Since bloggers can only find their target group on the Internet, one measure is unavoidable:To optimize your own blog for search engines.
SEO for Blogs: How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
In order to win over prospects or customers for a product, you also have to invest time and effort in marketing: A car manufacturer has to publicize the advantages of its latest car through advertisements, TV clips and radio reports, just like a beverage manufacturer has to publicize the unique selling points of its new drink. But even offers that are published on the World Wide Web, such as an online shop or blog, can only be achieved with the right advertising strategy to the desired success. The classic print and television media, however, play a subordinate role here, as the advertising costs for these media would exceed the budget of most bloggers many times over. Since bloggers can only find their target group on the Internet, one measure is unavoidable:To optimize your own blog for search engines.
Why SEO is so important to bloggers
Running a blog is a matter of the heart for many people in charge. You comment on topics that interest you personally or inform the reader about what you have experienced in the recent past. How many people a written article reaches in the end is usually less due to the quality than to the reach of the article . At the latest, if blogging is to turn from a hobby into a profession , you have to deal with the question of how you can attract visitors to your blog and continuously increase the traffic.
The positioning in the search engine results - above all Google - plays a decisive role, because most readers typically find their way to blog posts via the popular search masks - especially via the first page of results. Very few are specifically looking for a blog. The goal of SEO for blogs must therefore consist in the individual contributions and the entire project be tailored to the typical search queries of those users who are interested in the blog topic of interest . Otherwise, you may achieve a good ranking, but the hoped-for increase in traffic does not occur because the target group can already see in the short preview in the search results that the content offered is of no interest to them.
So optimizing your blog for search engines is a very complex endeavor that you should invest a lot of effort and time in. But the SEO area also offers the opportunity to outdo competitors who are active in a similar subject area and to give your blog an advantage in the competition for the readers' favor.
SEO Blogging: How Can I Optimize My Blog?
Under SEO covers all measures which serve to the placement of a Web project in the results of search engines to improve. A distinction is made between the two disciplines on- page and off-page optimization , which, when combined, promise the greatest possible chance of success for improving placement. While all SEO optimizations that are carried out directly on the blog (texts, headings, images, metadata, etc.) are on-page measures , off- page SEO deals with all external factors, with link building being the main focus.
Onpage SEO for Blogs: The Most Important Adjustments
The on-page optimization of a weblog encompasses various areas: The content is an essential field. The fact that high-quality content is an indispensable asset in modern web projects and forms the basis of every marketing campaign should be known to everyone by now: Good texts and interesting videos as well as impressive photos increase the chance of attracting new readers to your blog and retaining them in the long term. Positive user reviews and a longer time users spend on your website have a positive effect on your search engine ranking.
A similarly important criterion for SEO success is the performance of their own pages , which many operators neglect . Availability and especially loading time have become increasingly important over the past few years and with the continuous growth of mobile traffic. If the blog's performance is inadequate, this is judged negatively by users and search engines alike. But there are many ways to improve page speed. You should pay attention to the following things if you want to optimize the performance of your website:
Suitable hosting environment (CPU, RAM, hard disk space)
Responsives oder separates, mobiles Layout
No oversized design templates (themes)
Economical use of plug-ins and scripts
Regular database checks
Use of a content delivery network
Compression of images and source codes (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
While the above measures primarily improve performance , in the following we will now present ways to make the content as search engine friendly as possible .
Keywords: focus on one topic and up to two key terms
For every post you write for your blog, you should first define a clear topic that runs through the entire text. This increases the chance that search engines will classify the article as particularly relevant to the selected topic . It is also important to find the keywords that match the content, whereby you should concentrate on one or two main terms. In particular, long-tail keywords (combination of several search terms) are a tried and tested means not only to rise in the search engine rankings, but also to reach those users whose search intention matches the topic of your page.
Strategic positioning of the keywords
Once you have completed the keyword research, it is important to place the search terms in the right places: In headings and in the body part, you should make sure that the implementation of a keyword is never at the expense of legibility. An excessive or disproportionate use of key terms can also be quickly classified as keyword spam and punished by search engines. However, it is of elementary importance to include the key keywords in the following places:
URL : The URL is one of the first pieces of information to be processed by the search engine crawlers. Since each post is published under a unique URL , you also have the option of integrating one or two keywords here. With a good URL structure that reflects the categorization of your posts, you also increase user comfort. For example, the URL meinblog.de/marketing/blogger-tipps tells the reader that the article comes from the subject of "Marketing".
