SEO for Personal Blogs

A lot of us have thought about starting our own blogs at times; after all, being able to freely broadcast our words and thoughts to the world is an excellent form of self-expression. Not only that, but it has a low barrier of entry as you only need a computer, internet, and a small amount of money to start a blog. The money is usually for the initial domain purchase and payment for hosting. After having an established blog with some traffic, the blog can be commercialized with advertisements or product deals to generate an income meaning the investment can pay off massively. It can prove to be a great hobby or even a full-fledged business depending on one’s preference. Hence, blogs can provide both a source of income and a creative outlet for our thoughts.

Although the entry barrier to starting a fresh new website is very low, creating a high-quality personal blog, in the long run, requires a significant time investment and can often be overwhelming. This is also the reason many people tend to start a blog with an idea. But, it never comes to fruition as they end up giving up somewhere along the way. To prevent this, we need to pick a blog topic that we’re extremely interested in, which lowers the chances of feeling demotivated over time. Along with this, there are many other factors that can influence the success of a blog, but one of the most critical factors in Search Engine Optimization or SEO, for short. So critical is this, in fact, that many bloggers turn to a Digital marketing agency to help them get set up on their sites.

Use of SEO

As is common knowledge, most people tend to come across new websites or blogs on the internet through search engines such as Google and Bing. SEO refers to the process of optimizing a blog in a way that makes it preferable to rank the blog higher up on the search page compared to other blogs. As most users typically don’t go beyond the first page of a search result, it becomes imperative for us to focus on making our blogs appear on the first page of a search result to gain the most amount of organic traffic. Traffic is the single most important factor that influences the success of a blog and the amount of income it generates. Different search engines make use of various factors to rank a blog in their search engines, but the most crucial element in all cases tends to be the quality of content on a website/blog. Hence the phrase, “Content is King.” There are multiple types of SEO methods (on-page, off-page, and technical) that can be employed to improve a blog’s ranking, and it’s best to use a mix of them. Below listed are some impactful ways to optimize a personal blog.

Doing Research

One of the reasons I recommend picking a blog topic of your interest is because that makes it easier to do research and create content. Or else, the task can feel boring and overwhelming, which increases the chances of not completing it. Moreover, since content quality is very important on a blog, the content needs to be well-researched and well-written. Any plagiarized or inaccurate content can negatively impact a blog’s ranking on the search engine.

Choosing Right Keywords

The next step is choosing the keywords to base the content on; these keywords need to be well researched so that they’re neither too obscure nor too popular. As popular keywords will be very competitive, making content ranking harder, whereas unknown keywords will generate a very low amount of traffic. We can use various SEO tools such as Ahref or Moz to analyze and select the best keywords to write our articles on. These tools can reveal keywords that have good potential to generate traffic as well as not being that competitive. After choosing the keywords, it’s best to place them strategically in the articles, as merely doing keyword stuffing can degrade the quality of the product.

Technical Factors

Making sure the blog loading is fast and secure is preferred by the search engines as slow or insecure websites can provide a bad user experience. The SSL security certificate needs to always be activated as well, which increases the authenticity of a blog. While writing articles, it’s good practice to refer to and link other blogs often as it can generate backlinks and increase the trustworthiness of the blog. All these factors will ensure your blog is as SEO-ready as possible.

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