Three Tips to Improve Your SEO

Ya'll may not know this, but SEO is one of the most important things for your blog. It's one of the reasons a lot of bloggers switch to Wordpress, but it's important for Blogger too. I know very little about SEO so I enlisted the help of my Tips & Tricks contributor, Carly. I hope you all learn a thing or two today!

Hi guys! I'm Carly -- firefighter wife, 7th grade teacher turned stay at home mama, writer behind Texas Lovebirds, and a full blown Dr. Pepper addict. I'll be sharing different topics that fit under the "TIPS & TRICKS" category, so if you have something that you'd like me to cover, email Danielle about it with the subject "ASK CARLY" I'd love to address any topics that you guys are specifically interested in or are wondering about.

Today, we're talking about SEO. If you don't already know, SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is the process of optimizing your blog or website to improve your visibility and natural search result position. SEO addresses this question -- When someone searches a topic or a question on the big world wide web, what is the probability that your blog post will come up in that search? If you're utilizing SEO correctly, you can guarantee that your post will come up in that search. More searches pulling up your blog/posts = more potential readers coming across your site.

First, you must know that having great content or an awesome blog design does not mean that you'll have great search ratings. Why? Because when Google (and all other search engines) reads a site, all it sees is coding. The coding of my blog looks like this...

Not so pretty is it? Now, if you're like me, you don't care much about what the Google bots see, you just want to know how you can optimize your SEO...and fast!

Luckily, today I am sharing three simple things you can do for your SEO right now. These things are super easy to do and don't take much time to complete. I've been implementing these three things since I began my SEO research and I have seen major improvement in my numbers and traffic. So, let's get to it!


//3 TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SEO//

1) CHOOSE A KEYWORD OR PHRASE. 
Think of a keyword or a few keywords that your blog post is about. Try to keep it short and to the point. Try to use your selected keywords within the title of your post and within the first paragraph of the post. It also helps to think of something that might often be searched. 

To this day, one of my most visited posts is this post I wrote over a year ago about Gunner being transverse when I was pregnant. Why? Because many women search for information when they find out their baby is in the transverse position. I wrote that post way before I even knew what SEO stood for but it included a commonly searched term in the post title and within the first paragraph; thus, it still draws a lot of readers to my blog.


2) SAVE YOUR IMAGES WITH DESCRIPTIVE TITLES. 
Chances are that most of your images from your camera are saved with a file name similar to 145.JPG, and this is okay if it's a picture you never plan to use on your blog; however, if you'll be uploading it to your blog save the picture with a much more descriptive image title. For example, if you're sharing a post that includes your favorite pasta recipe, title images something like "Bow Tie Pasta In Creamy Italian Sauce." 

This is especially important if you're hoping people will "pin" your images, because the images will automatically be titled with whatever you save them as. A lot of people are careless about captions when pinning, so providing a title for your image guarantees that an accurate description will show up when people are pinning.


3) ADD ALT TEXT TO YOUR IMAGES.
Remember, search engines can't see images, so you need to describe the image for them. Just like the process of choosing a keyword, you want to keep them brief and to the point, yet still descriptive. In fact, it wouldn't hurt to use a few keywords in your Alt text too. If you're on Blogger, the process for adding Alt text is simple. I'm not sure how to go about adding Alt text on WordPress but I'm sure you could find it through an easy Google search.

Here's how to add it if you're on Blogger...

I often add the same description in my title text, but sometimes vary them. A lot of people discourage using the same words for title text and alt text, because they are different in some ways. If you're interested in learning more about their differences, you can read about that in this article.

So there you have it, three quick and easy things you can do to help optimize your SEO! There are many more things you can do and I'm still learning, but if you'd like more resources feel free to email me at texaslovebirds{at}gmail{dot}come. I'd love to share some of the resources that I've found!

Linking up with these ladies.