Whether you are new to blogging or have been in it for awhile, the term “SEO” is sure to give you chills. SEO can be confusing, difficult, and a never ending process. However, this list of SEO made easy tips will help you improve your SEO (without any headaches!)
Even if you don’t have any clue how SEO works, you can still implement these SEO made easy strategies! These quick and simple fixes will help your blog rank higher on Google, without compromising your content that you’ve worked so hard to create!
If you have been blogging for awhile and know a bit about SEO, it can be helpful to get back to some of the basics. It can be easy to forget some of the foundational SEO strategies when you get caught deep in all the data. Don’t forget to focus on the small things, that mean the most!
For a more detailed look into some of the common SEO terminologies, check out our basic SEO glossary!
Looking for a new Keyword Research Tool? Try Kesearch! Follow our link and use code KSDISC for 20% off! That’s only $13.60 per month for one of the highest quality (and more affordable) keyword research tools out there!
As a new blogger, you should be able to implement most of these corrections in your blog quickly (depending on how many posts you have to edit!) so let’s get right to it!
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Need more help with SEO? This course will guide you through everything you need to know about SEO in only around 2 hours!
Install Yoast SEO
Installing the Yoast SEO plugin is one easy blog correction you can make that will help improve your SEO! The best part is, Yoast is a free plugin, unless you want to purchase the premium version.
Yoast makes improving your SEO easy, even if you know nothing about it! It will help get more traffic from search engines and increases your reader’s engagement by improving your readability.
Yoast helps you optimize for your targeted keyword/keyphrase, and helps let Google know what your post is about. This will help Google rank your pages!
With Yoast, you can edit your meta description (the small paragraph that comes up under your link on Google). You can also edit your title tag (the anchor text of your link on Google), and even how your URL looks (called the slug)!
Additionally, Yoast analyzes your writing to help your readability score, to help your audience. For example, it will tell you if you have used too much of a passive voice, or if your sentences are too long.
Once you install the plugin, you will have to go to your posts-edit- and scroll down. You will see Yoast here, where you can edit each part! Try to get green smiley faces for both SEO and readability (although your readability score is not as important)!
Basically, every blogger I know uses Yoast, so you can have confidence it is reputable, easy to use, and helpful for your SEO!
Heads up: Through our link, you can get a FREE trial of SEMRush, one of the leading SEO resources out there! It has over 20 tools to help your website rank, track backlinks, improve your keyword research, and more! You will need to enter a credit card (but you can cancel it before your trial is up!) Click here for more info!
Where to put your keyword
Another easy blog correction to improve your SEO is editing your keyword placements. After you have done your keyword research, you will need to know how to include it in your post!
Read more in depth about keyword placement in our article, Where to put Keywords in Every Blog Post!
Here are the main areas your keyword should be in your post:
Wondering how to even find Keywords worth using? I use Keysearch and it has seriously improved my rankings! Follow our link and use code KSDISC for 20% off! That’s only $13.60 per month, which is the cheapest (and highest quality) keyword research tool I’ve found yet! Click here for more info!
Put your keyword in the title
This is typically considered the H1 or Heading 1. This gives Google an immediate understanding of what your post is about! You can add words around your keyphrase to make a better title, but don’t change the original keyphrase!
For example, the keyphrase in this post is “SEO made easy”. You can see I have put it in my title or H1, and added words around it to make a better title, without changing the keyphrase!
Need help coming up with an enticing title? Check out our list of catchy titles here!
Include your keyword in the first 100 words
Your keyphrase should typically be placed within your first paragraph. This helps Google and your readers know what the post will be about as soon as they start reading.
For example, you can see in this post, my keyphrase of “SEO made easy” is easily found in the 3rd sentence of the first paragraph.
Put your keyword in the meta description
You can edit this by using the Yoast SEO plugin. Typically, you should put your keyphrase as close to the beginning of your meta description as possible. Then, you can describe more what the post is about, and create a compelling description to entice readers to click your link.
For example, a meta description for this post might look like this. Notice how my keyphrase is found in the beginning:
“Blogging SEO made easy! Proven ways to improve your SEO! Improve your rankings by using Yoast, keywords, compressing images, optimizing your media, and more!”
Other areas to include your keyword
Include your keyphrase in your URL, also known as a slug (typically made the default), and throughout your post.
Avoid “stuffing” your keyphrase. Yoast will tell you if you have used the correct amount of keywords! For a 2000 word post, this would typically be around 6-7x.
Fix your headings
Another way to improve your SEO is by fixing your headings. Headings in posts are more than about their font size and are used to help Google and search engines read your post. Headings tell them how different areas of your post are related to each other.
For every post, you should only ever have ONE H1 or heading 1. This is typically your title, so you won’t have to worry about it.
H2, or heading two, is your next subheading. In one post, you might only have H1 and H2, and that is perfectly okay! For example, all the purple/pink headings in this post are H2.
If you want to explain a subheading in more detail, you would then use H3. For example, in the H2 “where to put your keyword” in this post, you will notice additional headings underneath it (put your keyword in the title, include in first 100 words, etc.) These headings are all H3 because they further describe the H2.
You can continue this sequence with H3, H4, etc. For example, if I wanted to describe the H3 “put your keyword in the title”, I would use H4.
Think of headings like a book. H1 is the title, H2 is the chapter, and H3 are headings within the chapter.
Include alt text
Another way to improve your SEO quickly is to include alt text in your images.
