How To Make SEO Work: An Easy Starter Guide for Mompreneurs
“My rule of thumb is to build a site for a user, not a spider.” - Dave Naylor
Do you hear the words SEO and wanna scream?
Does SEO shout HARD WORK and BORING to you?
I know it did for me when I first started blogging, mainly because I couldn’t get my head around it and I didn’t really understand it all…
But, the more I’ve learned about SEO, the more comfortable and confident I’ve become with it. The sheer fact is, that you can’t blog without it.
SEO is something bloggers need to know about and it needs to be incorporated into your blogging strategy.
At least it does if you want to rank and get anywhere that is – and I know you do!
As Mums, it’s hard enough trying to find the time to actually write blog posts, let alone incorporate SEO into the mix!
We don’t have as much time and energy to put into our blogs as others do, that’s why when we are blogging, we need to make sure that we’re using our time wisely and that everything we’re doing is productive and moving our blogs forward in the right direction.
I know that when I was learning all about SEO, the overwhelm was incredible.
There’s so much information out there, that it’s hard to decipher it all and understand what we actually need to do to get it right!
So how do we do this SEO stuff without it being so time-consuming that it becomes a full-time job on its own?
That’s where I come in to share how to make SEO work: an easy starter guide for mompreneurs…
But, before we get into it, let’s take a look at what SEO actually is…
“This post does contain affiliate links throughout and if you make a purchase using one of my links, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you”
What is SEO exactly…
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it’s where you grow your traffic organically via search engines.
When you optimise your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPS), this gives you a higher chance of people finding your website when they’re searching for information online.
It’s super important because most people find websites via a search engine.
Did you know that when people are searching for something on Google, they’re only likely to click on something that shows up on the first page?
The first few results on that page are the most visible, so websites need to rank as high as possible.
Every search engine’s aim is to provide the best, most relevant results for its users.
To get slightly technical, but not too in-depth – search engines crawl the internet using bots (called spiders) to find new pages to index in the search!
This is all to do with the algorithm, which unfortunately changes all the time and can throw things out.
You can never get used to anything when it comes to search engines, especially good old Google – which is by far the most superior search engine out there…
But it’s all good and well knowing that you need SEO in your blogging life, but what are the benefits of Search Engine Optimisation?
What are the Benefits of SEO?
The reason bloggers love SEO is that it has a tendency to result in consistent traffic for them, whereas other platforms such as social media tend to have a high influx of traffic when something’s actually posted, but that’s about it.
It then disappears into the nether, out of everyone’s mind!
So with that said, there’s tons of benefits to SEO, but some of them are:
Increased web traffic
Increased brand awareness
More leads and sales
Improved search engine rankings
More authority within your niche
Helps you achieve your online business goals…
With all these benefits, you can see why you should definitely be jumping on the SEO bandwagon!
But will I see quick results with SEO?
SEO is definitely a long-term strategy because it takes time to see results.
It’s not a one time fix either and is something you have to continuously work on.
Adding content consistently and optimising your website are a must, but if you stick with it, you’ll start to see improvement in your search engine rankings over time.
It’s taken me months to start seeing my traffic increase with SEO and it is a slow process, plus, if I haven’t posted weekly on my blog, I’ve really noticed how much it dips.
It can be disheartening to put in so much time and effort without any instant gratification, but that’s SEO for you and you need to keep going forward…
The only thing I can really ingrain in you is to be consistent. As cliche as it sounds, it really is the only way you’ll make any success with your blog.
You just have to keep showing up and putting fab, valuable content out there. Keep putting in the work and it’ll pay off in the long run!
What’s the difference between Organic & Paid traffic?
There are two types of search results – organic and paid.
Organic results mean that your website will be listed in the unpaid, or natural, results of a search engine and you cannot pay to be there.
Paid search results are those that are sponsored by an advertiser and are listed at the top of the page, as you can see in the above image.
Every time someone clicks on a paid search result, the advertiser pays the search engine under what’s called pay-per-click (PPC).
Everyone wants to be ranked within Google, as it’s the leading search engine, however, SEO isn’t just about Google.
