Best SEO Practices For Bloggers In 2024

Smart SEO Tips & Tricks For Bloggers To Get More Organic Traffic

With so many changes going around it can be difficult to find out what is working. What are the best practices in SEO that you should follow? 

If getting organic traffic from Google and search engines is your number one concern right now then keep reading as, in this post, you are going to learn the top 15 best SEO practices for blogs. 

SEO can appear scary, and to be honest, I was not a big fan of it. When I started, I had always avoided learning SEO practices, until I found out that one of my blog posts was ranking for a keyword. 

That’s when I realized that SEO can be slow but it does bring results. So, I started learning and writing SEO based content. 

Quick note: This post contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a commission should you choose to make a purchase using my link.

As a blogger, you should be learning and implementing the various tips to get organic traffic. Why not start it with this SEO best practices checklist that I share in this post.

You can never learn enough SEO and that’s why I will not say that this is all you need to become an expert.

What I would say is to use this as a checklist to make sure that your content is optimized for SEO.  So let’s begin. Shall we? 

15 Best SEO Techniques For Bloggers 2024

These are the top SEO techniques that you should follow this year. Another thing is that this post is based on tips and tricks so we are not going to get into SEO basics. 

If you want to learn SEO basics for bloggers then read this informative guide by Moz or enroll in this free SEO course for bloggers. But here are 15 things you should be doing in order to increase your search traffic:

1 – Improve Your Website Speed

Your website speed is one of the top ranking factors. Especially after the core web vitals update. The update in short means that your website speed is one of the ranking factors and it will determine whether your site should be ranked or not. 

If you want to read more about the core web vitals update then check out this article. 

Google wants to deliver the information as fast as possible. How fast? Ideally in less than 2 seconds. Is it possible? Yes, it is. I’ll tell you in a bit. 

But first, why did Google release this update? It is because of the user experience. The readers are happy when they find correct information quickly. But if a site loads slowly then the reader would be annoyed and leaves the site. 

So, the best SEO practice for websites is to have their landing pages open as soon as possible. How do you do it?

The first step is to check your site speed. Then find out the errors and fix them. You can also follow these easy ways that you can implement on your site to lower your site speed. 

2 – Make Your Site Mobile Responsive

More than half of the world uses a mobile device to do a Google search. 

If your site isn’t optimized to load properly on a mobile phone then you are missing out on a big chunk of traffic. 

This SEO practice is very crucial even if your site is not currently ranking for any keyword. Because you will still have readers visiting your blog through various social media platforms. 

And if your site elements don’t fit in the screen that’s certainly a bad user experience. Not acceptable. So what’s the mobile SEO best practice?

The simple technique is to have a mobile friendly site. 

You can install a mobile responsive and SEO friendly theme. The responsive theme would automatically work differently on different devices. 

The theme that I use on my blog is the Astra theme. Some other great themes are:

• Generate Press
• Avada theme
• Divi Theme

3 – Enhance User Experience 

Google has never officially disclosed its list of 200+ ranking factors. 

But they were always clear about the user experience. That their priority is to solve their users’ problems. And they reward websites that follow their rules. With higher rankings.

So, your site should be able to provide a better user experience. In conclusion, your readers should leave your site happy and satisfied. Most big brands hire UX designers to follow the best SEO practices and design a wonderful website. 

But you don’t have to do that. Just make sure of these things while designing your website. 

• Have a clear navigation system. For example, a menu in the header. 
• Use the sidebar to add links to important pages. 
• Add a search bar. 
• Use Subheadings to break down content. 
• Write small paragraphs. 
• Add beautiful images. 

When your site looks good and easy to navigate a visitor would want to spend more time on it. It’s as simple as that. 

4 – Do Proper Keyword Research 

Keyword research is not about finding a single term and using it several times in a piece of text. It used to be that way when you put keywords and rank higher. Now that’s called keyword stuffing, and it’s pretty frowned upon.

Those golden days are gone and Google is getting smarter day by day. If you have heard of it, Google released an algorithm called Rankbrain. 

