SEO For Dummies
I don’t know about you guys but when it comes to SEO and all things SEO I feel like kind of a dummy a lot of times and as someone who barely knows anything when it comes to technology I really did not even know what SEO was till like some months ago. I’m not going to lie- SEO stuff makes me feel like a dummy sometimes. Even though the majority of the stuff I read about SEO optimization and stuff like that is in English I feel like it’s written in a different language that I don’t know. It took a lot of work for me to figure some stuff out and improve my site and I want to spare people the time and effort if I can in some way so I decided to write this article for people like me who may be a bit technologically challenged. I know a lot of you do struggle with SEO stuff because I do get a lot of comments/emails/DM’s asking about it and I also got some people asking about it in a poll I took some time ago asking what you guys want me to write about.
These tips will most likely help you but if you feel like you are still not fully understanding how to make your posts and blog SEO friendly or if you just don’t have the time to make so many changes I wanted to let you know that I do offer SEO services now. I can personally both make your site as well as your blog posts more SEO friendly. For more on these services click here.
So basically, I have picked some basic stuff about SEO up over the last few months and noticed that certain small changes can make a huge difference so I decided to share these small ways through which you can improve your sites SEO.
What Is SEO?
“SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”- moz.com
I think this sums up SEO and what is really well so I’m going to just leave it at that.
Why Is SEO Important?
As mentioned above SEO can help you not only increase your traffic from search engines but also help you increase your traffic to a more specific audience. It helps you get an audience that is specifically looking for sites like yours. WordPress is awesome and I love connecting with other bloggers but just having WP traffic isn’t always enough especially if you are looking to blog professionally at some point. SEO gets you this outside traffic from search engines and helps you build your blog and diversifies the audience. Here are some easy and simple ways through which you can improve your SEO:
Theme
Your theme is absolutely a vital thing for your blog. The way your blog looks and loads is definitely directly related to how much traffic you get. Not even just SEO traffic but all traffic in general. Most people these days have shorter attention spans and if your blog does not load fast enough they are simply to going to move on to another blog that does load quickly.
Another thing you want to take into account when it comes to your theme is how easy it is to navigate. Can your reader easily find what they are looking for, do you have your categories neatly put somewhere so they can look at specific topics they are interested in and do you have a search button somewhere in case they are looking for a very specific post that they can’t seem to find. Also, is your font easy to read for everyone, does it load quickly, does it obstruct other text/links etc.
These are all such tiny things but they really make the biggest difference because often search engines will pick up on these little things and this will make you lose a lot of traffic that would have otherwise been directed to your site. I will be sharing a post which will be published at the same time as this one next week- Tuesday at 9 PM EST- and in that post I will talk in more detail about how to customise your theme to make it more SEO friendly and how to pick an SEO friendly theme to begin with. If this is something you are interested in check in again next week.
Headings
Your headings are super important and I will talk more about that below but what’s even more important are your subheadings. Don’t stick with just using H1 headings use H2, H3 and H4 as well because this will help search engines pick up the topic of your post better and therefore it will rank higher on the search engines pages. It’s a very simple but efficient way to increase your SEO. I also read that using an H2 heading with similar words or the same words as the H1 heading is also helpful because I guess it really emphasis what the topic of the post is and gets your keywords into the system.
Post length
Most sites agree that post length is very important when it comes to SEO. Although it’s not impossible for shorter posts to have a high SEO score it does help a lot if your posts are longer. I am not completely sure why (let me know in the comments below if you know why) but longer posts are definitely better for your SEO. Most people suggest that you write a post that contains about 1500-2000 words in it. And if you are able to write posts that are even longer then you should definitely go for it and write posts that are longer than 2000 words.
The problem however with this is that it’s good for SEO but it may not always be good for other organic traffic. Yes, search engines will be able to pick it up more and you will likely see an increase in the amount of search engine traffic you get but at the same time you may lose your current/non-search engine following because they are used to your posts being a certain length and to be honest most people may not have the time/energy/enthusiasm/attention span to read really long 1500 plus word posts.
