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The Lazy Gal’s Guide To SEOHello, and welcome to my lazy gal’s guide to SEO. Everything you need to know about SEO to get you started, and all in one place.I have designed this guide to be easy to read, easy to understand and easy to implement in your own blog, but if there’s anything I can do to improve on it please let me know. I’m always trying to make things easier for my fellow bloggers and entrepreneurs.As you will have noticed, I didn’t ask for your email address in exchange for this guide. I don’t want to spam you with unsolicited and unwanted emails pretending to be your best friend but really only designed to do one thing – sell you something.My whole blog (and business) is based on genuinely helping new bloggers to get started, and to become successful and profitable faster by showing you what you need to do, and introducing you to tools and strategies that are usually both free and easy to use.You will find lots of useful information and free resources on my blog at lynne- so please feel free to visit and have a look around. If you subscribe to my blog you will get a quick email from me just telling you that I’ve published a new post, but that’s it, no spamming your inbox, it’s just not how I like to work.As a side note, I’m English and we spell things a little differently in the UK than you do in the US so please bear this in mind as you are reading.Right, without further ado, let’s have a look at what this guide is going to be covering for you.What’s included in this guide:What is SEO exactly?Keywords, how to find and use themWhere to include your keywords in your postHow do you SEO your images?TagsMeta descriptionWhat is SEO exactly?SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This just means that the search engines can find your content more easily because you have done certain things within it to make it clear what the content is about.The easier it is for the search engines to recognise what your content is about, the more likely they are to show your content in search results to people looking for information on your topic.To be able to establish what a piece of content is about the search engines must first go to your blog and read it. Yep, they actually read EVERYTHING on your site to give them clues as to what your blog is about.They will read your titles, your posts, your alt tags in your images, your tags section and anything you have specified in your YOAST section (we’ll get to this in a bit).This means that you need to do a number of things to get your blog post noticed and ranked by the search engines and this is what this guide is going to teach you to do.There is a whole industry built up around SEO and it seems that every day things change and algorithms look for something else, but this guide will teach you the basics so that you stand a chance of your blog post being found when someone keys in a search into Google or any other search engine.The best way of being found by search engines is to use keywords, we are going to be looking at this next.Keywords, how to find and use them.Keywords are words (or phrases) that you want your blog and blog posts to be ranked for by the search engines.The words you choose will depend on what your content is about. If you are a momma blogger you will use words like mom, momma, child, baby, infant, kids, etc.If you are gardener blogger you will use words like garden, plants, soil, best compost etc.I am a blogger who helps other people to get started with their blogs and so I use words like blog, blogging, start a blog, create a free blog, etc.You don’t have to figure everything out yourself either, Google will help you to decide on the best keywords to use. Here’s how…The other week I wanted to create a post about writing a good blog post. I wanted to show people what needed to be included for it to be found, read and shared.First, I needed to decide on the keywords I wanted to be ranked for. I decided I wanted to include the words blog and post.If I key “blog post” into google right now, (and I’m actually doing this right now) this is the number of results it comes back withOoooooh. That’s a lot of results, and mine will be just one of them. I need to reduce the odds of my blog post being found from 1 in over 10 trillion to a few less.So how can I do that? Well here is exactly what I did…I keyed into the Google search bar “how to write blog posts”. I then scrolled to the bottom of page one and here Google shows me searches that people have ACTUALLY keyed in to the search bar that are related to my phrase.I decided to go with “How to write a great blog post”. When I choose this keyword (yes I know it’s a phrase, this is called a long-tail keyword) my odds have been reduced. Look!I have been able to reduce the odds from 1 in over 10 trillion right down to 1 in 917 million. You don’t seem impressed?I don’t blame you. Those odds aren’t much better are they? The fact is that the words blog and post are very, very competitive.I decided to still write my post with this title because I am promoting it on social media and I know this is a phrase that people are searching for.However, I could have drastically reduced my odds even further by instead using the phrase “How to write a great blog post even if you’re a beginner”, after all, I specialise in helping beginner bloggers so this would have been appropriate.Look at the results now.Okay, so it’s still over 400 million but to be honest, this is what you’re up against when you are trying to get your blog found by search engines. That’s why it takes so long to start growing your visitors and getting noticed.The trick is to try and think of keywords (or phrases) that although people are searching for they are not attracting millions and millions of results.If you are a local business the best thing to do is to include your locality in the title.For example, my business website thomasjonesconsultants.co.uk has a blog too. I am a business coach specialising in helping new businesses (or bloggers) to become profitable faster and I am based in Wolverhampton in the UK.If I put the keywords business coach into Google these are the results.But instead, I put Business coaching in Wolverhampton and these are the results…Wow, you see, no more millions. And even better…2089150254000right6350Here I am look, on page 1 of Google. I managed to get here for FREE. I haven’t had to pay for an advert, I haven’t paid for SEO and I haven’t had to pay for a listing.I have been able to get on to the first page of Google for my keywords because I was clever about how I included them.People who are looking for a business coach in Wolverhampton will now be able to see my listing along with all the other paid for listings and huge coaching companies who are also listed on page 1.It gives my business credibility which is worth a lot0Here I am look, on page 1 of Google. I managed to get here for FREE. I haven’t had to pay for an advert, I haven’t paid for SEO and I haven’t had to pay for a listing.I have been able to get on to the first page of Google for my keywords because I was clever about how I included them.People who are looking for a business coach in Wolverhampton will