How To Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

By Rachel Thompson | Blog

Dec 10
How To Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO, BadRedhead Media, Rachel Thompson, @BadRedheadMedia

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 

How To Best Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO, BadRedhead Media, Rachel Thompson, @BadRedheadMedia

 

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.

***

To read the rest of this post, and many more updated tips, purchase this mini eBook on Amazon for only 99c! 

BadRedhead Media's HOW TO BEST OPTIMIZE BLOG POSTS FOR SEO by @BadRedheadMedia

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.30Day-BadRedheadMedia-Book-Marketing-Challenge-2018-WEB

Sign up for my newsletter and never miss a post again! I will never share your email and that’s a promise. Follow me on Twitter @RachelintheOC or @BadRedheadMedia for social media, branding, or marketing help. Increase your blog traffic by participating in #MondayBlogs (a Twitter meme I created to share posts on Mondays — no book promo)

All content © 2018 by BadRedhead Media aka Rachel Thompson, author, unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided a link back to this page and proper attribution is given to me as the original author.


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About the Author

Rachel Thompson is the author of newly released BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge: How to energize your book sales in a month - created to help authors market their book. She is also the author of Broken Places (one of IndieReader's "Best of 2015" top books and 2015 Honorable Mention Winner in the San Francisco Book Festival), and the multi award-winning Broken Pieces, as well as two additional humor books, A Walk In The Snark and Mancode: Exposed. She owns BadRedhead Media, creating effective social media and book marketing campaigns for authors. Her articles appear regularly in The Huffington Post,  IndieReader.com, The San Francisco Book Review (BadRedhead Says…), 12Most.com, BookPromotion.com, and Self-Publishers Monthly. Not just an advocate for sexual abuse survivors, Rachel is the creator and founder of the hashtag phenomenon #MondayBlogs and two live Twitter chats: #BookMarketingChat (co-hosted with TheRuralVA, Emilie Rabitoy) and #SexAbuseChat, co-hosted with C. Streetlights and Judith Staff. She hates walks in the rain, running out of coffee, and coconut. She lives in California with her family.

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Leave a Comment:

(25) comments

MeChell December 12, 2016

A lot of great info here. I am definitely going to try these!

Reply
Better Blog Post Branding with Images | Forseng Fiction December 18, 2016

[…] 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 […]

Reply
10 Tips To Up Your Book Marketing Skills Right Now - BadRedhead Media January 4, 2017

[…] 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. […]

Reply
Orval March 4, 2017

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

Reply
Vladimir Covic April 24, 2017

Very good info, especially for new bloggers. Thank you Rachel.

Reply
    Rachel Thompson April 24, 2017

    HI, Vladimir and thanks so much! It’s an easy beginner guide, and that’s what I’m aiming for. Appreciate your comments.

    Reply
Kim Amy April 24, 2017

Thanks for a more straightforward way to look at Seo without all the technical jargon

Reply
    Rachel Thompson April 24, 2017

    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.

    Reply
How to Create and Market your Author Platform FREE - BadRedhead Media June 4, 2017

[…] 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 […]

Reply
How to Create Pre-Launch Buzz for Your Book Right Now - BadRedhead Media July 24, 2017

[…] 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 […]

Reply
Helix forte review July 29, 2017

Thanks foor finally writing about >Why WordPress is the Best Choice for your Author Website by @sugarbeatbc <Loved it!

Reply
How to best optimize your blog posts for SEO - BookMachine August 25, 2017

[…] 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.  […]

Reply
Bryn November 26, 2017

Rachel! This is very easy on the eyes – and very easy on the mind – perfect for beginners!

Reply
manik sharma February 9, 2018

thanks for sharing this article good work

Reply
sachin raj February 19, 2018

thank you so much for this information.
this is very helpful specially for me because i am beginner.
thank you again

Reply
Gajraj Singh June 26, 2018

Hey bro can you guide me if i use 4-5 images in my 2000 words article can it affect SEO

Reply
    Rachel Thompson June 26, 2018

    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.

    Reply
Teachtalk July 26, 2018

Very nice info, especially for new bloggers. Thank you Rachel.

Reply
Tom Buckland July 31, 2018

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

Reply
Ananthi Mathur August 8, 2018

Great post Rachel! Guide looks super promising. Have also signed up for the newsletter. Thanks!

Reply
Jason Steward August 29, 2018

Informative article, exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks for sharing the information!

Reply
Ravi Singh April 14, 2021

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.

Reply
    Rachel Thompson April 14, 2021

    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

    Reply
Amara Smith May 10, 2021

Hey Rachel. Thanks for sharing this mini book telling about blog optimization. Short, Crisp and Simple. Keep writing and sharing your thoughts.

Reply
stanley December 1, 2021

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

Reply
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