The advice I would give is write from the heart- if you can make it to 1500 words or more than that’s awesome but if you can’t don’t force yourself. If you just keep rambling on people are going to realise that and kind of skip a lot of what you’ve written or stop reading your posts in general because most people don’t want to read someone rambling on just to fill the word count. Another piece of advice I would give is that before you write a post do a lot of research about the topic you are writing on so that you aren’t just rambling but giving actual vital information to the reader about the topic while lengthening your posts. And at the end of the day if you can’t make it to a certain word count it’s really not the end of the world and it’s most definitely not worth losing your current audience over.
Images/gifs
Images and gifs are something that a lot of people forget about when it comes to their posts. There are so many benefits of using images and gifs on your posts such as it will draw in your readers, it will give your readers a break from reading if your post is longer, it will maintain your readers attention and in general it will just make your post more fun and interesting to read. Another awesome benefit is that images are great for your SEO. Images and gifs can really help draw in traffic from search engines and a lot of bloggers/sites admit that using images/gif’s really helps increase their traffic from search engines.
I do, however, want to warn people against using too many images in their posts. Yes, some images are good but overwhelming search engines with images will basically just get you listed as a spammer/spam. Also images do tend to slow down your loading time and as mentioned above loading time is very important when it comes to SEO. I would suggest stick to using a couple of images per post.
URL’s
URL’s are one thing that I think a lot of people neglect or that a lot of people may not know are super important when it comes to SEO. Make sure your URL isn’t too long or too short because this can effect your SEO as search engines may have a hard time identifying/categorizing your post. This isn’t really a URL thing in particular but I would also recommend double checking your title and making sure it is not too short or too long as this will effect your SEO and whether or not search engines are able pick up your post/article as well. I will talk more about making SEO friendly titles in the next post if I decide to make another similar post but until then try to keep your title medium length- some suggest about 30 characters long and some suggest about 50. Also I have noticed some people use emojis, hashtags and other things in their title. This can directly effect your URL so when you are editing your post make sure to edit your URL just to make sure that there are no emoji’s or useless hashtags in your URL.
Conclusion
I tried really hard to keep this post simple and to the point which I feel like a lot of posts about SEO aren’t because obviously a lot of technical terms and things are involved when it comes to SEO. However, this post is more for the average writer/blogger/site owner who may not always know much about SEO or technical terms. Basically I just didn’t want people to Google every five minutes before they understood what I was saying so I tried to keep it very basic. I know some people may find that beneficial and if you enjoyed this kind of simple post about how to better your SEO scores I have a lot more simple tips like these that I can share with you so let me know in the comments below if you would be interested in similar posts.
Thoughts
Are you like me and have a hard time understanding SEO? What is something you have learnt about SEO that you have found beneficial? Did you know about the tips I mentioned above and do you use any of them? If so do you find them effective? Would you like to see more similar posts with easy/simple tips and tricks about SEO? As always I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below and if you don’t have any thoughts about SEO feel free to just say hi!
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I can’t wait for the next post because I’ve barely even looked into SEOs if I’m being honest. The thought of attempting to learn about them gives me unnecessary anxiety.
Yeah I was the same way. I was super anxious about the whole SEO thing and for good reason because it’s very complicated and difficult. But to be fair it’s not so bad once you figure it out to an extent.
More posts like this please. You are awesome! Thank you for sharing your tricks and tips!!!
Thank you and hope this helps! More posts about SEO coming up for sure!
Hi, I also tried to learn about and read up on SEO by myself, but this post really summarizes some good tips to use. I try to keep my posts ~1500 words, but I will definitely try to use more headings. Thanks for this!
Thank you! Yes subheadings really help as well.
I am still struggling to learn about SEO. What I always wonder is how to incorporate my style of writing into it.
