5 Simple SEO Tips For Blogs

#1) Beware of Duplicate Content

While small amounts of duplicate content shouldn’t have a negative impact on your blog’s search ranking, large amounts can knock it several pages back. Blogs are particularly susceptible to duplicate content since they often publish the same content in multiple areas. In WordPress, for instance, content is published in categories, archives, tags, author, and the actual post URL. The bottom line is that you need to implement some type of measure (e.g. canonical URLs, plugins, noindex, etc.) to prevent duplicate content issues.

#2) Publish New Content Regularly

Search engines love fresh content, which is why it’s important to publish new posts on a regular basis. You can’t expect to achieve a top ranking for your blog’s target keyword if you only publish new content once every month. A good rule of thumb is to strive for a minimum of one post per week. Depending on the content management system (CMS) your blog uses, you may be able to schedule new posts in advance.

#3) Enable Comments

Why should you allow visitors to comment on your posts and articles? Each time a visitor leaves a comment, your blog receives new content (remember what we just discussed). Search engines will notice this content the next time they crawl your blog, giving it a boost rankings boost as a result. Furthermore, comments encourage greater interaction, which subsequently improves metrics like bounce rate and the percentage of returning visitors.

#4) SEO-Friendly URLs

One of the most common mistakes new bloggers make with WordPress is using the default URLs. By default, all new posts and pages are given URLs such as yoursite.com/?p=123. Let’s face it, this isn’t exactly appealing, nor is it relevant to the post or page’s content. A smarter and more search engine friendly solution is to set up your blog to display post name URLs, such as yoursite.com/post-name. Search engines will notice the keywords used in your blog’s URLs, taking them into account when ranking your blog.

#5) Break Up Your Content

Another all-too-common mistake bloggers make is creating a wall of text. Contrary to what some people may believe, the human brain doesn’t read from left to right. Instead, it reads by looking at section of text. You can use this to your advantage by breaking your blog’s content up into easy-to-digest sections separated by sub-headings, bullet-point lists, bold keywords, and similar styling elements.

Have any other SEO tips you’d like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!