Basic SEO for Beginners: 10 Quick Tips to Help You Optimize Your Blog

 

There are numerous ways to drive traffic to your blog. However, Google remains by far the best source (and search engines in general). Free search engine traffic (as opposed to paid search ads), also known as organic traffic, continues to be the most important source of traffic across all channels. In fact, did you know that organic search accounts for 53% of all traffic?

Organic traffic is not only the most numerous, but it is also the most consistent and long-lasting. Did I mention it's completely free?

Knowing all of this, it's critical to ensure that Google (and other search engines) are aware of your blog's existence. Not only that, but You also want Google to believe that what you have to offer is the best. You want Google to promote your blog, to show your blog posts on page one, at the top of search results, and preferably at the number one spot. Because the first position on Google's page one receives 32% of all clicks.

This is where SEO comes in. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your blog, page, or post so that it appears higher in organic search results.

SEO is now a difficult skill to master. It can be intimidating, especially for beginners. Fortunately, you don't have to be an SEO expert to reap some of its benefits while you're still developing your blog. In fact, there are numerous quick tips and actionable steps you can take early on to ensure that your blog covers the SEO basics. Here are some of the best:

Wait… I don’t have a blog yet.

What, no blog? Not a problem!

It is simple to start a blog. You can make your own in about an hour and with only a few simple steps. In fact, I've put together a comprehensive step-by-step guide to help you start a blog for beginners from scratch. If you don't already have a blog, simply follow this guide and you'll soon be the proud owner of a beautiful, brand-new blog, the foundation of what could be a profitable online business that earns you a full-time income and allows you to work from home or anywhere you want.

1. Install a good SEO plugin

One of the easiest and savviest things you can do, SEO-wise, is to install an SEO plugin on your blog. A good SEO plugin helps you optimize your content, keywords, and readability, and over all improves your site’s rankings on search engines.

As it stands, Yoast SEO is the most popular and most recommended WordPress SEO plugin out there – and for good reason, too. It comes with tons of features to optimize your website, including built-in content analysis and sitemap management. Most of what Yoast SEO does is automated, but it still requires plenty of input and decisions from you.