This algorithm is using keywords and its similar terms and treating them as equal. For example, breakfast is equal to bread and butter. 

You don’t have to use the same keyword, again and again, and make your text appear robotic in the process. Instead, you can use context keywords, synonyms and niche terms to enrich your articles.

If you’re not sure how to do keyword research wisely, this blog content creation challenge has in-depth tutorials that show you exactly how to hunt down keywords that you can rank for, and how to incorporate them in your blog posts naturally.

After the update, your site not only ranks for the main keyword but also for similar terms. You can write naturally using different or similar terms. These similar terms are not the exact keyphrase but phrases that have a similar meaning. These are called LSI. 

To find LSI keywords you can use these free tools:

• LSI graph
• Keyword Surfer Chrome Extension
• Answer The Public

Or, if you’re looking for an affordable but more detailed keyword research tool, we love KeySearch (use the code “ANA20” to get 20% off.)

5 – Write Topic Clusters 

After I started learning more about SEO I found out this truth. A low DA site can also rank for highly competitive keywords. By writing topic clusters. What is a topic cluster, you ask? 

A topic cluster is a group of 4 to 6 blog posts that cover the sub topics of the main topic. And these are all interlinked to each other with one main page called the cornerstone page. 

For example, 

• SEO is a big topic that can not be covered in one blog post.
• Link building, On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and more are all its subtopics and need separate blog posts. 

So you will create the main page for SEO and sub pages for link building, on-page, and off-page SEO and link all of them. You can also target competitive keywords this way. But having a combination is better. 

Therefore instead of writing one blog post about a topic, try to break it down into 2 to 3 subtopics. 

6 – Keep Your Content Longer

Short content is thin and not-so-informative hence it is not possible to rank such content. 

Therefore your blog posts should be long and detailed. Generally, your blog post length should be 1500 and more. However, some topics don’t need more words so you shouldn’t exaggerate them. 

For example, an article on how to tie a tie – do you think that this topic needs more than 200 words for an explanation? No, right. So don’t do it. 

Readers want to find solutions quickly. So keep it to the point. Posts like guides and tutorial posts where an explanation is required can be written detailing everything. 

If you’re not sure how long a blog post should be, Key Search has a feature called the Content Assistant, that tells you the average Google 1st page word count for a keyword you’re targeting.

This will give you a ballpark of how many words to shoot for to be able to match that. So for example, if the average word count for a topic is 2,500 words, you want to write anywhere between 2,000 to 3,000 words.

7 – Install An SEO Plugin 

Having an SEO plugin will allow you to ensure that your blog post follows on-page SEO practices.  I use the Yoast SEO plugin. It is a free plugin that gives you bullet points of some to-dos. 

These can be adding internal links, images, external links, and more. 

RELATED POST – 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins For Bloggers

8 – Optimize Images For SEO

You can use images to enhance your post SEO. This will not only make your blog post more SEO friendly but your images will appear on search results too.

Do you know people often search for images on Google? You can use this opportunity to drive traffic from image search. 

So what are the different types of SEO practices for images that you can use? 

Follow these steps. 

• Add keywords in the image title tag. 
• Write an informative alt tag that includes keywords. 
• Compress images before uploading them using a free tool tiny jpg.  
• Download the images in the web format. 

9 – Optimize Meta Description For Higher Click Throughs

Adding a meta description that makes readers want to click on your link will help you get more traffic from Google. 

But it will also send signals to Google that people are clicking on your page so it must be good content. Hence higher rankings. 

You can install the free Yoast SEO plugin and write meta descriptions at the end of every post. You get 155 to 160 characters to write a meta description so you have to be a little creative here. 

So a good meta description has:

• Keywords
• A call to action
• And a problem

10 – Include Target Keyword In Title Tag

The title tag is one of the most important places to put your main keyword. 

Not only readers but also Google bots use the title tag to understand what your blog post is about. Therefore, make sure you use the focus keyword in your title tag. 

Some other places to use keywords (not necessarily the main keyword, you don’t want to over optimize your blog post) are

• In the first 100 words. 
• URL.
• Meta description. 
• Subheadings. 
• Image alt tags. 