There’s many other search engines out there too, such as Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Yandex to name a few and as bloggers, you’ll want to cater for these as well.
So now we’ve covered what SEO is, some of the benefits and the types of search results there are, let’s look at what you can actually do to make SEO work for you and your blog!
I’m going to share all the things you can do to give you the best possible chance at showing up on the search results pages…
Let’s dive right in mama…
Why Site Structure is so important for SEO
Firstly, let’s start off with the basics and that’s making sure your website has a good structure to it.
Without a good structure, search engines are gonna be put off straight away!
Nobody wants to visit a jumbled site, where they have no clue what it’s about.
Site structure is super important for SEO because it helps search engines understand your website’s content.
You need to make sure when visitors come to your site, they know straight away what it’s all about and to make sure this happens, have a clear layout and a well-defined topic.
When you have a well-structured website, search engines can easily crawl and index your pages, helping your website to rank higher in the SERPS.
You can improve your site’s structure by using an SEO plugin, such as RankMath SEO. This plugin will help you optimise your website’s meta descriptions, title and content readability, images and more, to give you better SEO results.
I’ll be talking more about RankMath later on in the post.
Create a Sitemap and Submit it to Google Search Console
Another way to help your SEO efforts is to create a sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console.
When you first start a blog, it can take a while for Google to take you out of the sandbox, but at some stage, your website will get seen.
You can speed up this process by submitting your site to Google yourself and you do this with Google Search Console.
To get your site indexed, you need to submit your website URL and sitemap.
A sitemap is a file that contains all the URLs of the pages on your website. This file helps Google find and index your website’s pages quickly and easily.
If you use a plugin such as RankMath SEO like I mentioned above, you can do all this within that, but if not, you can do it manually by creating a sitemap for free using the Google XML Sitemaps Generator.
Just enter your website’s URL and click the “Generate XML Sitemap” button.
Once you’ve created your sitemap, you need to submit it to Google Search Console.
To do this, sign in to your Google Search Console account and select the website for which you want to submit a sitemap.
In the left-hand menu, select “Sitemaps.” and enter the URL of your sitemap.
Click the “submit” button and Google will start to index your website’s pages.
The last thing I want to say about site structure, is to make sure it’s always easy to navigate around and the layout is simple for both you to use and your visitors to consume your content.
Have clear menus and topics so people know exactly what they’re getting.
Have a Self Hosted Website
Another really important aspect of SEO and for your blog, in general, is to have a self-hosted website.
If you’re serious about SEO, a self-hosted website is a must!
It’s basically a website that you host on your own server and it allows you to have complete control over the customisations and the way it looks, feels and functions via a theme!
You get to choose from hundreds of themes too (my fave is Divi), which can help you even more, as you don’t have to build from scratch as there’s templates involved.
It also requires no coding and means you can use plugins to help with all kinds of things, including SEO. There are some incredible plugins out there for sure!
There’s several ways you can do it, but I find the easiest and simplest is to use a good hosting company that you can purchase a domain name and server space from, all in one place!
These companies usually use a platform called WordPress (the best and only self-hosted platform I recommend) and it’s super simple to set up (more on this in the next section)…
Why do you need good hosting!
A good hosting package is crucial for SEO purposes, as well as your whole blog in general.
When you have a good hosting package, your website will not only load faster, but it’ll rank higher in search engines.
Search engines love fast-loading websites and when your website loads quickly, it tells them that it’s high quality and of value.
When you’re a new mamma blogger, I can’t recommend SiteGround enough. They offer fast-loading servers, excellent customer support, and free SEO tools.
You can also use their 1-click WordPress installation to make setting up your website a breeze. This really does make setting up your first blog quick, simple and even fun to do!
SiteGround also provides a free SSL certificate for your website, which is really important because it helps keep your website secure and protects your visitors’ privacy.
Whichever hosting company you go for, just make sure they can offer all of these things, so that your website is safe and your visitors are safe and protected too!
I really can’t fault Siteground at all. They’ve sorted out soooo many things for me, when I’ve messed things up (yep – it happens) and when I couldn’t work something out, so give them a try as you won’t be disappointed with what they offer.
