ate the apple”. “The man (subject), ate (verb), the apple (object)”.
In the passive voice, the subject is no longer the “doer” of the action. Instead, the subject is the receiver of the action. Passive voice sentences make the content sound drab. An example would be “The apple was eaten by the man.”
Sentences constructed in the active voice add interest and impact to your writing. So, it’s best that 90% of your content is written in the active voice.
7. Format Text And Fonts For Easy Reading.
With the enormous amount of information on the internet, it’s easy to spend many hours reading posts and blogs. And these days much of our internet searches are on carried out on our mobiles. It is therefore important to use a font type and size that is easy to read on all platforms.
Be careful when using colored text, as some people are color-blind and will not be able to read your text. Pale colored text on a white background and small font size are also difficult to read.
Black text on a white background is the best! It has been used by book publishers for hundreds of years! With this in mind, create interest by using a limited number of colors, font types, and sizes.
Highlight key points by using bullets, numbering, bolding, italics and underlines. These tactics help to make your page easy to read and easy to scan.
8. Use Your Focus Keywords In Your Introduction.
Your introduction should be smart, appealing, and engaging. Use your focus keyword in your introduction, preferably within the first 2 sentences. This helps increase your search engine optimization because it helps search engines to understand your topic.
When you use your focus keyword in your introduction, you inform your audience what your content is about. People will then know upfront what they’ll learn from your blog post. If your blog will make them happier, better informed, or more financially astute, they’ll be itching to read your blog!
9. Improve SEO In Content Writing By Adding Value.
When creating web content, this tip should always be at the front of your mind! The content that you create should be original, high in quality and must add value to the lives of your audience.
Content that adds value provides details, facts, stats, entertainment or information that is helpful to your niche audience. Valuable content solves a problem that keeps your audience awake at night. Help your audience by solving that nagging problem, or by providing them with the exact information that they desire.
Doing this will definitely increase your search engine optimization. The reason for this is because your audience will be able to relate to what you have written. They will stay on your page longer to read what you have to say. Your audience is also more likely to interact with your content by leaving a comment.
Both these factors are significant to SEO in content writing! These factors imply that your content is important or valuable to an audience. The more interaction your website gets, the higher your website will get ranked. And the higher your website ranks, the more organic traffic your website will attract!
10. Write In A Conversational Manner.
Write in a conversational manner that is respectful of your target audience. Compose your content so that you are speaking directly to your target persona. Your target persona is a fictional character that you create. This fictional character is based on a typical person from your niche target audience.
The tone of your content should be friendly, useful, helpful, generous or entertaining. This makes your audience feel like you are directly addressing them and are interested in them and their well-being.
Tell your persona that you understand his/her struggles. Tell them that you sympathize with them and that you can help them. Share useful tips that solve a problem, makes them feel better, or that inspires them. Make sure that your content satisfies their particular need in their internet searcher journey.
11. Keep Content Simple.
Learn how to improve the SEO of your website by ensuring your sentence structure, terminology and content ideas should be kept simple. These should be simple enough for an eight-grader to understand!
Overly complex sentence structure, jargon, abbreviations, and complex terminology may result in readers losing interest. As a consequence, they will bounce off your page. This in turn, lowers your chance of ranking high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
12. Share Your Stories.
Some concepts are difficult to grasp! Make your content easier for your audience to process and understand by telling a story.
Everyone loves a good story especially one with a happy ending! Stories inspire and motivate people to take action. They can persuade someone to take the action you want them to take.
Share your past clients’ stories with your audience. Describe the problem and associated emotions in detail. Take them on a journey through all the steps required to solve the problem. Finish with a happy ending of how the problem was solved with your help.
13. Clarify with Examples.
Examples are another way that you can help your audiences to understand and absorb your message. Use examples to clarify complex or vague concepts.
14. Use Short Sentences.
We live in a fast-paced world surrounded by information. Because of the reams of information on the internet, people usually scan posts. This way they can quickly see if the information contained in a blog post is what they are searching for.
If you want to know how to improve the SEO of your website, use short sentences. Short sentences make it easier for a person to scan your blog.
Long sentences are difficult to read! To improve your SEO in content writing, ensure that your sentences contain between 15-20 words.
15. Use Short Paragraphs.
Short paragraphs are also easier to scan. Paragraphs shouldn’t contain more than 5-6 sentences. Mix your paragraphs up with a combination of long and short sentences.
To make your content easier to read ensure that there is enough white space between each paragraph.
16. Divide Text Into Short Subsections.
For your text to be reader-friendly, the best practice is to break the text into subsections. Each subsection shouldn’t contain more than 300 words.
