Serious Blogging and Keywords

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Good SEO – What does that even mean?

For the I.T. novice it is one of those nebulous ideas that somehow relate to the number of people who see and read your blog.

Serious business bloggers most likely take SEO very seriously. I don’t, but I was curious about what might improve it.

Information is always good, so I decided in my sticky-beak curious-kinda way to conduct a bit of an experiment.

Here is what I found:

How to Use a Keyword Analyzer in Blog-post Titles?

I found there is such a thing as a title and headline analyzer that can be used to help bloggers construct and check potential blog titles.

The Title: Serious Blogging rates a score of 37 and the analyzer recommends that I limit my positive and passive language advising:

Bad news sells! Conveying positive emotions can build positive associations with your brand, but can just as easily disinterest the reader.

By adding more alert words or adding ‘tips,’ in the title rates better.

Eg: “Tips for the Serious Blogger” – rates 67, but the analyzer points out there is no brand mentioned.

Mentioning my brand increases the rating result. However, my blog title isn’t a recognized brand/business, so its rather pointless to add my brand. Nevertheless, doing so did raise the score to 68 – the highest score, so far.

While working on the titles, I also discovered that adding the word “perfect” increased the score. I added this to the base keywords.

Something to Ponder About Top Ten Perfect Tips for the Serious Blogger = 70

Really? 70?

Isn’t that title ridiculously verbose?

Unwieldy?

Like I’ve swallowed the keyword analyzer?

I decided that was enough playing.

Try it out for yourself: headlines.sharethrough.com

Here is a summary of findings from my experiment and suggestions from others:

Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

General Suggestions for Improving Headlines and Titles

• Increase headline length
• Mention the brand?
• Use Alert Words
• Try adding a celebrity – N.B. – I would NEVER do this deliberately….
• Look for questions people are asking, on the topic, on Quora. It’s a site for determining the common questions people ask that you can use as inspiration for writing blog posts.
• Run through your notifications on the socials. Another source of ideas – I rarely do this though.
• Read other blogs. Check blogs in your topic area – this is a useful approach. Reading other bloggers posts can be incredibly inspiring and you can both benefit from pingbacks.

How to Write A Blog Post for SEO

• Write a list of headings and then fill in the gaps

or,

• follow a linear chronological timeline

Most of the time my humble musings just flow from the keyboard, but if the post is a pure ‘how to,’ and strong theoretical post, Ill start with paragraph/idea headings that are of interest and then fill in the gaps.

Some recommendations use the list of associated keywords as a stimulus for each part of your text. This can work well.

And you can always re-order the text afterwards to get a better flow.

This can be a good way to find inspiration for fiction and poetry if you are stuck and nothing riveting comes to mind.

Headings, Tags, Sharing and SEO

Add H2 and H3 text tags.

You can do this in your post editor. Choose H2 for your subtitle and H3 for your paragraph headings. It is better to use H2 and H3 – it just looks better, visually, i.m.o.

You can also make a heading larger by increasing the font size.

When using images, it is recommended to add Alternative text and Image Title Attributes to enhance the work of Google spiders that crawl the internet compiling image searches.

Adding a link which opens the image in a new tab is a further option for SEO, apparently.

Who’dathought?

Frankly, I think it’s pointless unless you want to look at a nice picture in a larger format.

Linking a site to an image could have some benefit, I guess.

Some sites suggest the Link Rel field is where you can add no follow. This is useful if your image directs you to an affiliate link.

Dw – there ain’t no affiliate links here at StPA.

A good habit, especially if you are new to blogging, is to add supporting external informative links to your blog post. This enhances your credibility and gives a reader added value. It may help build trust in your blogging.

Something I don’t do very much, but should, is adding internal links to earlier posts.

This is a good SEO practice to use because it will help you keep readers on your blog for much longer. I assume if you don’t have affiliate links, keeping readers on your blog for longer will help you rate higher on Google searches. Please correct me if that is wrong.

And remember to reverse link:  after publishing your new post, add some links to it from your existing articles.

Tips on creating a Successful Blog and increasing traffic via the WordPress reader

Using Tags in Blog posts

Photo by Every Thing on Pexels.com

Sharing Posts Across Social Media for Increased Exposure

If it is your thing to ramp up readership or exposure, social media sharing will help your article rank, so squeeze traction by using social media for your benefit. Share your post everywhere. Some bloggers have more success by sharing several times a day, but this can piss off your fan base, (if you have one). 

N.B. StPA doesn’t have a fan base, it has readers.

A short info post that is published at different time zones to attract international interest is the best approach, I think. It gains exposure, readership and thus, SEO. After you have shared the post, wait a few days, and share it again.

In fact, it is suggested that you should never stop sharing your articles.

Lastly, to give you a chuckle, here is a satirical angle to becoming fixated with the importance of being a blogger.

Do you need Blogging Rehab?

P.S. As I previewed this post, I noticed way more ads than I have noticed before. Almost an ad every second paragraph. This is a free blog and I guess WordPress pays by sourcing ad revenue, but three ads is a bit rich.

I see them, but do you? Please let me know in the comments.

Advertisement