They’re amazing for beginner bloggers…
Does Server Location affect SEO?
With millions of blogs around the world and all kinds of people checking them out from everywhere, server location can play a big part in SEO and your site speed.
If you’re looking for even better SEO results, you can use a CDN or Cloudflare.
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a service that delivers your website’s contents from servers around the world. This helps ensure your website loads quickly no matter where your visitors are located.
Bunny.net is a content delivery platform you can check out and they’re really affordable too when starting a new blog!
Cloudflare is a free service that helps protect your website against attacks, as well as increase your website’s security and speed up your website’s loading times.
If you use SiteGround to host your website, they now have their own in house CDN (which has replaced the free Cloudflare CDN).
If you want to use Cloudflare and it’s not within your hosting package, you can get it here…
Using a CDN is really important in making the experience for your visitors fast and enjoyable.
UX or User Experience
The biggest and most important thing for any blog and website is the user experience or UX for short!
I want to say this… Whenever you’re writing content and putting something out on your site – the only thing that should be at the forefront of your mind is your audience…
Your audience comes first and your SEO second…
Do not ever write just for SEO purposes because your readers will see right through this.
You can’t put out amazing content if you’re not writing from the heart and writing for them first.
Yes, SEO is important to even get your content noticed and read, but when you write with the purpose of anything other than for the reader, your text will be stilted and unnatural.
Naturally written content will flow and because it reads easier, it’ll be better for SEO anyway, so a win-win!
When you have a good UX, your visitors will stay longer on your website and be more likely to convert into customers.
So what can you do to make the User Experience second to none:
Use High-Quality Images & Videos
High-quality images and videos will help to keep your readers not only engaged but on your website for longer.
We all know that visual content is leading the way and we all engage far more and have much more of a connection with people when we see them.
SEO takes into account things like bounce rates (how long a user stays on your site before, well-bouncing)… and anything which can engage them for longer will have a knock-on effect on this.
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but when you search for something on Google, it brings up videos in the search results too.
Videos are such a powerful way to consume content, it’s no wonder they appear higher in the search results.
Also, when you upload an image or video to your blog, be sure to include keywords in the file name and fill out the alternate text field with a brief description of the image. This will help hugely with your SEO!
Use a Responsive Theme
Use a responsive blog theme such as Divi, which looks great on all devices.
Divi automatically adjusts the size of the screen, making it easy for visitors to get a great experience on your site. I talk more here about how to use Divi.
Responsive themes are crucial because so many people want to look at content anytime and anywhere – usually from their mobile devices!
There’s nothing worse than visiting a site that doesn’t cater for mobile. You can’t see half the content and have to keep scrolling over to find things…
You can see in the image below when creating pages using Divi, I create them within the scope of the phone editor because I want to make sure mobile users are top of mind and get the best experience when on my blog.
Make sure your Site is Easy to Navigate
Making sure your visitors can get around your site easily is vital!
Clear menus and categories are really important for SEO purposes too as search engines need to be able to crawl pages easily.
I’ve made my blog really clear as to what’s on it.
My categories are simple and easy to understand and within each category, I give a rundown of what kinds of content can be found within that category itself!
You want it to be Pretty
I bet you’re like me and like to look at a nice pretty site when you land on it.
Pretty colours make it a nice, enjoyable experience.
You can have a beautiful website that doesn’t hinder the content you put on it.
Just always keep in mind simplicity… Don’t get hung up trying to make it all look perfect because you’ll never get anything up online!
Pick some core brand colours and stick to them throughout your blog, using them within posts and on pages.
As Mums and women, we’re instantly drawn to pretty sites, so it makes sense to create our own sites to be visually appealing.
Easy to read Fonts
Another way to make sure you’re getting the best out of your SEO efforts is to make sure you’re using clear, easy to read fonts!
I like nothing more than a pretty, squiggly font when it comes to a pin image, but when it comes to my blog – I want simple, bold and stand out fonts.
You want your fonts to be set larger for your headings, of which the main ones to use are H1, H2 and H3…
Then you also want to make sure your body text isn’t too small. I have mine set to 18px on all devices.
