How SEO can save your blogbloglosophy.com /seo-can-save-blog/

how SEO can save your blog image

Several of my readers have asked about a simplif ied version of using SEO and here it is. I will trynot to use any language you won’t understand and if I do, you are welcome to smack my hand inthe comments.

Let’s go step by step, starting from the beginning.

Site Title and Tagline

1. Go to your dashboard and then to Settings/General. At the top, you will f ind Site Title andTagline. These are super important because these are what will show when a search f or your sitepulls up your homepage. Don’t just write any old thing here. This is where you can tell the worldexactly what your site is about. Paleo diet or basketball tips are not specif ic enough. There arehundreds of thousands of blogs out there doing exactly the same thing so try to be quitespecif ic. For the Tit le, write your blog name and then a crucial keyword(s) f or your niche. Forexample, f or my blog, Strands of My Lif e, I have written: Strands of My Life – Low FODMAP Diet.

For the Tagline, I have written: Low FODMAP Diet | gluten-free recipes | gluten-free diet | lowFODMAP recipes | irritable Bowel Syndrome. This covers all the major keywords f or my niche. Anddo separate them out with the “|” symbol. Don’t use this in the tit le, just in the tagline.

how SEO can save your blog

Install WordPress SEO by Yoast

2. Next go to Plugins/Add New. Type in WordPress SEO by Yoast. Install it and activate it.

How to conf igure WordPress SEO by Yoast

3. Click on SEO in your side menu and you will see a whole heap of subtit les shoot out. These allneed to be conf igured. The best way to do this is to f ollow a tutorial by the man himself , Yoast.https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/ .

How to use WordPress SEO by Yoast

4. Once that is all set up, let’s have a look at what has changed underneath your posting area. Goto Posts/Add New, then scroll down to beneath the editor area to where you can see WordPressSEO by Yoast. That wasn’t there bef ore, was it? This now becomes one of the most preciousareas of your blog – neglect it at your peril.

Take a look at my SEO area f or my last post, Why decreasing your blog load time will get youmore traf f ic.

Let SEO can save your blog

a) The snippet preview at the top will show you exactly what will show in a Google search onceyou have f illed in all the f ields below.

b) Choose your main keywords (it can be more than one word and actually should be to narrow itdown) and enter it/them in the Focus Keyword area. Use this tool to f ind good keywords:https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner. The Focus Keyword is put in there just to guide youon what to write f or the SEO Title and Meta Description. You can see that I have put decreasingyour blog load time as my keyword(s). Decrease probably would have been better and hence acouple of areas where my exact keywords are not duplicated perf ectly. But that doesn’t worry metoo much. It is just a guide f or you.

c) SEO Tit le will be populated automatically f rom your heading f or the post. That doesn’t mean ithas to stay that though. The purposes of a Heading that goes out to your public and the tit le f orSEO of ten don’t coincide. The heading is so that you can catch the attention of your readers withsomething clever or f unny. The SEO Title is to catch the attention of the search engines andshould be short and have your keywords in it with no extra words. In my case above, theycoincided but you always have to think about whether they should stay the same or not. You cansee that I have gone 4 words over the allowed amount of words bef ore Google cuts you of f .

d) Meta Description should also be rich with your keywords but does have to make sense andencourage the person searching to choose your snippet in the search results over that ofanother website.

See below to what showed up when I did a Google search. It is almost the same as the SnippetPreview though the tit le has been cut a bit shorter.

SEO can save your blog image

Now that you know where your meta data ends up, hopef ully that will encourage you to f ill it in.

SEO for your Images

5. It is not all over yet. There’s something else you have to do with every new post. When you addphotos to a post or to your media f ile, you must enter all the meta data over on the right. That isso important if you want the search engine to see them. Photos can lead people back to your sitebut only if the search engine can see them and it can’t without that data f illed in. See ascreenshot of the area below.

how SEO can save your blog image

a. See at the top on the right there is the name of the photo. This is what you named it when yousaved it to your computer. Please, please name your photos and don’t let them remain a string ofnumbers or the word image.

b. Title – this can be the tit le you used f or your post. The Alt Text can be the same but add theword image or graphic at the end of it.

c. Caption - this is optional and I seldom use them but they actually can be quite helpf ul andpeople do like to read them.

d. Meta Description – similar to the meta description on your post.

NOTE: it is best not to use the exact same meta data on all your images in the same post. Vary ita bit.

e. Further down you have Alignment. If your image is the same size as your post area, then youcan leave this at the def ault None. If it is smaller, choose right or lef t so that the writ ing comes upbeside it and doesn’t leave it swimming about all alone.

f . Link to – it ’s better to choose None here because otherwise if you put Media File in there,people click on them and get the image alone by itself and that achieves nothing. The other twoare seldom relevant but could be in special circumstances.

g. Size – it is really a bad idea to use this f unction to downsize your large photo. Downsize it tothe exact right size bef ore uploading it and then choose Full Size. Now click onto Insert into Post.

h. Now go into Media Library in the menu and click on the photo. Look below and you will see thef irst area is where you have f illed in the meta data as explained above. But scroll on down andyou will f ind the WordPress SEO by Yoast area. Complete this just as you did f or the post. Makesure you click on Update bef ore leaving.

Use the<H1> and <H2> Tags

6. Another t ip is to use the <h1> tags right at the top of the post and the <h2> tags as yoursubheadings. See my article on creating pages to learn about these tags. It really is quite simple.

Those are the mechanics of it all and need to be done with every single post. It will give you aboost in the SEO department but much of it depends on choosing good keywords which peoplesearch f or but that don’t have a lot of competit ion f rom the big blogs. And never f orget that atthe end of the day, it ’s all about writ ing great content that gives someone the solution to aproblem they have. And hopef ully it is a solution that they can’t f ind anywhere else.

Related Posts

5 Great Plugins to Install at the Start of Your WordPress Blog

How to Choose or Install a WordPress Theme

How to create your f irst post on your WordPress blog

How to Set Up Categories in a WordPress Blog