It’s not too difficult because I’ve noticed you already have images/infographics which is great. All you need maybe is to use more subheadings.
Honestly, I pay almost nill attention to this these days except for one thing. Striving for the best SEO took away the fun. 😊🤷♂️
Yeah if you fixate on it too much it really takes the fun out of writing. I feel like do your best and at the end of the day don’t worry too much about it- just enjoy your writing!
This is really informative,Pooja. Thanks for sharing.
So glad to hear that thank you!
Very onformative post, Pooja. You have have simplified what SEO is about. I have also contacted Debbie as you suggested. I will be working with her as soon as I get some stuff sorted. Thanks for your help.
Thank you! She is very helpful so I really think that will be quite beneficial for your blog.
Very simple and helpful tips! Thank you for sharing.
Thank you!!
I love this!!! There were a few things I knew about, like using gifs/photos or having a good theme. I did Not know about the length of a post affecting the SEO. Wow. Definitely a helpful tip.
Yeees! I love all of your posts and highly appreciate your posts with tips. So yes more please! Thanks for sharing all these great tips ^_^
Thank you- I’m so glad you find my advice posts helpful!!
Oh! Question, I read somewhere that using your own photos on your posts (taking your own pictures) helps with traffic and followers too. Thoughts? Do you think that would be more helpful?
Yes I’ve heard that too. From what I know it’s not that you need to have taken the picture it’s just that you have to own it so you need to have created it. I’ve heard that this does help with SEO.
Yes! That makes a lot of sense. Ok, this might be a silly/total newbie question. Would you happen to where would I could go to create my own photos? I see so many beautiful blogs with their own logos or other pictures. I often wonder How they were able to do that.
I think Canva is one of the most popular and easiest to use ones so I would definitely recommend that. You can make everything from just images to logos to cover images on there.
Thanks for the help! <3 I'll definitely try that out!
You’re welcome and feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!
Super tips
Thank you!
Very interesting! I confess I pay no heed to SEO but perhaps I should take a closer look?
Thank you! If you are looking to grow your blog learning more about SEO can really help.
It’s not that I’m looking to grow my blog per se, more that I want to increase my knowledge.
Than I would totally recommend reading about SEO stuff- it’s an interesting thing to learn.
I’m going to follow your good advice, thank you.
thanks a lot, it makes so much more sense now!
So glad to hear that!!
Good and informative post,
Give some advise and tips about backlink
Thank you!
Gosh – Once again, I do everything wrong!
Haha well there’s always time to learn!
I think the biggest issue I am having is trying to be SEO friendly without just waffling in my posts. In the end I have resorted to keeping the posts as long as they need to be because my frequent readers are more important in my view. I know my site is far from SEO friendly and I’m trying to improve it without impacting the quality too much…. why is this soo hard! ugh
I know it’s really difficult and I’m surprised I know anything about SEO at all! I have the same problem especially because some of my posts are poems, six word stories and stuff like that which literally can’t be very long. I’ve decided to just write as much as I can and not care too much about the length as well because like you said your frequent readers are more important.
Thank you, Pooja. Insightful post! Is it just me that felt so calm after reading the post? Oh, Pooja, you’ve saved us the stress and frustration! LOL!😂 I look forward to seeing the next post.
Hahah thank you so much- so glad to hear that!!
One of my favorite topics indeed. Learning SEO bit by bit, and actually I’m currently trying to come up with a way to measure whether the non-content changes have a lot of impact, or not. The blog has a funny situation in that one single article draws a lions’ share of people in, while there are a lot of.. hmm.. prospective garbage lying around. 😀
Thanks for yet another good one! The post walked through a lot of important aspects.
Yeah posts just hit differently depending on the topic I guess. SEO can be quite interesting but I find it super difficult to understand it very well which can be frustrating.
Thank you!
I want to know about SEO, waiting for your next post. It’s very helpful, thanks for sharing!!
Thank you!