Plenty of White Space
This is one which I find necessary, at least as a consumer of content anyway.
I hate going to blogs to read an article and it’s full to the brim with stuff – EVERYWHERE!
I want to be able to read the article comfortably, without my eyes shooting all over the place at more things.
You can see I have plenty of white space within my posts and on my pages too, so make sure you don’t cause your readers distress by having posts and pages which are far too busy!
Clear Call to Actions
Having clear Calls to Action (CTA’s) are also crucial for a great UX, as well as for SEO!
Whenever you’re writing a post, you must include some kind of CTA for your visitor.
You don’t want them to leave without taking some kind of action…
This action could be:
Clicking a link to visit another of your blog posts
Signing up for a freebie and joining your email list
Purchasing a product (your own or an affiliate product)
Leaving a comment…
Whichever CTA you apply to your posts, make sure it’s clear on the action you want your visitor to take and don’t make them jump through hoops to take it either.
Make things as easy and simple as possible for them.
When visitors click more links on your site, Google sees this as awesome and will rank you higher…
Avoid crazy pop-ups
Another thing to bear in mind when creating a good UX is to make sure you haven’t got pop-ups appearing constantly.
There’s nothing worse than reading something and having a pop-up appear, blocking what you’re reading.
I’m not saying pop-ups aren’t good, not at all. In fact, they actually give a high conversion rate if they’re used in the right way.
The best way to use a pop-up is to either set it to an exit-intent – meaning when a visitor goes to leave the site and clicks on the “x” in the browser, a pop up will appear or to have it as a slide-in on desktop mode only.
When using an email marketing platform, such as ConvertKit, which is what I use and love, you can choose to switch it off on mobile and just show it on Desktop.
Site Speed
Another important SEO factor and UX is site speed.
Now you don’t have to have a site that loads at lightning speed, but you want it to load ideally in under 2-3 seconds.
You have to remember as well that site speed depends on several factors, including people’s internet speed, where they are in the world etc, so you won’t necessarily get a truly accurate speed test.
I use a free tool called GT Metrix and it shares all kinds of information on your sites, such as Performance, Structure and Waterfall to name a few!
You can see in the image above that my site is quick, but it could be improved.
There’s also some other great free site speed tools you can use and I recommend you use all of them to get an idea of how your site actually performs:
Site speed can be slowed down by several factors, some of which are:
Plugins which may be bulky and slow things down
Bulky Theme or Page Builder
Un-Optimised Images (use an image optimiser plugin such as Shortpixel which is fab) to help with this
Render-blocking javascript (far too techie for me lol)
Not using a CDN
Bad hosting
Many other things could potentially slow your website down, but these are some of the main reasons you can take a look at.
Use SEO-friendly URL structure
You’re probably wondering what the heck I’m talking about when it comes to URL structure, but it’s really super simple.
Google needs to know what all the pages on your site are and how they all relate to each other, so there’s some simple practices you can put into place to make sure you’re giving Google and your users the best possible experience.
Keep URLs short
Include Keywords in your URL
Keep URLs simple
Try not to include numbers/hyphens or other symbols etc
Make sure it’s easy to spell
Have it all in lowercase
Another thing you need to do is set your URL structure to “post name”.
You do this by going to Settings > Permalinks and making sure the Post name is selected.
NOTE: If however, you’ve already published blog posts with another setting selected DO NOT change this as you’ll break those links and your site. You do not want to do this, as this will make your SEO worse!
So that’s all the basics on how to create a great User Experience for your visitors.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is where you optimise as much as you can on that page/post to try and rank higher and gain more relevant traffic to your site from the search engines.
On-page SEO is an extremely important factor for ranking higher in search engines.