Title Tag (Headline): The title is displayed as the headline of the search result hit in the search engines. It gives search services and users an initial indication of the topic your article deals with. The following rule applies here: the further up the search term to be highlighted, the better for SEO.
Description : The description is a short text that, like the title, appears in the search results and provides the search engine and readers with further information about the content of the blog post . The description should contain at least one keyword.
Internal links
Often neglected, but still an important onpage SEO discipline for blogs, is the internal linking of the various articles. If you have the opportunity to link to older topics related to a topic in a new article , you should definitely do so. In this way you not only increase the length of stay of your readers, but also increase the chance that all pages of your blog will be recorded and listed by the search engines. For many content management systems there are plug-ins that automatically link suitable articles; you can also set the internal links manually. However, limit yourself to one or a maximum of two cross-references per text, as the link strength per additional link is greatly weakened will.
If you are linking two articles together, you should also formulate appropriate, natural anchor text. The anchor text is the part of the text that is usually highlighted in color and that leads the user to the linked page by clicking. Instead of a meaningless “here”, you should choose a link text that makes sense in the context - for example the title of the linked target article.
Keep topic tags clear
Tags, also known as keywords, offer a first-class opportunity to categorize your articles thematically . They primarily serve the user comfort of your readers, who can find their way around your blog much better with a well-structured index of keywords than if you do without this function. The tags are in no way rated as meta keywords by the search engines and therefore, strictly speaking, have no direct relevance for the search engine optimization of blogs. However, the search engine services do reward you when the tags you have selected and assigned increase the usability of your blog .
Optimize images
When designing blog posts, you usually don't just limit yourself to text, but also include multimedia content such as video clips and, above all, images where appropriate. For this reason, good onpage SEO for bloggers also deals with the optimization of these types of content, which search engines recognize as such by default, but can only be understood with the help of additional information. This information is specifically the file name and the so-called alt text. The latter can be defined in the <img> tag of the respective image using the alt attribute.
In addition to its function as a "translator" for the search engine crawler, the alt text is also a crucial component of user-friendly and barrier-free web projects: the actual function of the HTML attribute is to describe the image content if the image cannot be loaded for any reason . Visually impaired users can have the alternative text read out to them using the appropriate tools. You should also equip the file name with suitable keywords, because this not only helps you advance in the usual ranking, but also improves your positioning in the Google image search. Find out more about image SEO in our advice article.
Offpage SEO - of fundamental importance for bloggers
If you want to run a successful blog, you can't do without offpage SEO. In contrast to the on-page methods, this is not about keywords, usability , text structure and the like, but about increasing the popularity of your blog through active marketing and above all through the generation of so-called backlinks . The latter signal to the search engines that a web project is relevant, which is why the number and quality of the links that refer to your blog also serve as essential factors for the search engines to rank in the search results. Since the search engine crawlers can see which pages are referring back from , it is important that you sign up for aCreate a colorful mix of link profiles with backlinks from many different sources:
Forum links : Internet users exchange information on a wide variety of topics in forums. If you mention your blog in posts there and recommend one of your articles to other forum users, it shows the search engines that your project has met with acceptance on the web.
Links from other blogs : Links that have been set by other blog operators also prove to be a driving force in increasing link popularity . The more established the blog in question, the more you benefit from the referral. The active exchange of links has been a sensible practice for maintaining weblogs for years.
Links from industry or article directories : If you enter your blog or even individual articles in an online directory, you not only create valuable backlinks, but also increase the chance that users will notice you.
Links from major portals : Portals like Huffington Post, which have a tremendous amount of content and traffic, are a prime, if not easy to get, source of strong backlinks that will make your blog trustworthy.
You can also create your own backlinks by linking your own post, for example in the comment area of a similar article in a third-party blog - with the note that you have also written something on the topic in question.