I Can totally relate to the dummy part, ahah! trying to slowly incorporate some into my blog as well. Helpful post my girl!
Thank you- so glad you found it helpful! Lol as a fellow dummy I totally get the struggle!
Another great read! Thanks for sharing! I am still trying to figure out this SEO stuff with wordpress!
Thank you and hope this helps!
Thanks for this…SEO has been a mystery to me, but I love these simple tips!
Thank you and hope they help!
Such a helpful post, thank you. I’d definitely like to learn more about SEO, as I knew nothing about it until recently 😊
Thank you and glad this helped!
Great post and so helpful! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Pooja for this lovely post. I enjoyed reading it and it is really helpful. 😊
Thank you and so glad to hear that!
Most welcome dear. 😊
I don’t know Pooja – SEO in my world is ‘snoozing every opportunity’…
Haha 😂
Lol on that response above Richard. I was hoping it would make me a CEO…lol./
So much information. Write longer and it helps is wild because viewing shorter posts is my go to.. finding it hard to wade through all of the info. and then life, work and social media. YIKES! Thanks Pooja and don’t forget to write about D.O. ha ha. Dummies Or? 🤗😹
Loll!
I know I thought that was weird too. Before learning about SEO stuff I used to go out of my way to write shorter posts just because I thought people would prefer those. Haha will keep that one in mind 😂😂
Anything to keep us laughing right now. ok this is really so weird and counter intuitive to me so good to know. Strange. I see I’m behind in your posts, not sure how I missed them.
My conspiracy theory is that WP doesn’t want you to see my posts 😂
Ha ha… I’ll go with that… lol
Thank You for sharing this Pooja! 🙂
My pleasure! Hope it helps!
some great info here – SEO is something I’ve ignored since day one. If I were trying to make money from my blogging, then it seems like it is a critical issue to address…
I don’t think it’s critical for making money but it does help for sure! Yeah if you’re not planning on making money through blogging I don’t think it matters that much.
perhaps when I retire. then I will be bugging you every day for help with my blog 🙂
Haha I would be happy to help!
that’s good to know 🙂
It is hard to understand! A friend of mine works in SEO for a marketing firm and even he can’t explain how SEO works, haha.
Lol does anyone really know how SEO works though?? 😂
SEO is something I wish I paid more attention to when I was initially blogging. The past 2 months I took a break on posting new content just so I could update old posts to improve SEO.
Agree with all you’ve mentioned – even just having good post structure is so pivotal! Updating broken links as well. Also, by structuring posts, including more imagery, and adding other stylistic effects you can def help make long posts more digestible!
My views this month are actually the the highest they’ve ever been despite not having any new content! This is just from updating old blog content to improve SEO!
Wow that is so amazing and I am so glad the SEO stuff is working for you! Yes I agree updating old posts, getting rid of broken links etc is super beneficial for your views. I wish I knew this stuff earlier on too because I have so much updating to do now and it is definitely a pain.
Thanks for the post. Still fuzzy on the entire notion. The post length is interesting. Personally I don’t like posts where it’s really long and all writing…ie: not broken up by photos or something. People’s attention span is so short I think 1500+ words would put them off. I’ll keep plugging away.
Yeah I feel the same way that’s why most of my posts are less than 1500 because I don’t want to bore people. Plus, when I write poetry or something like that it’s impossible for me to have more than a few words- usually they’re like 200 words.
I’m the same. Short and sweet. But I guess longer is good too. Maybe I’ll have to start mixing it up a bit. lol…More to think about.
Great information – thank you!
Thank you!
I feel like a dummy when it comes to SEO that’s why I don’t want to bother myself with it yet because I figured it could be draining if I focused all my attention on it. Maybe for now, I’d try to grow my followers on WordPress and see where I can go from there and I’ll also try to incorporate these tips as best as I could. Thank you for sharing it in simple English.
