I’m a Blogger: what do I need to know about SEO?

Isn’t this the billion dollar question right now in an online world obsessed with being seen? I’m a blogger… so what do I need to know about SEO?

Doubtless some of you are as-yet uninitiated into the overwhelming and bizarrely complex world of ‘trying to help other people on the internet find your content which (you assume) they really, really, really want to read and desperately need in their life, even though they don’t know it yet.’ Aka Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is a process by which websites and webpages (or blogs, as the case may be in this instance), fiddle around with a bunch of different aspects of their site/page to try and boost search engine rankings. Why? Well, here’s an easy one: ask yourself how many times you’ve clicked onto the second page of the Google search results.

If you’re anything like most of the population, the answer is, not many.

Who Cares about SEO?

I mean obviously we ALL want to get our content—whether it’s our blog, our business website, our products—on the front page of Google (unless of course your stuff is super secret, in which case, bail now). For someone like me, I figure that’s relatively unrealistic, but that’s ok: there are still things I can do to make my blog more visible. How did I reach the point of deciding to do this?

Key Factors in Why I Wanted to Figure out SEO

1. I knew I wanted to get more out of my blog (if you’ve read ‘Creative Discouragement—The How and the Why’ you know what I’m talking about), and after moping around for a bit, I decided that’s what I was going to do. Figure out how to get more visibility, more interaction: just more. But I really wasn’t sure how to do that and it really seemed like figuring it out was just overwhelming (and still is, to some degree, but let’s not focus on that right now)… but I also decided that knowing how to make myself more visible might be a good place to start, and having heard ‘SEO’ thrown around a lot, I decided that might be worth a look.

2. I’d started looking at doing some freelancing work through AirTasker, an Australia jobs website. You create a profile, start bidding on some tasks and hey, presto! (assuming that someone wants to hire you, not as easy as it sounds, I quickly found out), you can get a job doing something. (Literally almost anything actually: like delivery take away to people’s houses so they don’t have to go out. Strange but true.) And one of the things that kept cropping up—at least for people who want to write and get paid for it—is SEO. Do I want to write and get paid to write? Ahhhh yes. So here am I. Figuring out SEO because theoretically it’s important.

3. I was also on uni break, and since I’d just taught myself how to use Wiki and create/edit pages, I figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to pick up some more skills while I was at it (this enthusiastic self-improvement streak may disintegrate rapidly now that I’m back at uni…)

Once I’d realised that that’s what I wanted to do, I figured I needed somewhere to start. Preferably somewhere simple.

Where to Look…

I decided that, surprise, surprise, one of the best places to start was the internet. Because… It’s the internet. Theoretically, it’s got everything. And fortunately for me, I wasn’t alone: there are heaps of pages focused on learning about SEO… But not all of them are necessarily really that simple. I mean, some aspects are. Like ensuring that your blog title comes up in the page URL, not just a string of numbers (tick, just fixed that for my blog). Or including chosen keywords in your blog title, content and other key places in order to get anywhere on Google.

Other things? Honestly not so much. Like how apparently my blog needs an XML sitemap (no, I’m still not sure what this is, so don’t ask). I should, apparently, be adding meta descriptions for each blog post (which isn’t an automatic option with WordPress blogs). And keywords have to be strategically placed, not just strewn liberally throughout the post… Oh, and by the way, the parameters for successfully using keywords change all the time. Or maybe the most challenging bit (thus far), is that the most important thing for SEO and ranking on Google is your link profile—how many ‘reliable’ websites have linked to your site, which tells Google how reliable (and important) you are—and mine is almost nonexistent.

Yeah, there’s a lot going on there. But I thought it might be cool to distill some of what I’ve learned into some really easy points that anyone can implement on their blog. If you want to keep learning more, I’ve included a list of great resources at the end of this post.

Things I’ve Learned So Far

1. Keywords. Oh holy guacamole, keywords. The short answer is that you need to figure out your target market and aim your keywords in that general direction. So when I blog about our adventures in the US, my keywords might be ‘Aussie’, ‘Expat’, ‘Adventures’, ‘USA’ (and that’s probably too many, but like I said, still figuring all of this out over here), because I figure Australians travelling to the US might identify with our experiences and find a list of fun things to do over here. I then want to make sure that those show up in important places: my blog title, my blog URL, in the meta description of my blog, and in the first paragraph of my content. Other than that, it’s not a big deal. Let me bold it for all the people up the back: keyword density doesn’t matter. Putting more keywords isn’t going to make you number one on Google.
2. Your theme, however, does matter. This is one I kind of stumbled on by accident when I decided to switch up my WordPress theme and found out—hey! Some of the very issues I’ve been learning about for SEO are taken care of by your theme… depending on which theme you use. My current theme allows me to manipulate my blog post URL, which is (apparently) important for the keyword point above, which is a cool benefit.
3. Internal Link Structure. Links enable your blog to be mapped by search engines. I’m about 99% sure that at some point I’m actually going to have to learn about how to create a site map to tell search engines how to crawl through my blog, but in the meantime, I’m learning that it’s important to link back to your own content to create interlocking spaces on your site. If you think about links as the highways between the cities of your posts, this means that you don’t have any isolated cities that search engine crawlers can’t reach.
4. External Links. This one, I’m not quite sure how to achieve, though I understand the theory. Basically search engines argue that if you are at all useful or important to them, you’ll link to legitimate external sites. And, optimally, legitimate external sites will want to link to you. This is particularly powerful if you are linked to by an ‘important’ site (i.e., a legitimate, verified site that has a lot of traffic and sits high in Google’s rankings). That tells search engines that you are, by proxy, at least somewhat important. (PSA: If anyone can figure out how to get an important person to link to me, that would be awesome).
5. Yoast WordPress Plugin. If you’re anything like I was about a week ago, and this SEO stuff is doing your head in right now, then let me tell you something. Most bloggers, especially those using WordPress for business pages who are trying to get customers, probably need Yoast (if they want an easy way to implement SEO). It’s one of the best WordPress SEO Plugins going around (so says the internet), and it’ll take a lot of pressure off you in terms of what to do, and how to do it. (For example, I’ve screwed up the external links on this article because I’m linking to things that are for topics similar to my post. Oops).
6. Content Quality. Now this one gave me a little wriggle for joy—I’m 99% sure that was a waste of precious wriggling effort, because it’s probably not going to help me that much. It refers to the fact that vocabulary and syntax of your content does matter to search engines. How? Well that’s mostly the secret of Google and their kin, but basically it means putting together well-developed, well-researched, and well-written content should (theoretically) help your search engine ratings. Which gives me a warm fuzzy feeling (even if it probably won’t actually help me) because I love well-written content.

As you can see, there are STACKS of things we can do to make our blogs and our websites more search engine friendly, which is (so the rumour goes), the first step in improving our visibility across the internet. So if you’re interested in SEO, hurray! Hook in and let’s figure this beast out (at least a little).

Helpful places to learn about SEO:

1. 12 Best Free Online Resources for Learning SEO (I mean, it’s called that for a reason).

2. The Beginner’s Guide to SEO (by Moz)

3. WordPress SEO

I hope that if you’re interested in SEO, you found something useful in here today. Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at continuing my own SEO education, optimising old posts and various parts of my blog, and trying to keep my head above water while doing it all. Looking forward to catching you all next time!

–Ana.