Here are the things to think about when it comes to on-page SEO:
Your content needs to be created with search intent in mind
Create clickable, enticing blog post titles
Optimise your Images (which we’ve already talked about) using Shortpixel and adding in the alt text, naming the file etc…
Create a good URL slug which we’ve also already talked about above
Optimise pages with certain keywords in mind (I’ll be talking about keyword research in the next section) to help you rank higher in the SERPS
Use the right keywords in your titles, descriptions, within your content and within the anchor text of your links too
Add internal links within your content to other posts and pages on your site, as this helps increase the authority of those pages and helps them to rank higher in the search engines
Make sure your website’s loading times are as fast as possible. Again I talked about this above. A slow-loading website can negatively affect your SEO rankings and cause visitors to leave your website.
When it comes to a fast loading website, there are plugins to help you.
As I host my site with SiteGround, they have a plugin that deals with all of the caching of data and files and everything else which helps to speed up your site’s loading times.
If you’re using a different host, they may have a plugin, but if not, you can use one such as W3 Total Cache.
Keyword research for SEO
Keyword research is a HUGE part of blogging and is essential if you’re going to try and rank in any of the search engines.
You need to know what kinds of things your target audience is searching for and you can start by thinking about words and phrases that define what your blog post topic is about and go from there…
These can then be plugged into keyword tools to help you decide whether you can rank for them and whether the topic is worth writing.
Keywords can be used throughout your website, including in your titles, descriptions, and tags, all of which will help you rank higher in search engines for those keywords and attract more traffic to your website.
There are literally tons of keyword research tools out there and believe me, it can get so overwhelming.
I use one tool and then a couple of other really helpful things:
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a paid tool, however, I don’t use the paid version at all.
The free version allows you to carry out 3 free searches a day which is perfect and more than enough for getting some keywords for a post or two a week I’m writing.
It’s so easy to use as well.
When you’ve signed up for an account, you can click on Keywords and type in a keyword for a topic you want to write about!
If you scroll down, you can see all the Keyword Ideas that come up, along with a colour-coded system as to how hard they’d be to rank for…
Red is hard to rank for and would be too competitive to go for, orange is still hard, but you could be in with a chance and green is much easier to rank for (they’re the keywords to go for ideally).
Basically, the higher the number, the more competitive the keyword will be to rank for.
Ubersuggest also gives you several tabs you can look under, some of which are Related, Questions and Prepositions, all of which you can click on to check out!
There’s also a Content Ideas section if you scroll even further down the page and here you can click on the Keywords tab under est.visits and it will open up a list of keywords for that content idea – cool huh!
Google Autosuggest
Another free tool, well it’s not an actual tool, but it’s really awesome to use is Google Autosuggest.
You’ve probably used this tool many times before and it’s amazing because you type something in and then it auto-populates what’s being searched for by people.
In the example below, I typed in “How to grow your” and it auto-populated all of the things you can see.
These are what people are actively searching for, so you can get so many blog post ideas and keyword ideas from this alone!
People Also Ask
As well as Google Autosuggest, there’s the People Also Ask section on every search page.
Whenever you type something in, it will bring up a section further down the page that shares other keywords and phrases people are searching for.
Again, this is awesome for blog topic and keyword ideas to include within your posts.
Keywords Everywhere
I briefly wanted to mention this nifty little tool which is a paid one, but I only paid about $10 for it.
I’ve only recently started using it and it comes up with some really great ideas.
It’s called Keywords Everywhere and you can get 100,000 credits (which last up to a year) and each keyword is 1 credit.
You can install it as an extension on either Chrome or Firefox and when you type in a search term, it will show you Search Volume, Cost per Click, Competition and Trend Data.
You can see in the image above how many credits you have and there’s a toggle to switch it on and off, which is fab as you can just use it when you’re carrying out keyword research.
With the normal search results (in the image below) it will show all the results the URL gets when you hover over the information for that particular search result.
As well as this, you also get some other results that show up in the right-hand sidebar.
Related Keywords come up first, then People Also Search For and then Long-Tail Keywords…
This is a great little tool for a next to nothing cost, which can really help you out with your keyword research.
Link building for SEO
Link building is basically the process of getting other people to link back to your site.
The more links you have from other websites, the better your website will rank in search engines.
It’s one of the most important factors in SEO because getting links from other websites tells search engines that your website is an authority on a particular topic.