Each subsection should have a sub-headline. Adding subheadings to your text makes it easier for your visitors to read. Increase your search engine optimization by using your focus and secondary keywords in your subheadings.
Ensure that there is enough white space between each subsection as this makes it more pleasing to the eye.
17. Content Should Relate To The Focus Keywords Chosen.
While this seems to be self-explanatory, it’s surprising how many blogs wander off the discussion topic. If you stay on track your audience will stay with you till the end. If you wander off your topic, they will go elsewhere.
18. Use the K.I.S.S. Principle.
K.I.S.S. stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid”. Sometimes it’s tempting to crowd your website with everything that you think your audience might be interested in. This results in a complicated-looking website.
Don’t overly complicate your blog page design as this can be off-putting. Reduce the number of ads, pop-ups, side margins, and other distracting elements.
19. Include A Table Of Contents So It’s Easy To Scan.
If you have a long post, use headlines, and sub-headlines to break up your text. To increase SEO in content writing, add a table of content. A table of contents makes it easier for visitors to scan your text. They can then easily jump to the section they want to read.
If you are using WordPress you can quickly install their “Easy Table of Contents” plugin.
Once activated, the plugin will automatically add a table of contents to posts with more than 4 subheadings. You can disable the auto-insertion and manage the settings on a post by post basis.
20. Link To Your Own Blogs With Similar Blog Topics.
Whenever you create a post, blog or web-page, improve your SEO in content writing. You do this by linking back to your own previously created content that covers a similar topic.
Providing links back to your own content shows search engines that you are an authority on a topic. Internal links help to keep the visitor on your page for longer as they provide the reader with more information about a topic.
21. Provide Outbound Links.
Don’t forget to include your related outbound affiliate links in your content. Outbound links can take your visitors to a quoted website. Or they can take customers to your purchase page. Outbound links should always open up in a new window tab.
22. Add Images, Graphs, And Videos.
The human brain can process information from images much faster than the written or spoken word. Related images, especially videos, make content much more appealing to a website visitor. An easy way on how to improve the SEO of your website is to simply add images.
Images can evoke or enhance an emotional experience. As you can see in the above image, an image can quickly and easily communicate a complex idea. As an added bonus, a visitor will retain the information from images for a longer period of time.
Don’t use images with large file sizes as these will slow down your website’s load speeds. Increase your search engine optimization by using your selected keywords in the image file name and title when appropriate.
23. Fill In The “Image Alt Attributes”.
Another tip on how to improve the SEO of your website is to fill in the “Image Alt Attributes” of your embedded images. If you use one of your keywords when filling out the “Image Alt Attributes”, search engines will be able to rank your images as well as your content.
Filling out the “Image Alt Attributes” also helps visually impaired people to know what your images are about.
24. Ensure All Links Are Working.
You have put in the hard work to provide great content for your audience. But this can all be undone if your links don’t work. Broken links can negatively impact on your website in 2 ways:
- They can frustrate a user when they click on one of your links and they reach a dead-end through a 404 error. Frustration can lead to people quickly leaving your site and going elsewhere.
- Broken links impact on your SEO in content writing by restricting the value that your links provide from one page to another. This can devalue your SEO and impact negatively on your rankings.
So, it is best to regularly check for broken links on your website with a plugin called Broken Link Checker.
25. Give Credit Where Credit is Due.
Your audience is on the lookout for a fresh interpretation of their problem. They aren’t going to waste their time reading content that has just been rehashed over and over again. So, it’s in your best interest to come up with original, fresh content.
It’s not only bad form to steal someone else’ work, but plagiarizing can impact negatively on your website. Copied work will result in poor page rankings, which should be avoided at all costs. Also, if someone finds out that you are plagiarizing their ideas, they might file a copyright infringement notice.
If you what to quote someone, go ahead and do so. But always give them the credit by linking back to their website. A quote shouldn’t be longer than 3 lines. If it’s any longer, you are still stealing someone else’ work regardless of whether or not you credit them.
26. Include A Tweeter Box.
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We have all seen them! Those posts that have those clever “Click to Tweet” boxes. These boxes are great as you can put in them a few lines of important information that you want people to tweet.
If your content resonates with your audience, a “Click to Tweet” box will help people to easily Tweet your message. It’s easy to add a Tweet box to your web-page. Just install and activate the “Better Click To Tweet” plugin on your WordPress website.
27. Call To Action (CTA) Link.
Every effective web-page should have at least one “Call To Action” (CTA) link. This can be in the form of a link, button, banner, popup, checkout, etc.
CTAs should:
- Contain verbs that are action-oriented.
- Stand out from the page and be easy to find.
- Use persuasive text such as power words.
