There are crucial ways that one must incorporate while setting up their blogs to achieve successful SEO. Factors such as choosing the right keywords, generating XML sitemap, forming suitable URL, considering SEO plugins and mobile responsiveness are important.
The visibility of a blog depends upon the signals sent to a search engine by it. A few simple Search Engine Optimization techniques can boost a blog’s ranking on the Web. Individuals should have a basic concept about the simple SEO practices while creating a blog since these are essential in the competitive world of internet ventures.
Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! drive the majority of the web traffic to some blogs and new contents in comparison to social media sites depending on their features. However, no matter how smart these search engines are, they are just roadways. An individual, while creating a blog needs to make sure that the search engines add the contents of the blog to their database which in turn increases the visibility of the blog. Search Engine Optimization enables this and gets a blog thousands of visitors.
Search Engine Optimization techniques signal a search engine and help it to determine if a site or a blog is relevant to the search query and depending upon the signals the site is ranked in search engine results pages or SERPs. The few usual signals which are taken into account by popular search engines are as follows.
Contents – The search engine ranks a site or a blog according to the relevance of the content of that site with the search query. Such contents are generally associated with what a user is looking for. Contents are the actual materials of a web page, which offer the users with the information related to any particular site or subject that they are searching for.
Links – Links are crucial to allow associations between the users and the website authorities, allowing the user search to be complete. A site linked to an authority website or a trusted and popular website is looked upon by Google and other search engines as trustworthy and hence the rank increases.
RankBrain – RankBrain is the new algorithm used by the Google search engine which directs the artificial intelligence used by the search engine to dig in deep into the internet and decide the ranks of a site. This algorithm is also based on the SEO provided by the different blogs and sites.
Once the concept is clear about the type of job the SEO takes care of, an individual needs to look after the few basic Search Engine Optimization practices which should be kept in mind while creating a new blog. Here are five tricks to successful SEO that you need to implement while setting up your blog:
1. Choose appropriate Keywords
Writing the content of a blog is important but more important is choosing the right keywords for the contents that are relevant to the search queries of the targeted readers.
Much research should be done in order to find out the keywords used by the customers so that the content stays relevant to the search query. Since keyword research is not an easy job, one can take help of tools to get it done perfectly.
Selection of a keyword is tricky since it should be able to beat the competition and at the same time should avoid being over specific as that would reduce the traffic.
2. Generate an XML Sitemap
XML sitemaps are the most important files for a blog as it contains the list of all URLs along with their metadata showing all the latest updates and the frequency of the updating process. This allows the search engine to crawl the site easily and index the content of the blog better.
The idea is essentially to improve the presence of your blog on the search engine, for which the XML sitemaps work wonders, if rightly associated with the list of URLs.
3. Form a proper permalink or URL
This is a common point even for those who have no idea about the SEO techniques.
Needless to say that an URL of a new blog or site with unnecessary characters is not ranked highly by search engines as it makes it hard for them to crawl the site. Such mistakes also prevent a site from being linked to an authority website.
4. Consider SEO plugins
New blogs will have it easier if the creator turns to SEO plugins offered by the platform in which the blog is situated. The plugins take care of the details that facilitate the SEO techniques like providing the Meta description, checking the SEO friendliness and the likes.
5. Ensure Mobile Responsiveness
Blogs which can be accessed from mobile phones as well always rank higher in the SERPs. A blog should have mobile responsiveness as this will automatically increase the visibility since studies show that smartphones are used as often as PCs in order to search contents and sites.
The CSS theme is one of the major concerns in case of a mobile responsive blog since it might hinder the blogs from responding properly on mobile phones. Hence the codes used to make the theme of the site should also be kept in mind while making the blog SEO friendly.
These are just the basic guidelines to setting up an SEO friendly new blog. However there are many more SEO practices which if taken into consideration will further improve the visibility of a website and blog.
But as stated earlier, the world of SEO is a highly technical and complicated one and so an individual interested in creating a website should seek the help of a professional.
Seeking a professional help does not mean being ignorant to the basic concept of SEO and that is exactly the void this information helps to fill.