A Simple SEO Guide to Help You Grow Your Blog

Long term bloggers always claim best practice SEO can really help you grow your blog.

But at first sight SEO can just seem so confusing that it's easier to focus your efforts on Pinterest and link parties. I have to confess until now I have just ignored SEO in my blog posts.

But the success of a simple little blog post on savoury muffins that I wrote back in March has convinced me I really should be paying attention to SEO ...

That little post is currently #6 in Google UK search results for savoury muffins, right above The Times and Delia Online no less! Google sends me traffic on that post almost every day and has made it my 5th best performing blog post ever!

So I have been beavering around reading every SEO guide I can find to help me understand how I got the SEO right in my savoury muffin blog post and how I can use these best practices to help my other blog posts.

I can't in any way claim to be an SEO expert but this list is a guide to all the best beginner tips I could find for using SEO to help you grow your blog. I am experimenting with these SEO tops myself on my new and old posts so I will report back on how I get on.

Feel free to add your own tips to the list ... and you can link up any posts you've written on SEO & Google at the bottom of this post ...

Simple SEO Tips to Help You Grown Your Blog

Write about specialist topics that you are passionate about & understand well
For each post pick a specific topic & stick to it ... don't wander off topic
Make your content as original as possible
Brainstorm words that different people might use to describe your topic
Use a key words tool such as Google Ad Words to find related key words
Note the related key words that have low competition but high local searches
Use the best performing key words in your blog post title
Keep your blog post title short and direct (save funny tag lines for Twitter)
Include best performing key words in the opening paragraph of your blog post
Use best performing key words in your URL
Keep your URL short
Ensure each blog post has text links back to it from other posts on your blog
Rename any image files in your blog post with titles that include key words
Use the Alt tag on any image links to post & include key words in it
Try to get featured at link parties which will give you good quality link backs
Share at link parties that do regular round-ups to get good quality link backs
If you've got a new blog URL submit it to Google
Check-out SEO plug ins for Word Press that analyse your key word use
Share your post on Google+
Build your Google+ followers as their likes will help your search ranking

To add a tip, click the Add Link button, put your tip in the name field and if you like add a URL to a blog post or your favourite social media account. Your e-mail will never be disclosed. Try to keep your tips short, punchy & helpful :-)

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