SEO for Bloggers: 8 SEO Tips for Improving Site Traffic

Intro

Optimizing your blog for search engines is about so much more than simply stuffing posts full of key words. In this SEO bloggers’ guide, we’ll explore in-depth the top 8 things you can do to increase traffic to your site.

Top 8 SEO Tips to Direct More Traffic to Your Blog

Unless a reader already knows of your blog and knows exactly how to find it online, the only way someone is going to find you is via the results page of their favorite search engine.

Unfortunately for you, there are hundreds of millions of blogs out there which you’ll need to beat to the top of that page. Which is exactly why informed SEO (search engine optimization) is the key to your blog’s success.

Here are 8 key tips to SEO which will naturally drive more traffic to your blog; SEO best practices which will establish a framework and dependable structure on which you can build your blog even stronger going forward.

Strategic Keyword Research

There are a number of elements (which grows increasingly more diverse) which search engines like Google and Ecosia use to determine the relevancy of a webpage to a user’s search.

It’s a web browser’s goal (and some would say, duty) to provide its users with valuable, engaging, entertaining and trustworthy information. Thus, when a user types in “How do I increase traffic to my blog?” it is the browser’s job to provide them with links to articles which shall dependably assist them with their issue.

One of the first things a browser like Google does, when sifting through the internet for relevant articles and blogs, is to look for pages which contain keywords relevant to, or contained within, that user’s search.

In this case, for example, Google would be looking for any pages which deal with “blogs” and “increased traffic”. At the same time, Google will also be looking for these pages to contain other relevant keywords and phrases which its algorithm identifies as related to the search. For example, these might include “SEO”, “optimization”, “search engines”, “SEO strategy”, and so on.

To organically increase the chances that your blog posts are identified by Google as relevant and informative, and thus worthy of pushing toward the top of its search results pages, you need to conduct strategic keyword research.

There are an abundance of digital tools you can use to help you conduct this keyword research, including Ranktracker’s Keyword Finder. With these tools, you need only type in the topic your blog piece is focusing on, and the tool will provide you with a list of all the most popular searched-for words and phrases pertaining to that topic.

Alternatively, of course, you can conduct this research manually by reading other blog posts and articles like yours and writing down phrases you see pop-up regularly.

Once you’ve conducted your strategic SEO keyword research, you can use your keywords when writing your blog posts to populate them with relevant words and phrases which search engines will look for the next time a user attempts to find out more about your chosen niche.

Fire up your keyword research tool of choice, gather hundreds of opportunities, export the data into a Google Sheets document, and build a simple content strategy covering a couple of months ahead. Set up a drop-down list to categorize your keywords by search intent: informational, navigational, and transnational.

Optimized and In-Depth Content

One of the major problems facing search engine providers today is the mastery of SEO by marketers and enterprises less concerned with adding genuine value and accurate information to a web user’s day, than they are with lining their pockets.

In other words, companies like Google use their algorithms to sort through the trillions of web pages on the internet in search of the best and brightest. To do so, they employ certain metrics which we – in articles like this – attempt to understand and use to our benefit. This makes it difficult for Google et al. to distinguish between genuinely great articles, and articles written purely for SEO purposes.

One of the ways in which search engine providers are attempting to get around this conundrum is by adding to their algorithms a requirement for optimized and in-depth content.

When establishing your blog, you should consider what’s going to make it unique. One element of this should be the niche area of discussion your blog covers, or the gap in the market it fills. Having established this, you can create content which takes a deep dive into niche, unusual and under-explored topics.

Search engines like experts, and if you can show that you know your chosen area of expertise inside-out with high-quality, thoroughly-researched and in-depth content, you’re much more likely to see an increase in traffic to your blog.

Proper Use of Headings

Another of the major fundamentals of SEO is the proper use of headings. You may also at times see this SEO tip referred to as the optimization of HTML heading codes.

Much of search engine functionality takes place in the HTML coding (hypertext markup language) of webpages. The search engine reads this coding in search of signs that the page is relevant to the user’s search.

One of the first things a search engine will look at is the H1 Heading of any article or blog post. The HTML of the H1 Heading tells the search engine in a nutshell what the succeeding article is all about. If this matches the user’s search criteria, then the search engine knows to explore the article further.

For example, the H1 Heading of this particular article is “SEO for Bloggers: 8 SEO Tips for Improving Site Traffic”. Immediately, this tells search engines that the ensuring article is going to be about optimizing your posts for search engines in order to drive more traffic to your blog.

Your H1 Heading doesn’t have to be the same as your meta title, but it should contain your most relevant keyword(s).

It’s equally important to SEO – and thus to the growth of your blog – that the H1 Heading also acts as the tip of a ‘heading umbrella’ structuring the rest of the article.

I’ve seen it described like so: “If the H1 Heading is the title of your book, then H2 Headings are the chapters, H3 Headings the different sections of each chapter, and H4-H6 Headings for clarification within sections.”

Using headings properly not only makes it much easier from an HTML point-of-view for search engines to determine the relevance of your blog post, but doing so also makes the UX (user experience) much smoother and more enjoyable.

The smoother and more enjoyable the reader’s experience, the more likely they are to keep reading, and to return at a later date for more.

We understand that this can be a little tricky to master, which is why Ranktracker offers a super simple SEO Web Audit tool for you to analyze at the glance the SEO compatibility of any one of your blog posts (or your site as a whole!).

