SEO SHORTS: HOW TO OPTIMIZE AN EXISTING BLOG

Work smarter—not harder, they say. Consistently crank out content, they say. Well what "they" haven't been telling you is exactly how to optimize your blogs to incorporate more SEO. In this quick hitting bonus episode of SEO Shorts, Crystal & Brittany are here to walk you through 5 key elements your blog needs in order to improve its ranking on Google & other search engines.

Don't overlook these key areas of your blog:

• keywords
• H1 headline
• links: internal & external 
• images: titles and Alt text
• button copy

Other episodes you might also like to listen to:
Website Accessibility w/ Erin Perkins
Share Blogs to Pinterest w/ Mackenzie Armstrong
Measure the SEO Success of Blogs w/ Holly Wiedman
Google's Helpful Content Update Explained
SEO Dictionary Part 1
SEO Dictionary Part 2

Want a pro to walk you through the exact steps to write a keyword-rich, findable piece of content for your website (aka: a blog)? You might be interested in Brittany's "How to Write a Blog w/ SEO" 10-day email course!

**Note:
The Galas conversation thread is no longer active. But ⤵️
Have you had an SEO win since listening to SEO Shorts? Tell us!

Connect w/ B: YouTube, Website, LinkedIn, Instagram

Transcript

Brittany Herzberg: 0:00

Well hello and welcome to SEO shirts a private podcast by the very same co host of the simple and smart SEO show, Brittany and Krystal.

Crystal Waddell: 0:09

Here you can experience way more actionable episodes, beat them as many SEO masterminds. Each week, we'll be walking you through a different tasks that support your SEO strategy,

Brittany Herzberg: 0:21

you will learn exactly how to take simple and smart action with step by step walkthroughs. And quick explanations of how your effort will impact your business's search ability.

Crystal Waddell: 0:31

And now it's time for this week's SEO short. Okay, guys, welcome back. I am so excited to talk today about one of my favorite topics, which is blogging and content and optimizing a blog when you already have a blog. So be ready to jump into this. And here I'm ready for the blogging. Okay, so we're just going to give like a quick overview of let's say like the four main things that you kind of want to check off on your list in your blog. And the first one is having a keyword phrase that needs to go in what we call your h1, that's the header or the main title of your blog. So that's the first thing you want to make sure that you do is, you know, research that keyword phrase, whatever keyword it is that you want to rank for, and make sure that it's in your title, AKA your h1.

Brittany Herzberg: 1:23

Yes, and I just want to make a quick point like this can be a strategy for new blogs that you're drafting and putting out into the internet. Or this could be a super simple way to go back to an existing blog and update it and make sure that it's actually doing a job for you that it should be doing. So take these tips, and you can either use it moving forward, which you should be doing. Or you can just start by going back to blogs that are already out there, and updating and optimizing. So after we have the keyword or phrase to focus the page on which it's in the h1, then we want to look at what kind of links we can have. And there's two types of links. Remember, you can have one, which is internal linking. And that means you're linking from the blog post to like your services page, or your about page or contact page. It's links that are happening inside your website. And then the other type is external linking. So that would be where, you know, let's say I'm writing a blog about SEO copywriting. I don't know that's so vague, but roll with you maybe I have a statistic or a factor like a point that I want to reference that I found in another outside source, I could write that statistic and then hyperlink it out to that blog post or that, you know, trusted source that I have. So that would be external linking.

Crystal Waddell: 2:40

Awesome. Yeah. And so as you move down the page, you're also going to need to add in images, you know, ideally, as you scroll down the page, especially like on your phone, you would never go a screen size without some sort of graphic or you know, just an image interruption or whatever. So you'll need images, and you'll need to title those images and add alt text. So this is a great place where you can also add your main keyword, or you know other keyword related phrases within those image titles and alt text. You'll also want to make sure that when you upload that image that you're not uploading image 123 dot jpg. If we're talking about SEO copywriting, you want it to say SEO, dash copywriting dot jpg, so you want it to be very specific to your keyword with one caveat, make sure that you don't overdo it with that, you know, main key phrase, you only want it two to three times throughout your entire blog. So just keep that in mind use keyword variations or you know other supporting keywords throughout your blog. But the images, image titles and alt texts are a great place to also put keywords. Yes,

Brittany Herzberg: 3:55

and a note, just a quick note on the alt text. So I like to bring up my friend Robbie who listens to the podcast and she is a blind website developer. I always like to keep Robbie in mind when I'm writing the alt text because not only is that descriptiveness of the image going to help her to actually like envision what's happening on this page. And what sighted people are seeing, it's also going to help your SEO. So it's like a win win win for everybody. So you can be super descriptive with that you could also reel it in and just be a little bit. There's a woman and she's looking at a laptop and she's typing in copy. So you can just

Crystal Waddell: 4:31

stop she's typing some SEO copy being

Brittany Herzberg: 4:35

that is how you do. Yeah. So then the last thing that we want to keep in mind is that every page on your website, but especially blogs should have a call to action. And you can put the call to action. You know, you can hyperlink text you can make an image clickable, but you can also have button copy and your buttons are another great place to add that keyword or phrase. And another quick note with your button Do you want to write them from the perspective of the website visitor? So you would write something not like, you want to schedule a call with me, it's I'm ready to book a call right now. That's what the button would say, of course, you would optimize it with keywords. See, I'm not so great on the fly.

Crystal Waddell: 5:18

I want to optimize my SEO copy. Yes, something like that.

Brittany Herzberg: 5:25

This is why crystals. And it's

Crystal Waddell: 5:27

one of those things I told you this the other day, you know, one of the best tips I can give you listening right now is that instead of using it, or him, her or any sort of descriptive words, like pronouns, anything like that, lose the pronouns, name, the thing, whatever it is, say the word that it is instead of it. And you'll just naturally infuse more SEO in your writing. So we do have one activity for you hear that you can join the conversation, drop your most recent blog into the Galus link. And we'll take a look at it and talk about it, give you feedback if you want or just go check it out, maybe leave a comment. But this is a chance for all of us to just kind of engage with each other and get some ideas, see how people are infusing seo into their blogs, and we'd love to see what you're creating. Yes,

Brittany Herzberg: 6:19

we would another just you know, benefit to doing that is that you're gonna get some traffic most likely if you drop your blog link in there, because of course, we're all curious. And we're like, what are you up to? What are you up here, and it's not a judgy thing. It's much more of a supportive thing. So if he was in traffic to a blog post, drop it in there, and we'll go check it out.

Crystal Waddell: 6:38

Awesome. So that is our short and sweet episode about optimizing a blog that you've already written. We hope that you can use some of those tactics and you know, just up level your blog writing.

Brittany Herzberg: 6:51

Yeah. Okay, see you next time. Bye. Bye. you're well on your way to being the answer to even more Googled questions. Thanks so much for joining us this week.

Crystal Waddell: 7:02

Have you noticed them SEO wins since listening to SEO short, who you want to know? Email us at Hello at simple and smart seo.com Or share an episode conversation thread