NOTE: I want to just say here that you should never buy links. This is classed as “Black Hat” and you can get into a lot of trouble and be penalised by Google for doing this kind of thing.
One of the best ways for link building is with guest blogging, so let’s look into this a bit more now!
Guest Blogging for Link building
Guest blogging is when you write a blog post for another website and include a link to your website in the blog post.
Guest blogging is a great way to build links to your website and improve your SEO rankings because when you guest blog on another website, you’re posting an article on their website with a link back to your own.
This is a great way to get exposure for your website and attract more traffic. It’s also a great way to build links and SEO authority for your website.
You can find guest blogging opportunities by searching for websites in your niche that accept guest posts.
You could reach out to them and send an email to see whether they’d accept a post from you.
A lot of bloggers love guest posters because it’s an opportunity for them to get extra content on their blog, which they haven’t got to write themselves…
NOTE: Whenever you do a guest post, make sure you’re writing something of immense value, that will really help their audience. Make sure it’s unique and you put the time and effort into it that it deserves.
Also make sure you’re guest posting on relevant, authoritative sites within your own niche.
Using Social Media for Link Building
We’re pretty much all on social media nowadays, so it makes sense to be utilising it for our SEO!
If you stay active on social platforms, engage with your followers and post consistently, you’re helping to get more eyeballs on your content.
Exposing your brand to as many people as possible means you’re opening it up to more audiences and this can help you get to know other bloggers and build connections with other authorities in your niche.
Creating Resource Guides or Roundup Posts for Link Building
You could also write a blog post that includes all of your favourite bloggers, referencing why you love them.
Maybe you’re writing about all the things mums do to become successful bloggers and you want to include tons of amazing mompreneurs!
After writing it, you can email them or reach out to them and say you’ve written this awesome post featuring them and ask if they could share it with their audience or link to it within their blog or content!
Not all of them will reply, but I’m pretty sure some of them will and that’s additional audiences your blog can reach.
Linking to other authority sites is also a must for SEO because when you mention other people’s posts within your own, it shows your appreciation for them too. You don’t want to always be linking to just your own posts and pages…
There really are many ways you can link build, try a few out and see how you get on!
You need to track your SEO performance
SEO isn’t a set and forget process at all!
It requires constant attention because you need to know what’s working and what isn’t!
You can use tools like Google Analytics which is free to help you measure the traffic to your website. It also helps you track how people are finding your website, what pages they’re visiting, and how long they’re staying on your website.
You can use this information to see which SEO strategies are working best for you and make adjustments as needed.
Google Search Console is also a great tool for SEO tracking. This tool helps you see how your website is performing on Google search results pages.
It’s important you visit these analytics at least once a week to start with, to see where you’re at…
How does using the RankMath SEO plugin improve SEO for your blog?
RankMath SEO is a free WordPress plugin that helps you optimise your website for SEO.
I’ve been using RankMath for a while now. I love how easy it is to use and it integrates with my WordPress site.
You can leave most of the settings to default which makes it even simpler.
It includes features like keyword research, image optimization, and sitemap creation. It also has a built-in SEO analyser that helps you track your website’s SEO progress.
When you use it within your blog posts, it appears on the right-hand side of the screen. It’s a box which will usually be a pink colour to start with.
You can click on it and all the options will come up that you can look into and see what you can improve.
NOTE: Do not try and get 100/100. It will be literally impossible to do this and you don’t want to waste tons of time on it.
See it as a guideline to help you improve areas and make sure your content is valuable and reads to your audience first!
As you can see in the image above, I have errors all the time, but some of the things it asks for just don’t make sense for me to change or add anything, without it making my posts sound unnatural and stilted – which I definitely don’t want to do.
Optimising blog posts for SEO
The last thing I want to talk about within this SEO post is optimising your blog posts.
At the end of the day, your posts are the main content on your blog and they need to be as optimised and well thought out as they can be, to give you the best possible chance of ranking!
First off, you want to always make sure you’re creating high-quality content.
This should be your main priority – to give as much help and valuable info as you can.
There are a few things you can do to optimise your blog posts for SEO. Here are a few tips:
Include keywords in your post title
The title of your blog post is one of the most important elements for SEO.