Be Visual! Always Add Images or Videos

A large part of mastering SEO can be done in your spare time, whilst you surf the internet for your own enjoyment. Ask yourself: What do I like about this page? What do I not? In analyzing the elements of a blog, article, page or piece of content, you are consciously identifying areas of strong and weak SEO.

One of the things we can surely all agree on is that we are visual animals. We love to be stimulated by the things we see around us. We like color, vibrancy, patterns and pictures. We love videos – whether on TikTok, YouTube, Netflix or Facebook.

Interestingly enough, this natural human affinity for visual stimuli plays an important part in SEO, and thus should be at the forefront of your mind when designing your blog and each individual blog post.

Internal Linking: Promote Older Blog Topics and Relevant Resources

Do you ever start reading a page about someone or something on Wikipedia, and five minutes later find yourself deep down a rabbit hole of information on a whole other topic? Well, in essence, this is the beauty of internal linking.

In the example, each of the blue hyperlinked, red underlined terms are links to an article on that specific topic. You, the reader, are interested in learning about SEO, which is why you visited the Wikipedia page on ‘Search engine optimization’. Now here, you find that Wikipedia is _also _an authority on many of the terms related to SEO, which you can click on at any point in order to dive deeper, and learn more.

This is a fantastic example of SEO in practice. Search engines see backlinks to older relevant content on your site as a sign that you are an authority on your niche topic. Not only are you writing about “The Best Vietnamese Restaurants in Glasgow”, for example, you can backlink to previous articles you wrote on Vietnamese cuisine, spice in South East Asian cooking, and Glasgow’s best pubs.

Each _relevant _backlink you include in a blog post adds value to that post and to the user’s experience. Just make sure you read up on how to capture readers’ attention with backlinks first.

Sometimes, you’ll naturally backlink as you’re writing. However, it’s more likely that you’ll need to formulate a backlinking strategy for your blog further down the line, once you’ve got more articles to link to. For this, it’s worth considering either hiring a professional SEO team to do the work manually, or opting instead for an AI SEO tool to help you do the job yourself.

Organize Articles Using Tags and Categories

Just like headings should be used to properly structure individual blog posts for greater SEO and improved site traffic, your cohort of articles should likewise be strictly organized with the use of tags and categories.

Let’s take a look at each in order to discover what they do and why you should use them to improve SEO:

Tags

Applying tags to articles indicates which topics they touch upon, and thus which other articles on your site they may share certain similarities with. Tags are sort of like #hashtags on a social media platform. They indicate both to your readers and to search engines like Google where in wider conversations your blog posts sit.

Here are some examples of tags you might apply to that fictional blog piece we described above, “The Best Vietnamese Restaurants in Glasgow”:

• Glasgow
• Vietnam
• Vietnamese Food
• Restaurants
• Eating Out
• Pho
• Noodles
• Asian Cuisine

Categories

Categories are much broader than tags, and blog posts should really only be filed under one category at a time (except in exceptional situations). A category might encapsulate blog posts on a number of different topics, but should clearly and consistently tie all of these posts together under an umbrella which makes sense. Usually, categories are also used for site navigation, and so are especially important for SEO and improving the UI and UX of your blog.

Here are some example categories you might file the above blog on Vietnamese food in Glasgow under:

• Restaurant Guides
• Scotland Travel Guides
• Food Reviews

The better organized your blog posts are, and the more identifiable they’re made by categorizing and tagging them, the easier it is for both search engines and your readers to navigate your site. Consequently, you’ll begin ranking higher on search engines – something you’ll be able to track for growth management purposes with a tool like Ranktracker.

Reasonable Article Length: Not Too Long, Not Too Short

The length of your articles is another aspect of web pages which search engines read before determining whether they’re going to display your blog in their SERPs or not.

A post that’s too short tells Google, Ecosia, Safari etc., that the article probably doesn’t contain enough information to be useful to the user. A post that’s too long tells the same search engine that either the user will lose focus/attention, or that the post is not concise enough to be useful.

In order to drive more traffic to your blog, you want to make sure that each and every one of your blog posts sits right in the middle of that ideal word count length. This sweet spot – in which search engines determine your post must be long-form content displaying E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) – can differ depending on your competition.

For example, if other bloggers in your niche tend to write 1,000 word posts, and you write a 3,000 word post, then search engines will probably deem it ‘too long’. If, on the other hand, bloggers in your niche regularly pump out 3,000 word pieces, then your latest post is right in the sweet spot.

You can check out the competition and learn how to match their SEO standards (including with regards to word length) with Ranktracker.

Be Consistent in Posting

Our very final pro tip on improving SEO for driving more traffic to your blog is quite simple: be consistent. The same goes for a number of types of brand marketing and social engagement enterprises, including on social media platforms, where regular content is the only thing keeping followers attracted to your page.

Search engines prefer sites which post often, and at regular intervals. This tells search engine algorithms that you are an active blogger regularly updating old information and providing new, quality posts for a readership to continue coming back to.

We’re not suggesting you have to post every day – far from it – but we do recommend you make a routine and stick to it. One post every fortnight, for example, posted on a Wednesday evening.

Equally, search engines want to see consistency in quality, as well as in quantity. Try your best to keep the quality of your blog posts high, and their E-A-T aspects consistent each and every time. Doing so will prove to Google and the like that your blog is one to watch, and in time one to push further and further up the rankings.

Conclusion

Blogging is most often done for fun, but it can also become a real money-maker and influential form of public-access journalism if done right. In order to drive more people to your site, and keep them there(!), make sure you pay due attention to SEO best practices. By implementing our top SEO tips for blogs, we’re confident you’ll see an improvement in site traffic in no time.