SEO is a vital part to the success of blogging, since it is the predominant way that websites obtain traffic. For example, for the websites I have created and maintained, I can see that around 80% of the traffic comes from search engines, with around 70% of the traffic being completely new visitors that has never visited the website for. This should make it clear just how valuable SEO is to gaining traffic, as well as trying to expand the audience you blog to.

Here are 5 mistakes that bloggers do online that are typically overlooked. From recognizing this, you should see an improvement in the SEO of your posts.

 

 

Too High a Keyword Density

Just as it is important to stick keywords throughout your content, to aid Google with understanding what your content is about for better SEO, it is just as important to make sure you do not over-compensate for keywords, increasing your keyword density to a value that will negatively impact the SEO of the post.

Plugins for WordPress such as Yoast will flag up red when the keyword density is too high.

 

 

Blogging too Frequently

It’s that old saying of quality vs quantity. It is far better to post a high quality post once a week rather than a post daily that is evidently not going be of as high a quality as the single post.

 

 

Not Using Categories

Categories are vital to SEO performance of posts for a number of reasons. As well as being able to create standalone pages which show the posts under one category (which will hold a level of SEO), categories provide a tree-like structure that makes it easier for Google and other search engines to understand and crawl through your website. Couple this with breadcrumbs at the top of your website and you are onto a winner.

 

Posts are Too Short

In general, the longer the post, the better it is going to get ranked organically. This is because with longer content, the web user is more satisfied and are more likely to find the information they were searching for. From doing this, they are less likely to go back onto Google, hence notifying to Google that they were satisfied with the result they clicked onto.

In general, it seems that 500 words is the standard article length, and probably the minimum length for blog posts. If you want to create the best content, look for content at least 1,500+ words.

 

 

Not Using Images

Images are a great way to increase SEO, since it opens up your article to Google Image search. Images also work to grab the web user’s attention to keep them on your website, increasing the likelihood of more pages/visits. Therefore, there really isn’t a reason to not use images in synergy with posts.