You should include your main keyword in the title and also try to place it within the first sentence of your post too.
Again, remember it has to sound natural, so don’t just slap it in there if it doesn’t make sense.
Include keywords in your post content
Include your main keyword within the content of your blog post.
Don’t overdo it though, just aim to include your keyword at least a couple of times throughout the post, so that it flows.
Use headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are a great way to break up your content and make it easier to read.
Use H2 and H3 headings throughout your posts, breaking them into logical sections and try to use your main keyword in at least one of the headings or subheadings.
Use Bullet points and make your content skimmable
Making sure your content is super easy to read is another SEO important factor.
You can do this by breaking chunks of text down using bullet points, as this means your content is skimmable.
A lot of readers do not read every single word of your post, they just skim the headings and pick out the bits that are relevant to them, so make sure they’re able to do this with lots of broken up text.
Include images and videos
Including images and videos in your blog posts is a great way to break up the text and make it more interesting and engaging.
You should also include your main keyword in the file name of the image or video, as this also helps with SEO.
Another great thing is, that I love how people who watch my embedded YouTube videos within my posts, tend to end up going over to my channel and checking more videos out there too, so it’s a win-win for both my blog and YouTube channel traffic!
Use social media
Social media is a great way to promote your blog posts. You should share your blog posts on your social media profiles, and you should also use social media hashtags to help promote your content.
Whenever I write my blog posts, part of my process is to create social graphics!
I create an Instagram post within Canva (you can check out how to use Canva here) and then I can resize the image into whatever else I want.
So from that, I resize for a Facebook post and an Instagram Story, all in one click.
It’s fab because you design once and click a button to resize!
I also create 3-5 pins per post and schedule these too, so I have my brand new blog post being shared on Pinterest and YouTube, if I’ve created a video alongside it as well.
Final Tips for Better SEO
Before I wrap this up, I wanted to share a few final SEO tips for you, so here they are:
Enable HTTPS on your site
Using HTTPS will make your site secure as it encrypts information between the server and the visitor to your site. This will make your visitors feel more secure when they’re checking your blog out.
If you use SiteGround to host your site, when you install the plugin, there’s a section within the Environment tab that you can switch across to turn this on.
Install an SSL Certificate
You also want to make sure you install the SSL certificate on your site.
Your hosting company probably provides this for free, I know SiteGround does and you can get to this by logging in to your account, clicking on Website > Site Tools > Security > SSL Manager.
Here is where you can then install an SSL certificate for free!
This works alongside the HTTPS enforcement we talked about above and you’ll know whether your site is secure once a little padlock shows on your site in the browser.
Enable Lazy Loading
SiteGround also allows you to toggle a switch which means you can set up Lazy Loading for your site.
This reduces initial load times for your images and means they will only show when users need them to be displayed. So as a user scrolls down the page, the image will appear as and when it’s needed.
Update old Content
Updating old posts is vital for SEO because you need to be making sure your content is up to date, fresh and still relevant.
Because a new post takes time to rank in the search results, updating old posts gives you an advantage.
Older posts are usually already ranking, so when you go in and update them, this tells Google to crawl it as fresh content, yet you haven’t had to spend the time writing a whole new blog post.
When you check your analytics, you’ll be able to see which posts are performing the best and these are the posts you should go in and update, make better and add more value to…
Find & Fix Broken Links
Broken links can hurt your site and SEO efforts because they can affect the user experience, as well as bounce rates…
Some links, such as 404 errors, aren’t actually that bad because Google realises this page doesn’t exist, so they don’t index it.
The best thing you can do is use a free tool such as Broken Link Checker which will check over your site and see what links (if any) are broken, so you can get on and fix them.
Let’s wrap it up
So there you have it – a guide to SEO for beginner mum bloggers.
Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to higher SEO rankings and increased web traffic.
Just remember it takes time to see results with SEO, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid it or give up on it.
Stick at it and you will see things happen…
SEO is a complex topic for sure, but I hope I’ve managed to break things down for you and make you see that it doesn’t have to fill you with dread!
