8 Website Winning SEO Tips for Faster Google Rankings and Lots of Visitors

What is Blog SEO?

Wikipedia defines search engine optimization as follows: Search engine optimization: Refers to measures that serve to increase the visibility of a website and its contents for users of a web search engine."

By definition, these are optimization measures designed to ensure that you rank higher in Google search results.

SEO measures are fundamentally divided into on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization is all about your website and the individual articles. You can optimize a lot of things so that the Google bot can understand your content better and more clearly.

Off-page optimization, on the other hand, refers to measures that take place outside of your website. When evaluating websites, Google also takes into account links that come from other websites, so-called backlinks.

But as is often the case, there are two sides to the coin. While some blog and website operators use these SEO measures responsibly and in the interests of Google (yes, Google even recommends certain SEO measures itself ), others try to find loopholes and outsmart Google to place their content higher up in the search results than it deserves due to its (lack of) quality.

Attempts to manipulate Google are as old as the search engine itself. Many people therefore view SEO very critically, and not entirely without reason.

This raises the question of why you should invest any time in search engine optimization at all.

Why is Website SEO important?

As already mentioned, even Google recommends certain SEO measures, which makes it quite clear that SEO is both useful and necessary. The main reason for this is that Google automatically evaluates websites and blogs (except for manual checks).

The so-called Google bot is nothing more than a computer program that constantly "crawls" through the web and analyses the pages it finds. The analysis is carried out automatically and the information collected is then evaluated using various algorithms.

Google itself has announced that it takes more than 200 factors into account when evaluating a website, some of course more than others. The search engine optimization permitted by Google now primarily serves to make it easier to analyze your website and to prepare your content as best as possible. This avoids problems with crawling and also ensures that Google can recognize what content is available.

Another argument for search engine optimization is competition. Hardly anyone runs a blog or website without any competition. In order not to fall behind and waste potential, you should use blog SEO tips, as the competition is most likely doing the same.

But even if not, it makes sense to focus on SEO. Why should you give away this opportunity just because your competitors are doing it?

The real question is how far you should go with search engine optimization for a blog. The possibilities range from white hat methods (allowed by Google) to grey hat optimization (grey area - not forbidden, but not entirely clean either) to black hat manipulation (manipulations that are definitely forbidden by Google and usually only work for a certain period). I will go into this question in more detail in the next article.

8 Website SEO Tips for Faster Google Rankings and Lots of Visitors

In the following, I would like to discuss useful on-page SEO measures. These relate to your website and are therefore easy to implement and you have full control.

The following optimization tips should be taken into account:

Content

Especially with blogs, the content is of course the most important thing. Blogs have a great advantage over other types of websites in that new content appears regularly and this can have a big positive influence on SEO. However, there are a few things that should be taken into account.

It is therefore important that the content is unique. You should not simply copy a piece of news and publish it on your own site. It is also always advisable to publish content that has not appeared anywhere else in this form. This is possible by linking information, your own opinions, examples, etc.

Of course, the content should be of high quality and appropriate for the target group. I have explained exactly what is meant by high quality in an article. Content is appropriate when you know the search intent of the target group and provide content that is exactly right for it.

Another very important tip is to only cover one topic per article. Instead of reporting on all football matches on a match day in all leagues in one article, it is better to publish one article per match or at least per league. However, you should make sure that these articles still have enough content and do not just consist of two sentences.

Text structure

But not only the content but also the form is very important. Good readability/scannability, subheadings, paragraphs, lists, highlights, etc. not only ensure that readers can understand an article more easily, but are also important for Google.

In general, it is highly recommended that you optimize your texts primarily for your readers. Google usually likes that very much too.

Metadata

The title is very important. It should be unique for each article and ideally contain the most important keyword of the article without overdoing it.

In addition, care must be taken with the meta description. This also has a high SEO relevance and is often displayed in the search results.

Meta keywords, on the other hand, have no SEO relevance. I still use them because they are legitimate meta information. But it is certainly no longer a must.

Pictures and more

Images also play an important role in search engine optimization. Without overdoing it, you should include the most important article keywords in the image file name, the alt and/or title text, but of course also in a way that matches the image content. This also applies to the images in your blog layout/theme.

Blog SEO tips today also include video and audio. You can embed YouTube videos and podcasts. This increases the added value of the content and is liked by both readers and Google.

Domain

SEO considerations also play a role when selecting a domain. However, the importance of keywords in the domain has decreased and is no longer as important as it once was.

You should also keep in mind that your blog will grow and that in a few years, you may cover more topics than you did at the beginning or even that the focus of the topic may change.

That's why you should choose a blog domain with a long-term perspective and find a good balance between SEO and brand building. With my blog's domain, I unconsciously found this balance quite well.

Internal linking

Internal linking is often underestimated in blog SEO measures. This not only ensures that the Google bot finds all content and readers can find other articles worth reading, but it also influences search engine optimization.

Important articles are given greater weighting through more internal links from thematically relevant articles and thus often receive better Google rankings.

When linking, you should never link exclusively to the main keyword. Google will quickly notice this negatively.

External linking

Many blogs completely ignore this measure. They do not link to other blogs and websites for fear that readers will leave their blog.

However, I think this is very important for two reasons. Firstly, it is an added value for your readers. They may leave your blog initially as a result, but if you link to high-quality content from the web, you make your readers happy and they will be happy to come back.

On the other hand, from an SEO perspective, it also makes sense to link to other websites. It is unnatural if many links come in but none go out. The Internet is not a one-way street.

Technology

Last but not least, the technology of your blog is also important for search engine optimization.

Loading times that are too long, downtime, errors in the code, etc. not only deter visitors but are now also taken into account by Google in the ranking.

This list and explanation are intentionally kept quite brief so that you can first get an overview of the most important measures and factors.

As a WordPress blogger, you can also get support with on-page search engine optimization in the form of SEO plugins. I prefer the WordPress plugin Yoast SEO, but there are also some alternatives.

Great articles are enough, right?

I am sure that despite my explanations and arguments, there are still some aspiring bloggers who are skeptical.

You often hear "content is king" on the web and I emphasize this again and again. So why invest time in blog SEO tips when you can simply write articles?

The answer is quite simple. Content may be king and blogs in particular can score points with high-quality content, but you will never reach the full potential with it on your own. It's similar to a great book. It can be as good as it is, but if it is not designed properly and is not advertised, relatively few people will buy it. It's similar to blog articles.

That's why many people say SEO is Queen. The blog SEO measures suggested here serve to optimally present the content of your articles to Google so that they rank higher in Google.

I have already shown in detail here in the blog how big the traffic differences in Google can be with just a few positions higher or lower.

Great articles are the foundation of blog success, but they are not as effective on their own as they can be with supporting SEO measures, among other things.

How much time should you invest in blog SEO measures?

An important question is how much time you should invest in blog SEO measures.

Of course, I can only share my personal experiences and my own opinion here, but I think that this is a good recommendation for many bloggers to get started.

You should pay attention to the most important permitted on-page optimizations right from the start. At first, it might be a bit annoying and take time. However, the most important SEO tips will gradually become second nature to you and at some point, you will implement them automatically without thinking about it too much.

Especially at the beginning, you should also make sure that the technical basis of your blog is correct and error-free. For example, activate an SEO plugin and make the appropriate WordPress settings.

You should also pay attention to the theme you use to see which SEO-relevant settings are possible and what the loading time is like. Later on, you should check from time to time whether the settings are still OK or whether changes make sense.

The on-page SEO measures no longer cost me much time. As I said, when creating a new article, many optimizations are already routine and are automatically incorporated into the writing process.