AD | What’s the focus of your blog? Marketing tips? Cat breeds? Star signs? Regardless of what type of blog you run, you probably know that following SEO best practice is key to driving traffic through organic search, especially Google. Whether you want to make money from your blogging skills or not, you’ll most likely want to know how you can help your blog rank better, and your content reach a greater number of people. So, this article will take you through some actionable SEO tips that you can implement easily on your WordPress blog.
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What are actionable SEO Tips?
From clean URLs and good page structure, through to page speed and image size, there’s a lot that you need to consider when it comes to creating the most optimised blog for your audience, industry, or market sector. Because after all, we want as many people as possible to find and read what we write, don’t we? I’ve teamed up with digital marketing agency, Embryo Digital*, to help you do just that with these six handy SEO tips to get you going.
Checking your Blog’s Page Speed
Have you ever visited a website but been put off by how long it was taking to load? That’s not surprising, considering that the average load time of the top ranking websites on Google is under three seconds. In fact, according to Google, 57% of people leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. Page speed has recently become a key ranking factor in the way in which Google uses its algorithm to rank pages within search results. So, checking the speed of your blog is just as important. Fortunately, there are a range of beneficial tools that will help you measure your blog’s page speed as well as provide some handy insight on areas for improvement.
You can test your blog page speed with Google PageSpeed Insights, as well as GTMetrix. GTMetrix is great for determining how long it takes for your blog to load, the size of the page you are testing and also allows you to view your PageSpeed and YSlow score.
Ideally, your fully loaded time should be within 2 – 3 seconds, and your page size no more than 3MB. GTMetrix then provides you with a number of areas for improvement, and the most common areas for speed improvement are:
Leverage Browser Caching
Browser caching caches images and other blog assets, so that when they’re reloaded on another page or blog post the second time around, the assets are actually loaded from the user’s device instead of downloaded from the Internet. Browser caching can be set up in a number of ways, however if you’re using WordPress, the easiest way to add browser caching is by using the Hummingbird plugin. (WordPress is a goldmine for useful must-have plugins). The Hummingbird plugin will automatically set up browser caching for you and this can improve page speed and performance considerably.
Enable Compression
Compression can help reduce the size of your blog pages, posts and blog images by using GZIP. Hummingbird can automatically apply GZIP to your blog through its WordPress plugin – it’s a very handy plugin 🙂
Optimise Images
Images add visual appeal to your blog, but they can often lead to longer loading times and large page sizes. Uploading images straight from your digital camera or smartphone creates large file sizes that really aren’t suitable for the web. To mitigate this issue, you can use the WP Smush plugin (which I do, it’s great). The WP Smush plugin will automatically optimise your images for web on upload, and you can also scan and optimise your current WordPress media library with it too.
Serving Scaled Images
The images you use play a key part in making your blog informative, user-friendly and engaging. Therefore, it’s imperative that your blog serves scaled images. In other words, the images you use on your blog have to be sized appropriately according to the rules set by your active theme. Otherwise, if an image is too small, the browser will scale it up (i.e. make it bigger), and it may become blurry and unrecognisable. If an image is too big, the browser will shrink it to the right size.
Instead of amending the size of the image using HTML or CSS, you can scale your images so that the image is loaded at the correct size. Scaling images in WordPress is quite easy: simply open the image in the media library, select edit image and the scale options are in the top right corner. You can add your new image dimensions here and then click scale.
Header Tag Structure
Providing context and structure to your blog, the header tag structure must be laid out appropriately too. The first tag should be the H1 and there must only be one of them per page/post. A H1 tag is defined as the most important heading and is used to give search engines context on what the page or post is about. Generally, in blogging, the H1 tag should be the title of your blog post. From there on you can use H2 tags for subheadings and there is no limit to the number you can use.
To identify your current H1 tag, H2 tags and other heading tags, all you need to do is load up your blog in your browser, right click, click ‘view page source’ then another tab will open with code for the given page. Next, use the find tool to search for <h1>, and this will highlight the H1 tag currently in use, and let you know if there is more than one, or even – horrors – if there’s none at all.
Page Titles
For page title optimisation, they should be no longer than 65 characters in length, and include the context and keywords of the page content as well as your blog name. Page titles are used as the blue link found within search engine results. For blog posts, you can set up SEO tools like Yoast to automatically use the blog title and blog name using the following variables: %%title%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%. Each page title should be unique to each page, as having copies or duplicates can cause Google some confusion in determining which page to rank for the same terms.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the short text found underneath the link to your website in the search engine results page. They are used to encourage search engine users to click through to your content. As with page titles, meta descriptions should be unique for all pages and posts. Meta description length should be no longer than 155-160 characters – anything beyond this won’t appear – and should outline what the content is about, including keywords and a call to action to encourage users to click through.
