How to SEO Optimise Your Blog Posts

Ivy, take it away. Enjoy.

You probably think you have a killer blog that you are keen for the whole world to see, but you can’t for the life of you work out why nobody has seen it yet.

Well, chances are you and your blog mean well, but it’s actually not as crash-hot as you think.

See, even if you spend heaps of time on your layout and amazing content, if you haven’t taken the time to do a little research into how Google decides what ranks well and what doesn’t, your blog might end up being abandoned just like so many others.

To help you out, we have a few tips for optimising your content for search engines.

1. Install a good SEO plugin – These plugins aren’t the be-all and end-all, but they are definitely a help to the inexperienced blogger who needs a hand to get started.
   
2. Start doing keyword research – Google AdWords is how most companies and brands access the most common search terms for their kind of business.
   
   Locate as many keywords as possible and try to use ones in your posts, meta description, and/or tags that are relevant and specific.
   
   For example, rather than “garden maintenance service”, try “garden maintenance Melbourne” or, more specifically, the suburb you are looking for.
   
3. Create a proper permalink structure – When you create a post and the blogging platform you are using, such as WordPress, creates a gibberish URL, this is bad for SEO.
   
   Take a couple of seconds to create a descriptive and memorable permalink to help your visitors locate specific pages.
   
   For WordPress, this is super-duper easy. In your admin dashboard, navigate to Settings > Permalinks, choose Post Name, and hit the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.
   
4. Seek help from SEO professionals – If you find this all quite difficult and confusing, and it can be for a non-native user, you can seek the services of an online marketing company like Optimisingthat can help you navigate the big bad world of SEO.
   
   These professionals will consult with you to get a good picture of what you want to present, and will help find the keywords and audience that you need for prospective readers to find you.

If you have a special take on any of the topics we discuss on this blog, you can write for vistawriting.com as a guest contributor.

Contact me with your idea. The only requirement is that you must submit an original article (never published anywhere else) covering any of the topics mentioned on the About page.

Also, include a short bio that goes at the beginning (or end) of the article. Let us grow together!