Common SEO Mistakes Bloggers Make (& How to Fix Them!)
After going through more blogs and websites for clients than I can count, I often see bloggers making the same SEO mistakes time and time again. The crazy thing is, even though these are the biggest SEO mistakes every blogger makes, they’re so simple to fix!
Meta Descriptions
Not even sure what these are? That’s okay! meta descriptions are the copy you see under each bold headline in a search results page. You may also see these called search descriptions. This is the content that should entice a person to click from Google and onto your website because what you’ve written as a “preview” lines up with what they’re looking for.
How do meta descriptions help your SEO? First and foremost, they enhance user experience. If a reader can correctly identify that the content on your site will fill their needs because of your descriptive meta description, they’re more likely to click to your website and stay there longer. Secondly, your search descriptions help the “Googlebot” (and other search engine crawlers) to accurately understand what your site is offering and the content of that specific web page you’re linking to.
Those blue headlines in the picture above? Those are also called Meta Titles. Sometimes, the title of your blog post will also be your headline or meta title by default.
Meta Titles + Meta Descriptions = Meta Tags.
They’re all related, not quite interchangeable, and all together they’re super important for SEO.
Keywords
Let’s start with the basics. A keyword is what needs to align in your blog post with the search term that a potential reader types into a search engine.
Keyword Research
My favorite keyword research tools are SEMRush, Google’s Keyword Planner, and (my secret weapon) Pinterest! Some of these links may be affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you click these links at no cost to you.
SEMRush is a paid tool that will help you optimize and prioritize your content strategy. If you really want to dig in and plan your categories and posts, I can’t say enough good things about the in-depth knowledge and suggestions that SEMRush has to support you. You’ll specifically want to look at their Keyword Magic Tool for this.
Get your FREE Keyword Magic Trial!
Google’s Keyword Planner and Pinterest are both free, but you’ll need to have accounts to use both. A new post coming soon specifically about how I use Pinterest for keyword research, so stay tuned for that!
Picking the Correct Keywords
As I gather my keywords during the research phase, I’ll collect them all either at the top of my drafted blog post before I begin or in a spreadsheet.
You want to use keywords and long-tail keyword phrases that have decent search volume but not too much competition. The narrower you can be normally the better, but you may swing too far when niching down and have content catered to keywords that no one is actually looking for. Ranking #1 for purple widgets is great, until you realize that no one cares about purple widgets.
For example, when I was working on this post for Morgan ma Belle, these were the keywords and keyword phrases I selected: “what to wear for your engagement shoot,” “photoshoot fashion tips for men,” “engagement session style guide,” “coordinating your outfits for photoshoot,” and “outdoor engagement photos.” Other keywords that I found while researching included “river photoshoot” and “best couple poses,” which then prompted this second post!
Writing Optimized Content
Now, how to actually use those keywords and keyword phrases you’ve researched to write your content?
You can start by looking at what your competitors are writing about (or what those popular pins are saying in their descriptions) because that’s what people are searching for. But make sure to bring something new to the table — put your unique spin or story behind the content you’re creating.
- You want to work them into your paragraphs naturally. No keyword stuffing! Make sure to use them in your title and any section titles in a way that makes sense to both readers and to search engine crawlers.
- If you find that you have too many keywords to cram into a post, consider making a series of posts all round the same content idea with various versions of the keywords you’ve deemed best.
- And, of course, make sure to use your keywords in your Page Title and Meta Description!
Image Compression For Site Speed
Bloggers don’t depend on their words to tell a story, they also have to use images! But all those nice images make for some large files and sloooooow load time. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s loading time on both desktop and mobile.
You want to compress your images so your blog loads faster and people won’t get impatient and click away before they’ve even read all that nice content you’ve worked so hard to optimize with keywords and meta descriptions!
If you’re using WordPress to blog, you can use the WPSmush plugin to compress your images after you’ve already uploaded them.
If you prefer to compress your images before uploading (I do!), then I recommend the following:
- JPEG only (PNG is too large and should be reserved for your site logo)
- less than 1 MB size
- You can reduce the file size in many of your basic editing software options on your laptop, like MS Paint or Photoshop.
Don’t forget you can join my free Facebook group for SEO and digital marketing strategies! Share your questions, post your polls, and interact in weekly prompts & challenges to kick-start your social and search engine growth.
See you there!
Originally published here.