URL Structure
Having a clean and simple URL structure is key to SEO. Keep your URLs in lowercase (capital letters are a no no) and ensure you use hyphens instead of underscores for spaces. Don’t incorporate any special characters either. Your blog URLs should also be relevant and related to the content, and you can check that your WordPress blog is using the post name for URLs by clicking Settings and then selecting permalinks – ensuring that the post name checkbox is selected. You can also amend URLs by page and post; simply click ‘Edit’ on the permalink under the blog post title or page title in the WordPress editor while writing your post.
*Bonus Tip* – Media Attachment Pages
When you upload an image to WordPress, the CMS automatically creates an attachment page which is a page on your blog that has the title of the image and the standalone image displayed. Google identifies these types of pages as thin content which can have a negative impact on your blog’s SEO performance. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin, you can simply set the attachment pages to redirect back to the image file which helps to remove the thin content issue. You can do this by heading to the search appearance section of Yoast and then clicking on the media tab. From there, ensure that ‘Redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself?’ is set to yes and, finally, click save changes.
So how many of these actionable SEO tips are you using?
With these handy tips, I think it’s pretty clear how you can greatly reduce your blog’s page speed, and improve its likelihood of appearing for relevant search terms and gaining greater visibility. While I’m already implementing some of these tips, I now realise there’s still a whole lot more I can do to improve my SEO. And if you’d like any more information on actionable SEO tips, why not get in touch with Embryo Digital to see how they can help?
Did you find this article useful? How many of these SEO tips are you using? What steps have you taken towards improving your SEO and helping your blog rank higher on Google?
* This is a sponsored post.
These are helpful tips Lisa. I learned some of them after several months of blogging so I have been going bakc and updating my old posts. I didn’t know about only using one H1 per post. Another thing to add to my maintenance list. 😀
Thank you, Michelle – and yes, I know, there’s always something to do on the blog front, isn’t there? 😀
These are great tips! Some of them I didn’t know about. Saving this!
I’m so glad they were helpful!
Great post! Thank you for these tips! I will definitely be doing some of these things soon!
You’re welcome, there’s quite a lot in here!
I am starting to pay more attention to my blog’s SEO, and this is a handy list of tips! Thank you. 🙂
Oh yes, SEO is key – good luck!
Thank you so much for sharing all of these tips. I will definitely check blog page speed.
New Post – https://www.exclusivebeautydiary.com/2020/07/carner-barcelona-tardes.html
Page speed is my Achilles heel too 🙂
Wow! A comprehensive overview and plenty of new information
I’m so pleased it was helpful!
Hi Lisa. Thank you for these SEO tips. I have to admit, the scaled images point was one that I just didn’t ‘get’ for a long time. I looked at the images on the published page and thought “Well, they look ok to me. Not too big nor too small. Nothing for me to do here.” Stop laughing! 🙂
Hi Richie, you are welcome and no, I would never laugh, SEO is black magic for me in many areas too! 🙂
Thank you so much, lovely tips!
You’re welcome 🙂
Really useful — I’m going to check my site for speed, etc. Thanks!
You’re welcome – good luck!
Great article – esp for those of us that are less then tech savvy! Knowing what these numbers are and mean is key
I’m so pleased it was easy to understand, that’s great 🙂
These are brilliant tips. And I’ve found a few new plugins to download too! I really wish I had learned about SEO sooner and not after I already have 1000+ blog posts published. I recently had an SEO audit and my god the list of things I have to do! xxx
They’re so good, aren’t they? Site speed is a killer 🙂 I know what you mean about SEO, my SEO audit has thrown up a LOT of homework as well, haha! xxx
So much to KNOW! Luckily, we have so many amazing resources (like this post!) to help bloggers along the way!
Aw, thank you, Tonya, that’s so kind of you!
This is such an insightful post Lisa! I’ve learnt quite a lot from reading this! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
You’re welcome, I’m so pleased 🙂 x
These are all helpful tips! I only knew about a few these like header tags & URL structure so I’ll definitely be looking into the other tips!
Site speed is the big one, I really need to work on mine!
Thanks for sharing your tips, it looks a lot of things to do to improve, but worth it in the end 🙂
Nic | Nic’s Adventures & Bakes
That’s a very good way of looking at it! 🙂
You posted a very helpful post – particularly for those who use WP. Thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome, I’m glad it was helpful!
Ooo! I’m saving this!! I’m always struggling to understand SEO so this will be super helpful! Thank you!!
I’m so glad – please could you link your blog so I can return the comment love?