Your CTA must resonate with your visitor and fulfill their need at their specific point in their searcher journey. Relevant CTAs motivate visitors to take the action that you want them to take. This could be to sign up for your newsletter, download a freebie, or to purchase a product.
Use persuasive text to tell your readers exactly what you want them to do. For example, “Get Started For Free”, “Join Now For Free” and “Show Me How”.
CTA’s allow your audience to continue their journey on your website. If your web-page doesn’t have any CTAs then your audience will have nowhere to go to finish their journey. They will simply leave your site and go elsewhere.
28. Content Length.
Good quality original content provides your visitor with the information that they are seeking. The best way to provide this information is to go into some depth.
Neal Patel who is one of the top 10 marketers is an advocate for lengthy posts. In his post “Why 3000+ Word Blog Posts Get More Traffic (A Data Driven Answer)” he states, “You have to create long-form content, meaning 2000+ words high-quality blog posts.”
Blog posts with 2000+ words provide the visitor with a deeper discussion than shorter content that just scratches the surface. Long-form content helps you to establish your expertise in your niche. Detailed content captivates the reader attention and improves SEO in content writing by ranking well.
29. Set Up Categories And Tags For SEO.
As a blogger, your job is to make your website easy to browse and as user-friendly as possible. Categories and tags help you to do just that. They help your readers to negotiate their way through your website to find the content they require.
Categories are like a table of contents for your website. They provide a broad grouping of your posts under general topics. Categories identify what your blogs are about. For example, if you have a cookbook website your categories might be “Meat”, “Chicken”,“Seafood”, “Desserts”, etc
Tags, on the other hand, are more specific and are like an index for your website. An example for your cookbook website might be “Beef Stir-fry”, “Chicken Parmigiana”, “Garlic Prawns”, “Apple Pie”, etc.
If you want to know how to improve the SEO of your website, you can do it by adding categories and tags to your blogs. Search engines can then easily negotiate your website and work out how your blogs relate to each other.
30. Set Up A Featured Image.
Every post or blog should have a featured image. Your image should relate back to the topic that you discuss in each of your blogs. Attach a title to the image that encompasses your keywords. And fill in the alt tag.
Overlay the image with text which has the headline of your post. For continuity of your brand, keep fonts and colors the same on your images as that of your brand. Set up your featured image so that it is shareable on social media.
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31. Add Questions At The End.
Another tip on how to improve the SEO of your website is to encourage user engagement. One way to do this is by adding questions at the end of your blog. Add questions that will encourage reader discussion or comments.
Visitor comments are viewed favorably by search engines. Search engines view comments as being positive because your viewers are engaging with your site. They therefore believe that you are providing value to your visitors. Value-added content increases your search engine optimization!
32. Shorten Permalink URL.
Long URLs look very messy and can be off-putting to web searchers. You can improve the look of your URL with a WordPress plugin called “Pretty Links”.
You can use Pretty Links to shorten your URLs so they look better, or to make them more memorable. Shorter links are easier to share on social media, forums, or in the comments section of other people’s blogs. Pretty Links enable you to use keywords in your URL, cloak affiliate links, and track how often a link has been clicked.
33. Optimize Post For Mobiles.
Every day, more and more people use mobiles to search the internet! If your website isn’t optimized for mobiles, you could be losing traffic!
Use a website building platform such as SiteRubix to ensure your content automatically shrinks down to fit a smartphone screen or any other platform.
34. Improve Content Writing For Mobiles.
It’s important that you improve the SEO in content writing so that it looks good on mobiles. You do this by:
- Putting your important details first.
- Writing short sentences
- Having short paragraphs
- Using sub-headlines
- Leaving white spaces.
- Not having links that are too close together.
- Including images with small file sizes.
- Highlighting text with bulleting, numbering, bold text, italics, underline, and colored text.
If you can, preview your content on your mobile to see if it looks overwhelming. If it does, reduce distractions and clean it up so that it presents well.
35. Put Your Keyword Phrase In The Meta Description.
Another tip on how to improve the SEO of your website is to use your focus keyword in your meta description. The Meta description (see the above image), is a brief snippet which sums up the contents of a web post or page. It tells searchers and search engines what your blog is about.
It’s therefore crucial to optimize your meta descriptions with your focus keyword as these are more likely to show in search engine result pages (SERPs). SERPs respond to keyword queries. If you don’t have your focus keyword in your meta description, your web-page won’t show up in a keyword search query.
36. Check Spelling And Grammar.
How do you feel when you read an online article that is full of typos, spelling mistakes, and grammatical errors? I just leave and go elsewhere and I bet that you do too.