Haha you’re welcome- I know not all of us are fluent in tech! Yeah it can be quite complicated but I would recommend trying to incorporate some stuff even if you are starting out because otherwise you will have a big blog with lots of posts and you will have to start from the bottom and update every post which is an insanely difficult process.
Thank you for this post! I was completely lost about what a SEO was but now I understand it better thanks to you!🥰
So glad to hear that!!
Hi Pooja, Great post to the point. Always thought short post are preferred by readers, so 1500 words look quite good and long enough (though it requires enough time to research and summarize). I follow your advice on tagging 5 words, but still not sure how to create link of someones post to own page. I actually dont know where to place the image, because it just occupy lot of space (especially for free wordpress users like me), and not sure how to attract with images. There are so many beautiful images some people have created and it looks awesome..Yet a lot to learn from you and others. thanks Pooja for your time.
Thank you so much! I thought shorter posts would be more popular too but apparently it was the other way around. You can link other posts through the insert link option in the drafts.
Educative, I have learnt something about SEO
Glad to hear that!
Omg I feel like this post was geared directly to me!! I am completely lost when it comes to SEO and this has helped me immensely! I cannot wait for your next post. Thanks, Pooja!
I’m so glad it helped! I’m not great at SEO either and I feel like it’s so complicated when you read about it online so I wanted to simplify it a bit.
This was literally the simplest version I’ve ever read so seriously, thank you!
So glad to hear that!!
This was such a useful post I thought it was meant for me!! I’m such a dummy when it comes to tech and SEO so this was really such a fantastically helpful post thank you for sharing it!! xx
I’m so glad you found it helpful! I am the same way so and it took me forever to learn more about SEO so I wanted to save people the time and energy of doing all that and just kind of simplify some things.
You are seriously a life saver I really appreciate this because just the thought of learning about it seems so intimidating and overwhelming so thank you!!
It’s the worst- SEO stuff is not fun if you’re not interested in that kind of stuff. You’re totally welcome!
Yeah … thanks again so much!
Thanks for the hints and tips Pooja. Your blog site is looking amazing now, well done 🙂
Thank you so much! I put a crazy amount of work into it so thanks so much for noticing!
I can see that 🙂
😊
Thank you for sharing this Pooja. I am always glad to read your post. It is always informative. ❤
So glad you find them helpful!!
😊❤
This is really goodaterial on SEO PoojaG. Reminds me of one time when I newly added the search widget to my blog because I couldn’t find something.
What I’ve learnt about SEO? Well, when you upload images on wordpress it renames them so you should check the alt text and description if they align with the image. Also, republish your content on social media and I personally use an app – SEO Check (you should download it) to determine some of my SEO score. It helps!
Thank you! That is super helpful information. I know about the alt text but I did not know about the app so I will definitely be trying that out.
You’re welcome.
Thank you for this Pooja ❤️ you’re heaven-sent
You’re very welcome and I hope you find it helpful!
This is just it.💯
Interesting 👏🏼
I enjoyed reading and learning alongside! 😌😌
Thank you so much!!
As your similar non-tech savvy friend, I did some researches about SEO too, just to get a grip of the how the whole system goes, I learned that long content posts tend to increase your page rank or page authority. Google identifies you as a “reliable” content maker expert in your field. It means that having long content will make Google like you. Which is kind of funny but I think that’s the thing about SEO. Hahaha I plan to share what I learned too and I hope it would turn out as great as this post. <3 Thanks for this post, Pooja! 😀
Hmm that’s very interesting! I knew long posts were good but it’s interesting to know why. I look forward to reading your post about SEO as well because I’m always looking to learn more about it!
Hahaha, thank you, Pooja! 🙂 <3
You’re welcome 😊
Correctly using tags, writing longer pieces, and incorporating images are three things I am going to actively focus on this coming month. Thank you again for sharing your tips. 🙂
I hope the changes help!
