If you want your website or blog to show up on search engines like Google, then you need to know about SEO. What is it? How do you do it? Keep reading!
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It is a term bloggers and business owners use to describe how they try to get their sites as close to the front pages of search engines as possible. For example, when searching for “pretty hospital gown” Annie & Isabel – a company that makes designer hospital gowns – benefits from being one of the first sites Google brings up. (FYI, that link was me loving them, not paid or anything)
Bloggers benefit from SEO because we write useful articles that deserve to be clicked when people are searching. I recently posted some HOP the movie coloring pages that is one of the first five pages Google brings up and I received a lot of search engine traffic from it!
Now, let’s get into the definitions.
Bloggers, how do you get your posts to go higher in search results?
Very good question.
Let’s start at the very beginning with the terminology.
Meta-Tag
A Meta-Tag is the title of your blog and your post title. It helps search engine crawlers know what your post is about. The meta-tag is found in the html of your blog. WordPress users can use a plugin for meta tags, blogger users must go into the html of their template in insert meta-tags manually. (This goes for meta-descriptions and meta-keywords too)
Meta-Description:
A short description of your blog post. Sometimes search engine crawlers use the meta-description as the short blurb under you link when it gives people results. Again, you put the meta-description in your template html for blogger and use a plugin in WordPress.
Meta-Keywords:
Keywords people might use and find your post. Example: for this post my meta-keywords might be “beginner SEO” or “how to SEO a blog post” or even “blog SEO.” This also goes in your template html or use the plugin for wordpress. And yes, blogger blogs require you to insert the meta-description and keywords manually.
Blogger users: Here is an example of the html to insert in your template for a post you want to SEO:
<b:if cond=’data:blog.url == "http://www.YOURBLOG.Blogspot.com/PostTitle.html"’>
<meta content=’SEO for Beginners’ name=’description’/>
<meta description=’How to SEO, SEO and blogs, blogging SEO, SEO for dummies’ name=’keywords’/>
</b:if>
Please note: You don’t have to do this for every single blog post. But if you are writing one that you think is super valuable and really great for googlers to find (tutorials and reviews for example) then by all means use the html.
How descriptive does the description have to be? Most search engines use a maximum of 160 characters in their “blurbs” so keep it short, sweet and to the point! A great way to know what to write in the description is to pay attention to what you read in the “blurbs” under the post titles when you google something.
The best WordPress Plugin for SEO
WordPress users: Download and activate the “All in One SEO Pack” plugin. At the bottom of every post you write, you can type in the title, description and keywords for your post! Saves so much time and is so easy. Even better, if you happen to forget to enter the keywords and description at the bottom of your “edit post” screen, it pulls from the post title, category and tags you used. Seriously, this plugin rocks! If you have questions about how to use it, feel free to contact me, I’m willing to help!
Next, use keywords in good places in your post. You can use that plugin or put html in your template, but don’t forget to use those keywords in your post, and put them in naturally too! SEO experts from SirLinksalot know the best keywords that’ll surely work. My title here is perfect for search engines, it is something people might type directly into google. Use other keywords in the first paragraph and bolded headings in your post too. The first sentence of this post is a perfect example of good use of keywords early in a post. And my headings in bold are too, so use this post as an example of that.
SEO those images!
When people do a Yahoo or Google Image search, they can find your photos and therefore find your blog! This works really great for product review images or tutorials. WordPress users, this is easier for you. When you upload a photo, put a “google worthy” keyword in the “title” field and your post title in the “description” field. If you’re still not sure how to do this via WordPress and you’re keen to get as much value from your site as possible, it would be worthwhile to read online resources or watch videos such as those from youtube.com/@createwpsite in order to get a better handle on how WordPress sites work.
Blogger doesn’t have these fields when you upload a picture so blogger users will have to go the html tab and edit the html of the picture to look like this:
<a href=”http://the_google_URL of the image Blogger gives you here.jpg”><img title=”Keyword” src=”http://the_google_URL of the image Blogger gives you here.jpg” alt=”Blog post or other description here” width=”300″ height=”300″ /></a>
One last tip: Write frequently about a few main topics and categorize and tag them and place that category in your nav bar. I get lots of search hits on cloth diapering so I make sure to post about cloth diaper tips and all my posts are easy to find up on my nav bar. This not only helps with search engine traffic, but helps readers depend on you for content on that topic and eases the maneuverability of your site too.
This is not an exhaustive post by any means! Please ask questions in the comments! I will answer them and write a part two if enough discussion is generated! What are you curious about with SEO? What baffles you? What have you learned recently that works?
This really helps answer a few questions I had about SEO. I had no idea that I should put the post title in the description for my images! I’ve been using the same phrase in both the title and alt attribute, while leaving the image description blank!
I have been using the very simple SEO function of my theme and no plugin. I would like to switch over to using the All In One SEO Pack, do you know whether or not I would have to go back and re enter all of my meta data into my SEO’d posts if I started using All In One?
No, I don’t think you have to go back and SEO older posts, unless there is one that you think should be doing a lot better in search engines, then you might give it a little more “boost” with the plugin. But your theme’s SEO will be ok. The All in One plugin is wonderful, so definitely download and use it from now on 🙂
Thanks Annie! I’m going to download it today 🙂
Thanks for this! I”m making the switch to WordPress this week and this will be so helpful.
