How To Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO
When I talk with authors about optimizing their blog posts for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), most look at me as though I’m speaking in tongues. And maybe I am: SEO is a different language when you think about it. Authors aren’t socialized to learn this stuff. It’s only through understanding the importance of book marketing, and how SEO fits into our author platform, that we realize, “holy moly, this optimization stuff truly does have an impact — maybe I should take it more seriously,” and so we do.
Well, some of us anyway.
What is Blog Optimization?
According to Hubspot:
When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are looking for keywords associated with your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google.
Once I got serious about this publishing career thingy, I studied, took classes, hired a professional (Barb Drozdowich of Bakerview Consulting, who is amazing) and switched to WordPress.org (from Blogger — if you’re an author, self-hosted WordPress (aka WordPress.org) is, by far, the preferred publishing platform of the industry). My decades in Big Pharma didn’t prepare me for the enormity of the multitude of tasks required for online publishing, but it certainly helped me to embrace it.
And now I want to help you do the same. Here is my 25-step blog optimization guide. It’s specifically designed for WordPress, but you can adapt it to whichever platform you use.
Here we go.
Blog Post Optimization 25-Point Guide
1) Headline
Use the Coschedule headline analyzer. Be sure to head over to the analyzer to fiddle with the headline and aim for a score of 70 or above (it will show green for GO). This will help with your Google SEO and click rate. If you can only get into the high sixties, that’s cool. Read their tips to score a better headline — VERY helpful! It takes some practice but you will get the hang of it quickly. I find this helpful for all clients and even my own blogs.
2) Permalink
Once you change the headline, be SURE to change the permalink (which is right under the title and says ‘permalink’). Again, this goes to SEO. Pro Tip: If you change an existing permalink (e.g., on an old post), you’ll lose your existing social proof, aka shares, so be aware. There is a way to do it that involves coding — read more here.
Pro Tip: You can update an old post’s pub date without affecting your social proof/shares if you don’t want to change the permalink. This will move it to the front of your queue. I recommend regularly updating evergreen posts.
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To read the rest of this post, and many more updated tips, purchase this mini eBook on Amazon for only 99c!
Purchase now for only 99c on Amazon!
My newly updated book, The BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge is now available on Amazon! Want to jump-start your author platform and book sales? Buy this book.
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A lot of great info here. I am definitely going to try these!
[…] used for blog post branding. I got this idea when reading Rachel Thompson’s excellent article How to Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO. One of the points Rachel makes is that you should have an image at the beginning of your blog post […]
[…] at least once weekly. This is effective for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Not sure what to blog about? Focus on your branding and keywords. […]
Professional SEO is a weird industry, because its
technical it is best done by workers who have researched the industry and have
practical experience, this is not always the case with a lot of professionals though
I have added you in my reading bookmarks, keep up the good work
Very good info, especially for new bloggers. Thank you Rachel.
HI, Vladimir and thanks so much! It’s an easy beginner guide, and that’s what I’m aiming for. Appreciate your comments.
Thanks for a more straightforward way to look at Seo without all the technical jargon
Thanks so much, Kim. I’m sure there are more techie folks out there who can run circles around me but I didn’t want that here — it’s confusing and discouraging. That confused me and it took me a long time to understand what’s important. I wanted this to be an easy intro for authors, and if they want to dig in further, there are many resources linked in here that allow them to do that.
[…] create a great SEO post use BadRedhead Media’s Blog Post Optimization 23-Point Guide and the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer – Both totally free and super […]
[…] or Huffington Post, which aren’t indexed by Google. Time: 60 minutes per blog to write and optimize. It’s fine to share your posts on Medium/Huffington after you’ve initially shared on […]
Thanks foor finally writing about >Why WordPress is the Best Choice for your Author Website by @sugarbeatbc <Loved it!
[…] Rachel Thompson is a bestselling author, and a social media and author marketing/branding consultant (BadRedheadMedia). She writes for several sites, including Huffington Post, Medium, Mogul, Feminine Collective, Pronoun, Blue Ink Review and Indie Reader. This post was originally published on Rachel’s blog. […]
Rachel! This is very easy on the eyes – and very easy on the mind – perfect for beginners!
thanks for sharing this article good work
thank you so much for this information.
this is very helpful specially for me because i am beginner.
thank you again
Hey bro can you guide me if i use 4-5 images in my 2000 words article can it affect SEO
It’s not so much the images (unless you use terrible images) but how you optimize them, as I say in my article and mini-book.
Very nice info, especially for new bloggers. Thank you Rachel.
There are still a lot of individuals who are not familiar with the term SEO and how they can fully utilize and optimize it to increase their rankings. This article is really an excellent share to everyone as it is really informative and helpful
Great post Rachel! Guide looks super promising. Have also signed up for the newsletter. Thanks!
Informative article, exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks for sharing the information!
Thanks for information, Also internal and external link enhancement is a key to success in Off page SEO and it can improve ranking by 20% which is a huge difference for anyone.
Hi Ravi – yes, I list that in my book – great tip!
I only share a tiny snippet here! I keep the book priced at only 99c so it’s an affordable buy for any writer or blogger. Thanks for visiting
Hey Rachel. Thanks for sharing this mini book telling about blog optimization. Short, Crisp and Simple. Keep writing and sharing your thoughts.
hi Rachel, really appreciate the efforts you have put in! I was very confused about setting up my first post on blogger, thanks again for the guide