You can edit your images alt text by clicking on media – hover over the image you want to edit – edit – you will see “alternative text” or “alt text”
You can also edit the alt text while uploading images in your post. Click on the image, and on the right hand side you will see the area for alt text.
Looking for unique images to use on your blog? Check out our list of FREE stock photo website!
What is the purpose of alt text
Alternative text has 3 major purposes:
- This is the most important purpose. Alt text describes the image for search engine crawlers. When robots “crawl” your page, they can’t “see” the images. They only see words, not pictures! Having alt text helps the robots figure out what the images are about!
- Images alt text also provides a description of the image in case your picture does not load on your screen. Readers will be shown the text, so they still get to know what the picture was supposed to be.
- Alt text also helps the visually impaired understand what your picture is about, as their computer system can read the alt text to them.
How to write alt text
Writing alt text is pretty simple. Basically, you just want to describe the image in as much detail as possible. Pretend you are describing a picture to someone, and want to use the simplest, concise, descriptive words possible.
For example, say this is your image:
An okay alt text might be: “dog”
Sure, that describes the picture. It is a dog. But what color dog? What is it doing? Is there anything else in the picture?
A better alt text would be: “Black and tan dog laying on blue couch”
If you close your eyes, you would be able to imagine the picture, right? That is what makes a good alt text description.
Avoid using a lot of filler words like “because”, “he is”, “the picture is about…” Stick to the basics, and be as concise as you can while describing the image fully.
If you use Canva to download images, make sure to use your keyword in the file name before you download your image.
Additionally, if you are able to use your keyword in the alt text, try to do so! However, avoid keyword stuffing if this is not possible.
Internal and External Linking
Some more ideas of strategies for SEO made easy that will improve your SEO is using internal and external links within your posts.
Internal links refer to linking to YOUR posts, within other posts. For example, if you have a post about how save money on travel, you might link to another one of your posts about budget travel tips.
Using internal links within your post allow search engines to understand how your posts are related to one another.
This is something you can do when updating old blog posts. You might forget to add a new post to a related post you wrote a year ago, which is completely understandable. Just go back and add it in at some point!
External links refer to linking OTHER websites to your post. For example, in the previous tip, I linked a post from Moz.com to help further explain my points. Think of external links as citing your sources. You don’t need to provide an external link for every point you make, but 2-3 per post is ideal.
When choosing external links, aim to use websites that are considered reputable. Just like when doing research for a paper, you want to have the best sources!
using internal Links
One easy way to improve your SEO is by editing your anchor text for internal links. Anchor text is the text that the link is attached to. For example, if I had an entire post related to internal links, I would probably want to include that here! This is how that would look:
“One easy way to improve your SEO is by editing your anchor text for internal links.”
The underlined text would be the anchor text, and would be where the internal link lives.
It is important to use your targeted keyword for that internal link as the anchor text, if possible. For example, if my keyword for that link was “internal links”, this would be a perfect example!
The anchor text provides search engines with more information about what the link is about. Using your keyword as the anchor text is an easy way to use that keyword again!
Compress your images
Another one of my “SEO made easy” tips is to compress your images. For new bloggers, this might sound difficult, but trust me it can be simple!
Compressing your images helps to increase the time it takes for your page to load. Search engines take page speed very seriously when ranking. Think about it- if a page took more than 5 seconds to load, you might just exit out of the screen. This is not good for your SEO.
An easy way for beginners to compress images is to download the free WordPress plugin, Smush.
Smush is very user friendly and easy to use! For the free version, you can only compress 50 images at a time, which really is not a huge deal in my opinion, unless you have thousands of images.
Smush does all the work for you! Use the bulk optimizer to “smush” 50 images at a time, and thats it! Your site should run a little faster after doing this!
If you are looking to use a better compression tool, I recommend Imagify. This is a paid plugin, but only a few dollars a month, making it very reasonable. Imagify has sped up my site a lot! Plus, it is super simple to use, and does all the work for you!
Imagify is part of WP Rocket, which has helped speed up my site tremendously! Both are very user friendly, and require very little work on your end!
"SEO Made Easy" Tips that will Improve your SEO
As a beginner blogger, there are tons of easy things you can do to improve your SEO! Don’t let the term scare you, it doesn’t have to be as hard as it seems!
Along with these tips, be sure to get WP Rocket & Imagify, as those have seriously taken my blog speed to the next level!
As always, feel free to contact me with ANY questions you might have! I hope you found this information useful!
This post has a wealth of information, explained clearly! Thank you for sharing. I have had a blog for nearly 2 years and just now started checking into keywords. Ugh, I know, I’ve got some work to do. Thanks to this post I’m ready to take on the challenge!
Thanks so much! SEO is a struggle, but sooo important! If you are interested, this SEO course, Soaring through SEO, does a great job at walking you through major SEO concepts step by step! Take 10% off with code BRANDNEW!
https://queenbeebloggers.teachable.com/p/soaringthroughseo
Thanks for the helpful information!! I appreciate it!
That is such a well-written post, well done!
I actually read it EVERYTHING to make sure I’m not missing anything, lol
The Digital Vixen
Saving this – so great!
This is a great tip particularly to those new to the blogosphere.
Short but very precise information… Thanks for sharing this one.
A must read article!
Normally I don’t learn post on blogs, however I wish to say that this write-up very compelled me
to take a look at and do it! Your writing style has been surprised me.
Thanks, quite great post.
I am studying about seo and I learned a lot here in your post. You have passed so complete information. Very nice of you sharing.