These are some great tips I haven’t seen spoken about much elsewhere! I’m off to check my blog loading speed right now haha x
Thank you 🙂 And site loading speed is something I REALLY need to improve! x
Thank you, thank you for these tips! I’m the worst at SEO I always try to learn more about it to try to improve. This post was easy to understand (which is super helpful in itself!) and gave me some things to work on in my blog!
Oh that’s so good to hear, I’m so pleased they were helpful!
SEO is like a foreign language. Thanks so much for the tips!
I call it black magic so yes, I’m with you!
I love the tips! I really have been trying to improve my blog’s SEO and speed, so your post was just what I needed. Thank you!
Grislean | gemlesschosen.com
Oh, that’s great timing, good luck!
Thank you for these tips! I’ve gotten a lot better about titles, descriptions and URLs over the last year or two but definitely need to work on optimizing my site speed, shrinking images, etc. Always lots to improve!
Site speed is the one I need to focus on right now!
These are such helpful tips, some things I really didn’t know about even though I’v been blogging for just over 3 years!
Same as me then, blogging is a constant learning process!
I love these tips, since I used WordPress, and could install any number of handy plugins!
Admittedly, it is a lot easier for me to write snappy meta tags and up the SEO game when I do the work on other blogs, as I recently discovered when I worked on a bakery website last week. But getting around to it on my own site is a good thing to do, especially for my longer writing. Thanks for sharing!
That’s the key, isn’t it? Start applying what you do for others to your own site, I’m just as guilty, haha!
This was incredibly beneficial! I’ve been trying to optimize my website as much as possible and I’ve worked really hard to learn a lot about SEO, but there’s always more to learn. I checked my website speed and it was pitiful, so I’ve been working for quite some time on that since reading this! Thank you for your insight. I’ve pinned this so I can keep coming back to it!
Honestly, you are not alone, my website speed is rubbish, I need to work on mine too, Hummingbird here I come!
Oh Lisa! It has taken me over half an hour to read this in between note taking and downloading plugin’s. My site speed is shocking and I had no idea!!
Thank you so much for the great advice, I have a busy day ahead of me but fingers crossed it helps x x
Oh no, I’m sorry, haha! If it’s any consolation, my site speed is shocking and I need to fix it as well! xx
Great tips! I’ve been doing the same SEO related tasks for ages, like image optimization, but I use Photoshop for that. At the same time I haven’t looked into new ways to improve my blogs, SEO wise, in a while, so I’m loving your post.
Thank you, it’s always good to see what other bloggers come up with, isn’t it? Wish I was better at PhotoShop!
Thank you so much for this post! When I started my blog in April I didn’t really know what SEO was, never mind actually optimising my posts for it. I’ve recently started taking SEO seriously so any tips and advice I can get are so valuable. I’m going to have a look into some of the plugins you’ve suggested.
You’re very welcome, I hope it’s useful – and great that you’re getting started on SEO early on and not when you have a few hundred posts to go back and sort out!
You’re welcome, I’m hope they’re helpful.
This is some great stuff here! I’ll admit, I’ve been pretty lazy about SEO. I installed Yoast, and as long as those two little dots are green, I usually don’t do anything else. I’ll definitely try out some of these other ideas, thanks!
Yoast is a great start but there’s a lot more to it than that, sadly, it’s never ending, haha!
Thanks for this!
You’re welcome.
SEO can feel like a whole new thing to get your head around when starting a blog. I love how you’ve made these ones so simple. They’re easy to miss doing but they do make such an impact. If a blog is super messy, takes time to load or has poor quality pictures it can be easy to miss the create content because you’re distracted!
Oh yes, it can, it’s also never ending! But page speed is a big one, I hadn’t realised how bad mine was until this post either!
Great tips.
And I’m sure it will be very useful and helpful.
Ann
https://roomsofinspiration.blogspot.com/
Thank you, I hope so 🙂
These are some really helpful tips. I’m just starting to try to get my head around SEO and you’ve mentioned some things I hadn’t even thought about.
Thank you, Kelly, I’m so pleased they’re helpful!
Great tips! I need to take notes on the sections at the top about page speed. That’s a constant battle for me (the recipe plugin tends to slow things down). My wordpress image editor has NEVER worked and it drives me insane x
Sophie
Page speed is a biggie, it’s something that I struggle with because I have such a lot of images. Probably also too many plugins but let’s not go there now, haha x
very well written advice and helpful tips this is what people need to hear
to keep positive at this time of year 2020 is a strange year.
starting a blog seems to keep me positive should of done it years ago
Thank you, and I’m glad to hear you are keeping positive during this strange time 🙂
These are some really good tips. There’s so many things to learn about seo and its easy to get lost so a list like this can be really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Tea, you’re right, SEO is a never ending list but I’m glad this helps!