Jenn, you will love the switch! Congratulations!! If you ever have any WP questions, I am here to help!
I use blogger. So for pictures I would go to the edit html mode of the post and put whatever keyword I want in the spot that says:
the_google_URL of the image Blogger gives you here
and .jpg after?
The only change you make to the html of your image in your post in blogger is adding the “title=”(here you put google keywords for your image)” and “alt=(here you put the title of your post) —-all that goes inside the
tag. Does that make sense? I just put .jpg to say it was an image, but maybe when you upload the photo is a .png or some other file extension 🙂
You add in the title= and alt= AFTER you upload your file to blogger and put them inside the
tag.
Here is the exact html from a photo uploaded to blogger, and with the SEO words put in:
(please note: I put in extra spaces so you can see the html words and not just the photo. html code works in comments LOL)
< a onblur= "try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UsrxZbF9NH0/Szq8Ka_dXmI/AAAAAAAAAps/IDFKWE2htZI/s1600-h/table+and+clock.jpg" rel="nofollow">< img style= "margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" title=”printable coloring sheet” src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UsrxZbF9NH0/Szq8Ka_dXmI/AAAAAAAAAps/IDFKWE2htZI/s400/table+and+clock.jpg" alt="blue cow coloring sheet" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420851988724014690" border="0" / >< /a>
I only added “printable coloring sheet” and “blue cow coloring sheet” to the html.
I have to admit, I hate all the garbeldy gook that blogger puts in the html in photos. Sure makes things more difficult.
Great post! I don’t go back and do the work for SEO in my posts (Blogger), but I just might after such an easy straightforward tutorial.
Thanks for sharing the info. 🙂
Thanks Anna! I am really glad you found this helpful. I think even more important than SEOing your posts is SEOing your photos, that is if you have photos of products you review. People like to search for images in google image search 🙂
Thanks for a great post, I always forget about doing keywords with my photos, I just leave it blank, I’ll stop doing that now though lol.
Now in regards to the All In One SEO, I fill out the title, and keywords rarely the description, does that really make a difference?
Really I think the description is not as important. Search engine bots will use keywords from your post in their “blurb” when it shows your site to people in a search, so be very mindful of that as you write your posts. Choose your words carefully, use words people might google within your post and make it flow very nicely and naturally.
Thanks for sharing the information on how to SEO on Blogger! That really helps. More and more I think it sounds like I should be making the move to WP LOL
Great post!
Thank you Joanna, I am glad this post was helpful! I am going to write another post in the series about blogger vs. wordpress. Blogger has a lot to offer, but wordpress is really simple for growing your blog professionally. That being said, I know some very successful blogs hosted on blogger! So the post needs written 🙂
So I’m having trouble with this.
When I enter the code provided (fixed with my info, of course) into blogger, my post goes kaploooeeee and I receive a Meta tags are not allowed error. I did some searching on Blogger about it, and the general answer I’m seeing now is that Google and other “big” search engines no longer use meta tags. Which is no help at all. 🙁 Just wanted to let you know since I tried to follow!
I still have so much to learn about this.
Me, too!!!
Great tips! SEO is definitely not the fun part of blogging, but can be necessary to continue growing so all those fun opportunities keep coming! 🙂
Thanks for the useful advice. I use blogger and was wondering how to seo my photos
Annie THANK YOU!! I’ll be reading this through more in depth tomorrow during the kids’ quiet time. Until then, I’ve linked my readers to this post 🙂 You rock!
http://www.obviously-marvelous.com/2011/06/12/blogging-basics-seo-help-article/
Just about the easier post to understand on SEO that I’ve come across.
Thank you.
I use thesis. This has a built in SEO package. My question is, I don’t need a plugin in addition to that do I?
Thank you!
Rachel, if you use the built in SEO package with Thesis, you are doing just fine, you do not need a plugin. People that need a plugin are people with free themes 🙂
Glad this was helpful!
Thanks, it was!
Hi Annie, another great post as usual.
I have a question about post tags and keywords. Are they the same thing? Should I be using them both and should they be the same terms basically? I’ve been a bit confused on how to effectively use them both so would love to know if I’ve been using them correctly and most effectively.
Thanks a bunch!
Yes, they are so similar. You do not need to use them both – but if you have a post that you think will be highly searchable, you can split the keywords 50/50 between keywords and tags.
For example: Say I write a post about “how to cure mildew smell in towels.” I can tag it “mildew smell” / “laundry smell” / mildew cure
and then put in the keywords: “how to cure mildew, towels mildew smell,” etc
Does that make sense? You don’t have to do both, the keywords is the most important, but using both is a good idea once in awhile.
Actuallly it makes great sense. Thanks again.
SEO kind of boggles my mind so this is really helpful. That plugin looks really useful!! I think that SEO can really make or break the success of a blog sometimes, so thank you for sharing these tips for us newbies.
There are BOOKS written about this, so I know my little post is the tip of the ice berg. I do hope this helps, even a smidge!