Usually bloggers get intimidated when they hear the word SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for the first time.
They assume in order to rank high on Google they have to learn some arcane and highly technical SEO strategies that are way beyond their comprehension. But nothing could be further from the truth.
There are 2 main categories in SEO i.e. on-page SEO and off-page SEO (link building). Basically, you have to earn and create quality backlinks in off-page SEO and that is the reason, it’s a bit tricky. More quality backlinks mean higher your website rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
It takes efforts and time to create the best links. But, even if you create the best links, your website will not rank, if your on-page is not proper.
Sometimes, if your content is valuable and your on-page SEO is excellent, you can rank your blog posts easily in Google.
In this article I’ll tell you simple, uncomplicated but effective on-page techniques to rank your blog high (Basically on First Page) on Google SERP in just 60 days.
And if you have not created your blog because you are scared of SEO, I will advise you to start this now and use the 9 techniques mentioned below to rank your website higher in search engine.
To your surprise, these techniques are no secret and you may already know them. But the trick lies in not knowing them but how well you implement them in your blog.
CONTENT IS KING
No SEO technique can replace content!
It really doesn’t matter whichever SEO technique you learn and apply but the fact is CONTENT is going to be the King.
Always focus on one single niche and be super thorough with it. If your niche is about weight loss then write everything about it that is under the sun.
Instead of just creating a website about weight loss and linking it to other popular websites you need to create original articles which are really helpful and valuable to readers.
You go in depth by adding images, videos, charts, diagrams in your content that answers all the queries of your readers.
Google ranks only those blogs which have quality content that people would love reading.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
The first point is inherently related to second point. You can first perform the keyword research and then create content around it.
To make your content more SEO friendly you need to include certain keywords that are searched by the people online.
You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest like or premium tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush to jot down a list of all relevant keywords falling under your niche.
Bifurcate the list into two parts. First one is Primary Keywords and second is Secondary Keywords.
Primary keywords are highly competitive to target so better go for secondary keywords (or long tail keywords). You got to include all the long tail keywords in your content organically.
Content should be natural and not overstuffed with keywords. In fact Google punishes blogs that are spammed with unnecessary keywords.
Create as many as articles to incorporate all the necessary keywords into it.
MAKING BEST OF GOOGLE CONSOLE
To make it more effective keyword research you can use Google Search Console to analyze your website traffic.
Google analytics will help you to analyze how many people are actually reading your content and how many of them clicking. You can find
a) Number of impressions
b) Number of Clicks
c) Click through Rate
Google Analytics will also tell you the keywords for which your blog posts are ranking high on Google Search.
You need to analyze this data and create content targeting those keywords. If you regularly do so then you will see 3 to 4 fold increase in your traffic in just 2 months.
Google Console is Free!
TITLE TAG & META DESCRIPTION
Incorporating keywords is not the only thing which you need to consider in your blog. You also need to optimize your title tags and Meta description.
Title tag and meta description is what that appear in Google search when someone searches something in Google.
Even if you write best content and create high quality backlinks, you can lose your ranking if you don’t create best meta title and description because of the low CTR on your posts.
Click through rate (CTR) is likely to increase if you are using same keywords in your title tags that people are searching in Google. However while including the keywords make sure they are appealing and arouse curiosity in readers.
Title tag should be less than 70 characters with the primary keywords included in this.
When people are choosing between links to click in Google SERP they may choose a site with a better Title tag and Meta description. Write a Meta description in just two lines (160 characters) that includes primary keywords of your niche.
PAGE SPEED
Google takes page speed seriously. If your page does not open in less than 3 seconds then you need to work on your websites seriously.
There are many tools like Page Speed Insights from Google, GTMatrix and Pingdom that will help you to check page speed score.
If your blog is on WordPress then you install plugins like Autoptimize, WP Super Cache, Smush that will help you to improve your page speed.
You can also consider using AMP for your website. AMP will make your posts super-fast.
CREATE TAGS & CATEGORIES
Creating Tags & Categories is perhaps one of the most overlooked but yet effective SEO technique.
Create tags for most important keywords that you want your blog to rank for. Tags must be inclusive representing different topics in your blog. Don’t create unnecessary tags, create tags for topics that are valuable to your readers.
You need to categorize all your blog posts under different broad categories. Categorization is a great navigational aid for users and also it helps SEO in a longer term.
While creating tags and categories make sure you target a right mix of keywords.