You put in a lot of time and effort in writing your content and trying to establish your website as an authority on your niche topic. Don’t sabotage your website by presenting content that has errors. Because web content that has errors presents as being unprofessional and untrustworthy.
If you can, get someone else to read your content before you hit the publish button. Otherwise, try reading your content out aloud as this highlights errors in sentence structure.
It’s imperative that you check your content for spelling and grammar mistakes. A tool such as Grammarly makes it easy to check your contents and correct errors.
37. Preview Post And Fix Errors.
Before you hit the publish button preview your finished post. If there are any glaring problems or errors such as font sizing, incorrect placement of images or lack of white space, fix these.
Kickass Tips After You Publish.
38. Proof Read Post In Published Format.
Congratulations, you have published your blog post! But this is no time to become lax. There are still a few more things that you need to do that will increase your search engine optimization.
Double-check your spelling and grammar. It’s a fact that the majority of people that read content that has errors think that the author is either is not conscientious, unintelligent, or untrustworthy!
Check the continuity of your content by ensuring that headlines and sub-headlines have a similar font and font size. For example, all H2 headings should be in the same font, font size, and color. All your H3 headings should all be the same as each other, and so on.
39. Test Social Media Links.
It’s important to recheck that your social media links work once your blog is published. If they don’t work, your visitors won’t be able to share your blog with their friends and followers.
Also check that the correct social media featured image is displayed. If you have different featured images for different social media platforms, make sure these are all correct.
40. Link Your Old Posts With Similar Topics To New Post.
Improve the SEO in content writing by linking your old posts that discuss similar topics to your latest post. Internal links strengthen the authority of your website. They allow you to give your most important pages more link value and boost SEO.
Internal links are great as they provide your readers with additional information on topics that they are interested in. They improve your visitor traffic within your website as visitors to one post might then follow your internal link to another of your posts.
41. Advise Anyone You Mentioned In Your Post.
Why do some people’s blogs get heaps of traffic while others don’t? One of the reasons is that experienced bloggers aren’t afraid to ask! They happily reach out to experts and influences that they mention in their post and ask them for a link back.
If you have mentioned an influencer in your blog or quoted another web author, contact them via a Tweet or email. Let them know that you have mentioned their work in your blog and ask them if they can provide a link back to your blog.
If you are a beginner, the response rate may be low. But if you don’t ask you definitely won’t get! The worst that can happen is that they ignore your request. The best outcome would be if they provide a link to your web-page and you receive an increase in traffic as a result!
42. Share Post On Your Social Media Feed.
Now that you have done the hard work it’s time to share your content on social media. Share your post or images on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest and Instagram. Let your followers or friends know that you have a new post, blog or page to share with them.
Hannah from Wildheart Media has some great tips in her post “Marketing Tip #1: Sharing posts and pages on social media”. She explains how to make your posts and pages look professional on social media.
Don’t be afraid to share your posts several times. According to Ben Sailer from Coschedule Blog “Should You Share Social Media Posts Multiple Times?” the answer is a resounding YES! Just don’t make them spammy.
43. Respond To Comments.
Respond to all comments on your posts or social media feed in a friendly and professional manner. It’s best to respond as soon as you can. Don’t leave it any longer than a week as your reader might lose interest and go elsewhere.
Replying as soon as possible shows your readers that you are interested in what they have to say. Your response could determine whether or not a reader becomes a loyal follower, so make it count.
44. Check Your Traffic On Google Analytics.
Another way on how to improve the SEO of your website is to analyze your traffic statistics. You can find out how your blogs are performing by checking your Google Analytics statistics. Google Analytics allows you to analyze the visitors to your website.
It provides website owners with visitor traffic statistics such as your visitor’s demographic information. Other stats include the total number of site visits, bounce rate, and average time on site.
45. Check Your Data On Google Search Console.
Google Search Console is a search-engine focused web service that is keyword driven. Google Search Console provides information on impressions, search queries,click-through rates, links from outside websites, and HTML errors. These stats are valuable for SEO as they can help you to improve your website visibility and presence in SERPs.
Summing Up: How To Improve The SEO Of Your Website
The above tips will help you to enhance your visitor’s experience and increase your search engine optimization. 45 tips on how to improve the SEO of your website may sound like a lot of work. But in actual fact, you are probably already doing many of these things.
Checking off each tip will ensure that each of your posts is at the top of your game. Before you publish, take a few moments to quickly scan through these tips to ensure that you haven’t forgotten any. Your content will then be more relevant to your audience and more user-friendly. This will elevate your posts to the next level!
I know there’s a lot to take in, so let me know if anything I’ve said doesn’t make sense.
Have I missed any tips that you think are important?
What SEO tips do you use to increase your search engine optimization?
