How to Use SEO to Improve Blog Ranking?

Search Engine Optimization is very critical for marketing your website or blog so that your website or blog becomes more visible to people and rank high on the search engine. SEO helps in optimizing the content of your website or blog with the keywords searched by the consumers associated with your products and services to increase your visibility. Thus, it is essential to keep a track of the SEO for blog.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

By the time you have the answer to this question, Google will be filled with over 2 million web pages providing content on a broad range of topics, and by the time you start writing your content or blog, 46 other people will already be pressing publish on their blogs. Competitive, isn’t it?

In this competitive market, it’s easy for your blog to get lost no matter how good or how original your content might have been. That is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. Wikipedia defines SEO as, ‘the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results.’ In simpler term, SEO is the process of tweaking your content with the help of search engine attractive keywords and phrases so that a search engine would like to flaunt it as a top result when certain phrases are typed in.

SEO can be very tricky to master given Google’s algorithm updates. While mastering SEO for blog can get confusing, this article will help clear things up, so that you can tweak your blog in a way that will get you on top of the Google Ranking ladder.

How do I use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve my blog ranking?

Now that you are through with what SEO is, it’s time to understand how you can use it on your blog to rise up the Google Ranking ladder in no time. Google loves pleasing its users. If a user uses Google to find something and gets content that is relevant to their search, both Google and the user will be benefited. Google strives to provide proper, and user search relevant content on top of its search results.

Around 50% of Google’s search Engines clicks are taken either by the first or the second search result. You might as well hide a dead body on the second page of the search results, and nobody would know about it. If your blog is not among the first five search results on the search page, you will struggle to increase traffic on your blog.

Google’s Search Engine Algorithms evaluate every aspect of content when choosing its rank on the search results page. Relevancy of the content, the value it provides, and the content quality is the primary criteria your blog is judged on. Google will rank those blogs which value trust. This means your blog should be something the people love and trust.

SEO Tips for Blog to Improve  Google Ranking

Following SEO tips for blog will improve your Google Ranking to a great extent:

#1. Content is the King:

Back in 1996, Bill Gates made a prediction. He said, “Content is King’” that ‘Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.’ His prediction is as true as ever today. A Google Search Engine user is the happiest when he finds content that is relevant to what he is looking for. When you Google for the best places to visit in the world, Google will put in everything to find the most relevant and quality content. It may come up with a blog post that segregates the “Top 10 places in the world to see before you die” instead of something that resembles more of a Geography lesson about the world.

This means you must produce quality content that is relevant, crisp and error free.

#2. Use Keywords:

An excellent blog has the right number of great keywords. This is where doing a keyword research comes into play. Before starting your post, you should have your keyword in mind. The word or set of words that you will be using in the title of your blog and throughout the blog post.

However, using too many keywords will drop your ranking rapidly. Google’s Algorithm knows exactly what you are looking for when you type ‘Burger King.’ In this case, Google does not come up with a burger on a throne, but the address and location of the exact fast food chain Burger King in Jacksonville, America. They do so by separating two seemingly ordinary words ‘Burger’ and ‘King’ into two keywords in the website or blog.

The more relevant your keywords are in your blog, the higher the chances are for your blog to rank upwards in the Google Ranking system.

#3. Ensure your blog is mobile friendly:

In today’s digital world the number of mobile users has increased two-fold. Chances are you are also reading this article on your handheld mobile device. The most common mistake that you as a blogger can do is not optimizing your blog for a mobile device. There are a lot of web pages and applications where you can check if your blog is mobile friendly.

A blog which does not have its mobile design in place will instantly turn a reader down and will send you spiraling down the Google Ranks in no time.

#4. HTML:

Without having a proper knowledge of HTML and optimizing it for every content, you create, you are going to have a hard time finding a place in the top positions of the Search Engine. If you are not familiar with HTML’s, there are countless courses online which you can avail to learn more about HTML’s.

The first thing that you should keep in mind is to pre-set your heading size to h1, i.e., the heading of the 1st order. This helps Search Engines distinguish the title of your blog from the rest of the content. The second thing that you should focus on is the meta description. The meta description is an excerpt from your blog on the Search page.

These HTML tips will ensure your blog is well optimized for the Search Engine.

#5. Blog Design:

If you thought your Blog Design only helped your blog look and feel good, then think again. A good blog design directly translates to a good user experience when he/she navigates through your page(s).

You should ideally have a blog design in mind before buying the domain of your choice. You should remember that the more accessible your blog is to Google, the better your blog ranking will be.

While designing your page, you should never ignore your page loading speed. Humans have an attention span of 8 seconds, and if those 8 seconds are spent looking at a never-ending loading sign, it will give a wrong perception about your blog to the user and the Search Engine.

Today, when we value our precious time more than anything else in this world it does not hurt to optimize your blog page loading time for a better user experience and ranking.

#6. Backlinks:

Backlinks are links to your blog embedded or placed openly in other blog posts or articles that redirect to your blog. While backlinks are important, they are not everything. They are at most a part of the whole SEO system.

While generating a lot of links are good, quality links matter the most. Building quality backlinks are all about going out there and providing some value in exchange of a good backlink. There is a tendency of people to wait for others to include their links into their posts, which is very wrong. You cannot expect someone to put your link into their blog without expecting something in return. You need to ask them to put your links on their blog.

Backlinks are seen very positively by the Search Engine, and apart from improving your blog rank, backlinks work as an excellent way to increase traffic to your blog when used in proper context.

Conclusion:

The whole subject matter of increasing your Google page ranks can be fascinating per se. But the challenges can only be tackled using some good key strategies that will help your blog perform better than your competitors in the digital world.

Increasing your blog rank in the Google Search Engine will not happen overnight, and the sooner you realize that, the better it is for you and your blog. Improving your blog with the help of SEO will require you to study and understand the audience you are targeting, what their needs and desires are. Only then will you be able to make content that will appeal to them.

Keyword research is of utmost importance. You cannot simply make and throw a bunch of words into your blog post hoping one of the words will hit at the Search Engine. Keyword research will bring relevancy to the type of keywords you are using in your blog.

You should remember that the only reason a reader will be reading your blog, is to find the answers to a question they had. If your blog can provide the answer to their query, it will become an instant hit in the Search Engine.

Don’t worry about certain SEO decisions that you may have made in the past. There’s always scope to learn and before you know it your blog will be among the top searches in the Google Search Engine.