When it comes to being a successful blogger far too often on-page SEO (search engine optimization) is overlooked.
If you don’t know this already search engine traffic is hands down the best traffic you can get to come to your blog. People know exactly what they want, have intent to purchase, and the traffic is FREE!
If you’re looking for some simple SEO strategies you can use to boost your website traffic today, then you are going to love the infographic below!
It’s a simple checklist that you can follow for each and every piece of content on your site.
For a more in-depth and strategic understanding of SEO for your blog, we highly recommend you check out the course Stupid Simple SEO.
By simply following this on-page SEO checklist you will quickly start to bring in more search engine traffic month after month.
1) Use Your Main Keyword In Your Post Title
It is important to understand that when it comes to SEO your goal is to make it as easy as possible for Google to know what your content is about.
Your title tag is the most important SEO indicator for Google. Make sure your keyword is front and center.
2) Keep Your URL Slug Short & Sweet
When I started out as a blogger, I honestly did not even know what a URL was. Now that I am a little more experienced I understand the importance of a short, clean, and keyword optimized URL.
Believe it or not, Google has stated that more weight is given to the first 3-5 words in a URL. It’s very simple to change your URL when creating a new post using a plugin like SEO Yoast. Make sure it includes the keyword you are wanting to rank for in the beginning.
If you are planning on going back to audit and update old URLs make sure you set up redirects before you make any changes.
3) Use A Click-Worthy Meta Description
Another huge factor in ranking higher in Google is having a high CTR (click through rate) when you appear in search. Take the time to learn from others that are already on page #1 for the term you are going after.
Write meta descriptions that help the user out quickly by acknowledging their problems and providing instant answers to them.
4) Include Your Keyword In The Beginning Of Your Post
Just like adding your keyword in your title tag and URL slug, it is important to continue to provide signals to Google. In the first couple paragraphs or 100-200 words, it is good practice to use your keyword.
It is important to remember that you will ALWAYS write your content for your readers first, then optimize for SEO. As Googles algorithm continues to get smarter and smarter “keyword packing” is no longer effective.
5) Sprinkle LSI Keywords Throughout Your Post
Google has become very smart and is able to understand general topics within articles. Their goal is to always serve the BEST information to the end user every time.
For us, that means finding related keywords that we can sprinkle naturally throughout the post. The best tool to help find these related keywords is LSIGraph.
Simply type in your keyword and LSIGraph will give you a bunch of related keywords you can include in your article.
6) Use Internal Links To Link To Related Content On Your Own Site
One of the simplest SEO boosts you can give a new article is linking it to other related content on your site.
Think of your site as a spider web. You want to intertwine and connect your related content so Google can understand it better.
Take the time to find related words in your post and link your old articles to them.
Additionally go back through old articles and see which posts you can link to your new content with.
7) Link To Other Authoritative Websites In Your Niche
This is a simple, white hat SEO strategy to get more search traffic.
Authoritative outbound links to related pages help Google understand thematically what your article is about. It also shows Google that your blog is a resource of quality information.
Simply search Google for related articles, case studies, infographics, etc. that will help the users experience.
8) Optimize Your Images With Keywords
You have probably heard this a million times before, but optimizing your images is very helpful. As our world continues to become more visual each and every day Google needs help sorting through all of it.
Take the time to save your images to your desktop using keywords instead of “img48321jnf88c-ed”.
It is also good practice to include keywords in your ALT text and title when uploading images to your site.
9) Optimize Your Site Speed
For some reason, our site speed is something we ignored for the first 2 years of blogging. Take my word for it you don’t want to do this!
Google wants to provide the best user experience and a slow website is extremely frustrating.
There are plenty of website speed tests you can use to see how fast your site is loading.
Here are some of our favorite:
Some of the fastest and easiest ways to speed up your site include:
- Image Optimization – ShortPixel
- Upgrade Hosting – BigScoot
- Install cache plugin – WPRocket
- Remove heavy or unused plugins
- Hire a professional website optimization service
10) Create Epic Content
The most important saying in blogging “content is king”. This holds very true when it comes to ranking page #1 of Google.
Studies have shown many times over that longer more in-depth content outperform. In fact, the average word count for a Google page #1 result is nearly 1,900 words.
If you are trying to make evergreen content that consistently ranks high in Google it needs to be the best of the best. Take the time to create incredible content that is extremely valuable for all your readers.
To learn more about SEO and how to drive massive amounts of traffic using free organic search traffic we highly recommend you check our Stupid Simple SEO.
It’s a course that was created by our blogging friend and SEO expert, Mike Pearson. It helped us 10X our organic search traffic and it’s by far the best SEO course on the market for bloggers.
What on-page SEO tactics did you not know before?
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This post and infographic was very informative, and also simple to understand and to the point. I am definitely going to follow some of these tips that I really wasn’t considering (as much as I should!) as I wrote my articles for my blog.
Glad you found it useful Llana!
Thank you for these great tips 🙂 I will really try and hope to get amazing results in a few months 🙂
I have a question… I saw in a course back then that it was good to put the category in my URL which I don’t think it still is since it needs to be super short… For example, this is a post I wrote about self help books. As you can see, there is the word “categories” and then the name of the category and then the title! I guess that it’s probably too long 🙁 but I’m afraid of redirecting because of all my pins on Pinterest. What are your thoughts? 🙂
Thank you!! 🙂
If you add a redirect that should not affect your pins on Pinterest. This might be a question I would ask Pinterest directly beforehand to stay safe though. They have an email just for us creators now.
Great job. I really like how clear and simple this graphic is. Thank you!
Thanks Zoe. So glad we could help you out =)