The important role of social media channels
Networking has always played an important role in blogging. The exchange with other operators and the mutual sharing of recommendations of published articles and the associated backlink structure is still a tried and tested means of increasing your own reach and addressing foreign readers. However, since the era of social networks, there has been an even greater radius of action when it comes to disseminating new content . With very little effort, you can advertise your website or individual articles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Co. and in this way address users who you might not have reached in any other way.
The users of the social media channels provide you with active support: "Like" information, comments or sharing your posts ensure that you reach a large number of potential readers. Even if these "social signals" themselves have no influence on the search engine ranking , they can indirectly contribute to improving the ranking. This will help your blog get more traffic, signal to search engine services that your project will meet with acceptance, and increase the likelihood that operators of other blogs or websites will link one of your posts .
These CMS plug-ins will help you optimize your blog for search engines
There are numerous modules or plug-ins for the different content management systems that simplify SEO for blogging in a variety of ways. These are, for example, extensions for compressing images or for creating XML sitemaps (display of the structure of the blog) as well as caching modules or link checkers with which you can check the status of internal and external links. We present some useful plug-ins for the most important CMS below:
WordPress
Yoast SEO : Yoast SEO is one of the most comprehensive SEO plugins for WordPress . Among other things, it extends the CMS with functions for the automated creation of meta-information, for tracking down duplicate content and for keyword analysis. You can also use the extension to create an XML sitemap or use it to edit the robots.txt or .htaccess file . In addition to the free version, which you can find in the official WordPress plug-in directory , there is also a premium edition with additional features - for example a preview option for social media posts.
WP Broken Link Status Checker : Use the Broken Link Status Checker to check the links and images of your WordPress blog. In this way you can find out whether these work or whether some cross-references are now "dead". Furthermore, the plug-in tells you the total number of all links and the total number of all links with a unique URL via the dashboard and also lists the anchor texts used.
TYPO3
SEO Basics : With the SEO Basics extension , you can add extra fields to your TYPO3 blog pages in which you can enter the title tag and description. In addition, a sub-module gives you an overview page of all the titles and descriptions of your project, which you can find under "Web" -> "Info". In edit mode, you can also find out whether you have included the keywords in the description enough times.
mindshape SEO : The mindshape SEO extension is also ideal for a simple title and description configuration . In addition to new fields for entering this information, the "SEO Preview" provides you with an overview of all pages on your blog, including a preview of the Google search results page and an evaluation of the metadata entered. In addition, the module implements an XML sitemap generator and a field for specifying specific Facebook meta tags .
Joomla
Easy Frontend SEO ( EFSEO ): With the free extension Easy Frontend SEO you expand your Joomla installation with easy management options for all important metadata in the frontend. You can choose whether the data should be generated automatically or entered manually , and define specific access rights for the latter option, provided that not every user should be authorized to change the title and other metadata.
SEO Keyword Factory : SEO Keyword Factory is a useful extension to common SEO features. The plug-in automatically generates search engine optimized URLs that contain the important keywords, thus relieving you of work.
Drupal
Real-time SEO for Drupal : Based on the JavaScript library YoastSEO.js and the Metatag module, Real-time SEO for Drupal carries out an analysis of your blog pages in real time. Among other things, the extension checks whether your articles are long enough, whether you have built in suitable descriptions including the focus keyword or whether your text is structured in a search engine-friendly manner.
CDN : If your blog has a particularly high number of hits and you are planning to integrate a content delivery network for relief purposes, the Drupal CDN module is exactly the right choice. It automatically adjusts the URLs of the data of your web project (CSS, JavaScript, fonts, videos, images, etc.) so that your visitors can access them from the selected CDN and not from the web server.
Contao
keywordDensity : Taking into account all embedded elements, the keywordDensity extension checks and evaluates the keyword density of your blog posts. For this purpose, you can store three search terms for each article and enter specific specifications, on the basis of which the evaluation takes place in the form of red, yellow and green markings in the text. With the extension keywordsAnalytics you can increase the number of keywords considered.
Google Keyword Suggest ( qwat-gks ): With the help of the qwat-gks module, you can use the search options of Google auto-completion directly from your Contao backend. You can use the suggestions made to enrich your keyword and thus optimize the texts, titles and descriptions of the articles on your blog for search engines.