Hi Pooja! This post really helped me a lot in breaking down the SEO into something that could actually be understood. I have a doubt which I hope you could help me with. I heard that using a repetition of keywords on your posts will help you get more traffic from search engines but too much will mark your site as keyword stuffing. So what exactly could be the keyword for a post, and how much of it is actually good to be used?
Thank you! My post next week will have a more detailed explanation about keywords but to sum it up you are totally right. Keywords do help a lot but you need to know how to use them properly. What is usually recommended is use more keywords in your introduction/first paragraph and less and less throughout the post. It’s also recommended instead of using one specific keyword again and again use synonyms or words like “it”, “they” etc as Google will pick these up as well. As for what a keyword is- it’s basically the main topic of the post so for example since this post is called SEO For Dummies my keyword would be SEO. Hope that helps and feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!
Thank you Il be sure to check it out!
You’re welcome 🙂
Thanks!!! That’s really usefull 🙌🏻🤗
So glad to hear that!
This is great and will def refer back to this tonight! much needed tips. Thank you for sharing
Hope the tips help and you’re very welcome!
Very detailed and educative article on usage and benefits of SEOs. It will certainly benefit the readers.
Stay blessed always
🙏🌹🙏
Thanks so much!
Thank you for sharing this information! I’m just starting off, so this has been very helpful. Thanks again, I enjoyed reading it!
Thank you and I’m so glad you found it helpful!
This post is very helpful thank you for your hard work!.
Happy to help!
Reblogged this on Lifesfinewhine and commented:
Sorry for posting so late but life happens sometimes. Hope you guys find this post helpful 🙂
Thank You so much! This was really needed as I really don’t understand what SEO means. Now I don’t 😃
Now I *know 😃
Glad this was helpful!!
Thank you for these tips. Though I had some idea about it before, this post really helps immensely. Please share more tips. Also, I have a question about upgrading one’s wordpress.com blog. Do you think it is inevitable?
Thank you so much for posting this, Pooja. I’m still a relative newbie to blogging and this really helps. Just a note: I tried to click on the making money post listed and got an error message saying it could not be found. Might want to check it out!
I’m glad you found this helpful and I’ll definitely fix that thank you for letting me know!
Very interested in your next post about Themes, Pooja…
You also have such helpful advice about SEO, something that usually pickles my brain!
I’m so glad you find my posts helpful and more definitely coming soon!
That’s great, Pooja!
I learned a few new things in your post. Thanks!
Glad to hear that!
Thanks for sharing this simplified version👏.Just starting and getting to understand SEO, URL and others… will be coming back for more read. 🙂
Hi! Great SEO tip in its simplest form. Sometimes, I do add emojis to my titles without modifying the URL. I will start watching out for that. Thanks.
YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER!!! Thanks for these amazingly helpful tips!! Really needed this.
Happy to help!
Domain authority seems to be a big focus for lots of people at the moment.
You probably also get requests from folks asking to place a link in your website?
I think they are all following the same program of link building.
Yeah that’s absolutely why people want links on numerous sites. It’s helps with DA and SEO in general.
I’ve been slowly learning about SEO and blog-related, social media, gaining audience stuff. I’m trying to figure out my brand, focus my content, and enjoy the blogging/podcasting process. I’m looking forward to reading more of your wisdom and advice; the “simplified” format is right up my alley! And btw, my WP stats say my average post word count is 1555, so I guess I’m in the right direction LOL.
That’s awesome and yeah it’s a lot of information to digest but so helpful for blogging and podcasting too. That’s a great avg word count so definitely going in the right direction! Also I have a new SEO FOR DUMMIES post coming in a few hours feel free to check it out if you like.
Thank you so much! I’m almost ashamed to say that most of your tips are new to me. I’ve avoided figuring this all out and thanks to
your site, I’m starting to learn. Better late than never. Thanks again!
I’m glad my posts are helping you learn and yes definitely better late than never!
Very few people will read 1500 words post.
I think it also depends on the content/topic.