INTERNALLY LINKING BLOG POSTS
If you find creating backlinks a daunting task then at least you can link all your blog posts to each other internally.
Here you link all your relevant blog posts with each other through an anchor text that includes most important primary and secondary keywords in your niche.
Internal linking helps Google to crawl your web pages easily and know everything about your website very closely.
However while linking your blog posts don’t link irrelevant posts with each other. Keywords in your anchor text must reflect the content of your blog posts.
It is a simple but effective SEO strategy.
FEATURED SNIPPETS
Today SEO has evolved very much and bloggers use best plugins to go beyond ranking 1st on SERP.
What is Featured Snippets?
You might have seen a small box with some text showing above the search results right on top. The information is pulled from the website.
There are 3 types of Features Snippets
a) Paragraph
b) List
c) Table
A blogger must optimize his website for Featured Snippets. The best part of it is even an underdog blogger can beat superdog if his/her site is geared for Featured Snippets.
Around 70% sites that are pulled up for showing information in Featured Snippet box are from low ranking sites.
So you have a chance to rank right on top of the search page.
All you need to do is go to Google and find out for which search terms Google is showing Featured Snippets in their SERP. You also need to target those search terms and create content exactly how your competitors are doing.
Usually Google prefer Q & A style content to rank for Featured Snippets. You need to structure your content and also add schema mark up to your webpage to rank for Features Snippets.
BASIC ON-PAGE SEO
I don’t want to write a whole article only on basic on-page SEO strategies. So I jot them down here describing them concisely.
- Choosing Title of the Blog Post – Always include primary keywords in the blog Titles. However they must read natural and reflect content of your blog.
- Length of the Post – If your blogposts are detailed and covers everything that can satisfy people then your posts are more likely to rank in comparison to others. If the word count is 1800+ then it will be a perfect post.
- Keyword Density – It should be 0.5% and above for primary keyword and 0.2% to 0.3% for secondary keywords.
- Keywords in URL – URLs are very important for SEO. Before you publish the post customize it and include a target keyword.
- Optimizing Your Headings – Google will absolutely look into h1, h2, h3 headings in blog posts. Here you can include secondary and long tail keywords.
- Image Text – Optimize your images by including primary keywords in
a) Name of the image
b) Alt text
Don’t ignore basic on-page SEO strategies they are very simple but yet very effective.
OFF-PAGE SEO: CREATING QUALITY BACKLINKS ONLY
Finally, if you want to beat your competitors fairly and squarely then you need to get quality backlinks from high authority websites.
You need to build Backlinks from sites which are already established and receives huge traffic every day. From my experience I can tell you it is better to have one quality backlink from a high ranking site than 30 backlinks from different 30 different low quality websites.
But how do you get backlinks from quality sites for free?
Here are some of the best ways-
- Write exceptional content – Well! One strategy that I often use is writing quality guest posts for quality websites and in return ask their owners to give a backlink to my site. You can get 1% to 2% success rate if you write exceptional content related to your topic. If your content is not high quality, people ignore to give you backlinks.
- Guest Blogging – This is another way to create quality backlinks for your website. You can search for the blogs in your niche and approach them for guest post. You can use search in Google if they have a page like “write for us” or “submit a guest post” etc. You can even outreach people who did not mention for guest post on their blog.
- Broken Link– There are tools that can help you to identify broken links on the millions of the websites. You can find broken links on websites in your niche and then help them to remove the broken or expired links. If you similar content, you can ask the web owner to include your link.
- Article Submission – Although this is not a quality way to create backlinks but there is no harm in creating such backlinks. There are thousands of high authority article submission submission like Hubpages, Ezine etc where you can publish your posts and create backlinks.
And it really works! Bloggers really don’t need to implement some other Black Hat SEO techniques.
CONCLUSION
In my concluding remarks I would say you don’t have to learn some over the top highly technical SEO techniques to optimize your blog until and unless you are working with a highly competitive niche.
If you just stick to 3 basic SEO strategies like
- Content
- Keyword Research
- Quality Backlinks then it is more than enough.
The rest of the techniques will fall in place automatically.
The best part is you don’t have to spend even a dime on this. It just requires a little bit of hard work and consistency from your side.
About the Author
Hey! I am Mitali, Blogging is my passion. I’d like my career to revolve around writing, which I fondly call “the art of words”. However, Writing about Career and HR is something that attracts my attention.