These were the H1 best SEO practices that you can apply to improve the on-page SEO. 

11 – Update Old Content With SEO

Bloggers ignore the fact that old content is equally important as new blog posts. 

What if I tell you that old content is more important? Yes, it is when you want to rank on Google. Google trusts old sites and that’s why higher DA sites are ranked. 

But these are not ranked just because they are old. Google still wants to deliver the latest information. So these sites are ranked because they are regularly updating the information on these pages. 

You must have learned something that you want to add to your existing content. Like a new SEO hack? Then you must update the old content to keep your website fresh. 

RELATED – How to write SEO friendly content

12 – Add Internal Links Strategically 

Internal links boost SEO. 

Remember, I told you about topic clusters? This is where you place your internal links strategically. By adding links to relevant content wherever necessary. 

PRO TIP – Adding a new post link to an old post will give your new post an SEO boost by passing the link juice. 

13 – Add High DA External Links

This might be the easiest SEO practice to look good in the eyes of Google that is often overlooked. 

When you link to other high domain authority (DA) sites it will tell Google that your page is linking to credible sources and so it (your page) must be a credible page too. 

That way your blog SEO improves. So you must check out the website you are linking to. 

It should be a credible source with higher DA than yours. If you randomly link to any source that is not credible then your site can be penalized. 

The last thing you want your website to have is the penalty by Google. 

Therefore, before linking to a website make sure of these things. 

• It is based on your niche. 
• Has a high DA. 
• And the topic is the same. 

Follow these tips and you are good. 

14 – Enable Social Sharing 

One of the basic SEO best practices is to enable social sharing. A single share can potentially bring lots of traffic. Not only that, but Google also keeps an eye on the total number of shares. 

It comes down to the user experience. People are sharing your content because they liked reading it. Meaning, the content is good and should be ranked in search results. 

A blog post with an equal number of backlinks but a higher number of shares will outrank. 

So what is the best SEO practice? It’s very simple. 

The first is to install a social sharing plugin like Social Warfare. And then you encourage readers to share your blog posts. 

I always add this line after the conclusion on my blog posts. > “If you found this blog post helpful then don’t forget to share it!”

PIN THIS POST FOR LATER 📌

15 – Use Videos In Your Written Content

If you can create videos and add them to your blog posts you are golden. 

The last year was all about the growth of Youtube videos. SEO experts like Neil Patel recommend embedding youtube videos in blogs. It is because people will spend more time watching a moving clip which will increase the time spent on page.

And when it is an instructional video then the engagement rate is even higher because that video is teaching them what to do step-by-step so they don’t need to go anywhere else but do as it is shown in the video. 

So what are the YouTube videos best SEO practices? 

Most bloggers have started their YouTube channel and not only they have increased their blog views but also built another income stream. But if you are camera shy (just like me) then you can also embed others’ content. Just make sure you give proper credits to the video creator. 

Conclusion: Easy To Follow SEO Tips For Bloggers

To conclude, these were some of the best SEO tips for bloggers that are working now. There are two truths about SEO that I’ve learned. The first is that SEO is easy. 

I used to believe that SEO is for those who have been in the blogging world for years. But I was wrong. I got results when I blindly applied some tricks. Imagine how great your results would be when you implement SEO strategically? Right!?

It’s also important to remember that for Google to trust your website, you need both quality content and quantity. Ideally, you should get to 100 articles published as quickly as possible.

You can learn to do so from the One Year of Blog Content in One Month Challenge.

The second truth is that no one can learn SEO completely. It’s because it is changing. 

I started blogging when SEO was about keywords (now, it isn’t!) and I think that’s why I was able to rank one of my posts so early. Since then, it has changed completely. No more keyword stuffing, no more tags, and categories optimization. But one thing that is the same is the User Experience. 

Because it is all about serving your target audience and making information available to them. These SEO practices are working now and there’s no guarantee that they would stay but implementing them is the best we can do as bloggers. 

So which SEO technique is your favorite? Which one of these are you going to try first?