now be able to see my listing along with all the other paid for listings and huge coaching companies who are also listed on page 1.It gives my business credibility which is worth a lotYou can achieve the same results if you are clever with your keywords.Where to include your keywords in your postNow you know how to find keywords and how to adapt them to get the results more in your favour, you need to know where to put them in your post so that search engines can find them and rank you.The first time to use them is in the very first sentence. You need to make it clear what your post is about and having the keywords in the first sentence makes it easier for the search engines to determine what your text is going to be about.You then need to place them throughout your text. DON'T do what some people do and "keyword stuff" your post. It looks horrible and your content ends up not making sense.By keyword stuffing I mean just repeating the keywords over and over again within your text. It’s nasty and looks terrible and reads even worse, don’t do it. Just put them in enough to make it obvious that that is what your post is about.You need your post to be educating, inspiring, informing or entertaining your reader. You need to keep that in mind as your main aim.Write your blog for your reader, not for Google. Make sure you are educating your reader (or whatever your intention is) and that what you write is making sense.Include your keywords wherever you feel they would occur naturally, pretty much like what I have done in this post. You need to include them about 4 times in your text if you can. Once in the first sentence, twice in the body of the text and once more in the last sentence.Some blogging experts will suggest you put them in bold, in italics, underline them and italicise them. You can if you want to but it's not necessary and only do it if it looks and feels right within your post.You can also include the keywords in the title and alt text of your images. We'll get on to images next.How do you SEO your images?Images are important in your blog for a few reasons but as this is an SEO guide we will stick to why they are important for SEO purposes.First, they give you an extra opportunity to include your keywords in your post without it looking out of place. You simply add your post title as a caption for the image.There is also something called an alt tag or alt text that you need to pay attention to when uploading images. Alt text means alternative text and this is what will show if your image can’t be shown for any reason.If you don’t put something in the alt text tab and your image isn’t displayed, the html of the image (the code behind it) will be shown instead and your reader will just see a load of gobble-de-gook that doesn’t make sense.The alt text is another way you can include your keywords. Make sure for each image you upload to your post you complete this alt text tab.This is what you’re looking for:42354501511935Write your alternative text here0Write your alternative text here3219450160655004203700851535Write your caption hereWrite your caption here31623009340850There is somewhere else you need to put your keywords to make it even more clear to the search engines what your blog post is about. We’ll look at this nextTagsIf you look to the right of your screen as you are typing your post you will see a side panel that has things like "save draft", "publish" and "format" on it. Scroll down until you see a section called tags. It looks like this...Enter all the appropriate keywords that you want this blog post to be ranked for.Once you have entered them once it keeps a record of them so the next post you write you could choose from the most used tags which saves you having to keep typing them over and over.For example, I use these as some of my tags:blogging, help to blog, blogging support, how to write a great blog post, working online, work from homeWhat you use will be entirely up to you and what you want Google to get to know your blog for. It might be that you want to be found in a certain location so you would include that location as a keyword in your tags (and in your posts if you can). You can see an example of how I've used this in my business blog?to promote my business within the local area.There is one final place you need to include your keywords to make sure that you get your post ranked and returned as a possible result for a searcher and that’s in the meta description. Meta description37655503917950Change your meta-description. This is the sentence or two that shows on Google results. It's just underneath the title and the website in the search result...This is how your blog will be presented to the searcher. You want to make sure that those 2 sentences are enough to get them to click on your content rather than the one above or below.You can do this in one of two ways.Way 1. You can make use of the Yoast tool. Most new WordPress themes come with Yoast as standard and you can find it if you scroll right to the bottom of your post. If it’s not there you can add it as a free plugin.You are able to change what your meta description says within the Yoast tool without changing what you have said in your post.orWay 2. You can put what you want your meta description to say in the first two sentences of your blog post.? If no meta-description has been defined, Google will usually take the first couple of lines of text from your blog post so make sure these contain your keywords.You need to make your meta description enticing so that someone is encouraged to click on it. This should either be by listing your content as in the example above, or by asking them to click to find out whatever it is that you are offering.Have a look at other meta descriptions from people in your industry and see what kind of things they put in theirs. Take notice of ones that you click on and why so that you can create similar ones.Okay, you've got this now. You can do it. You can go on and start creating some great blog posts that are all SEO optimised. Pop back to my blog if you get stuck, or if you need help with anything else blog related, there are some really helpful posts on here covering all sorts of things from how to create content that gets clicked and viewed to how to make money from your blog even while you sleep. Make sure you subscribe and I’ll drop you a quick email each time I find and publish something new.Now that you know all about SEO why not learn how to write a great blog post that will get found, clicked, shared and commented on.I have created a little e-book that will guide you through exactly how to write a great post by showing you:How to choose a title that gets clicked onHow to format your postHow to find license free images for your blog (ones that are legal for you to use)How to use a free graphic design tool that will help you create unique images for your blogAnd lots more besides. It even has links to a video tutorial on how to use that graphic design tool that I mentioned. You can get your copy here for just ?7.99 (or $10) so what are you waiting for? Go and create your winning blog, I can’t wait to see it.Lynne Thomas ................
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