Great post! There is a wealth of useful information here. I will definitely be applying some of this. I’d never even heard the term “thin content.” Thank you very much!
Neither had I before this post, haha! Thank you, I’m glad it was useful.
Love this! I’ll be checking and updating my old posts with this!
You’re welcome, I’m glad it was helpful!
I absolutely love posts like this, always so helpful. Optimising images and simplifying my URLs made the biggest difference to my SEO 🙂
Anika
That’s absolutely wonderful to hear – I second the image optimisation, now I have to sort my caching!
Great post!! Thank you
You’re welcome 🙂
Very helpful tips ~ I didn’t know that about media attachments. Thank you!
Thank you – and neither did I before this!
I’m really new to learning about SEO so many of these tips I haven’t heard of but are really practical. Thank you for sharing and helping me learn!
SEO is a constant learning game, this is only one aspect, sadly, but I’m glad it was helpful!
Thanks for the tips, a few things for me to work on, optimising my images being the first port of call.
That will make a massive difference almost immediately 🙂
This post is so helpful. I’ve been having a hard time with SEO. Thank you for sharing!
Antonia || Sweet Passions
Aw, you’re welcome, SEO is hard work!
These are really helpful, SEO is a bit of a minefield for beginners. Pinned so I can refer back as I work on my blog, thank you!
I’m so pleased you found them helpful, SEO is a lot of black magic to me even now!
These are some great tips! When I first started blogging, I knew NOTHING about SEO and it was obvious when looking back on the posts that I wrote at the time. it’s amazing how much of a difference it can make when you start taking the little steps that you outlined here. Something as simple as ensuring that you’re using the right headers isn’t hard to implement, but it can have a great impact.
Thank you, Britt! I know, when I first started blogging things like SEO, Pinterest, affiliate marketing were all things I’d never even considered. People who reckon blogging is easy have NO idea!
Wow, it’s kinda of bad that I am not sure which of these I’m doing!I do know that I did caching (gosh, this stuff scares me) and I did something to speed up my load time. I do get the meta descriptions checked by my SEO plugin (I don’t use yoast though). My urls are good based on what you’ve advised…maybe I’m not that bad? I made notes though1 Thanks!
It sounds like you’re already really on top of things, that’s absolutely great!
It took me a while to understand the SEO thing of our blogs. I use the Yoast Plugin and it is fab. It helps in so many things. I did not get the Header Tag Structure and the Media Attachment part. I have bookmarked this page and will re-read it when I do some changes. Thank you very much Lisa, these are super helpful tips. 🙂
SEO is a constant learning game, this is only a small part of it, sadly, but I’m glad it helps!
I love this post! I learned so much from this, and it’s really useful stuff as well. Absolutely brilliant, thank you for sharing these tips! The cache thing is definitely something I need to go and check immediately.
Teresa Maria | Outlandish Blog
Oh thank you, that’s so good to hear! I know, caching is on my list as well 🙂
Very helpful points, Lisa. I have started a new blog, and managing 3 others, and those three, I am switching to WordPress (they are on Blogger, which I am getting so tired of). I am not downing on Blogger, it is a good beginner website platform, I have been on Blogger for over 10 years, and I am ready for a change.
Wow, four blogs, you superwoman! I think WordPress is a more flexible platform in many ways but as you say Blogger is a great starting point too 🙂
Hi, Lisa! SEO is one of those topics we could talk forever about, and it would seemingly change every day. 😊 Okay, I digress, maybe not every day. But often. (Sigh)
You’re right though, good or bad SEO can make or break and otherwise great blog. For me, I think page load times are the toughest part to overcome. There’s a lot of technical details included in that one which take some study to pinpoint the fix. Smush is very helpful though!
I’ve heard of Hummingbird but hadn’t tried that one. Sounds like a valuable tool to try out? I also loved the bonus tip. I had no idea Google was using the attachment page and calling it thin content. Figures! I use RankMath instead of Yoast, but I’ll be looking into that setting.
Awesome post, Lisa. Thank you! This will help a lot of folks. I’ve shared on Twitter and Pinterest. Blessings to you and yours! ♥️
Oh goodness, thank you, Holly, that’s so very kind of you! Page load times are my Achilles heel at the moment, it’s something I’m trying to resolve. And I’ve heard good things about RankMath, which I believe integrates with Yoast, so I’ll take another look at that. Thank you again!
I’ve been looking at SEO lately. So important to have a site that loads at a proper speed. I’ve seen sites where it takes FOREVER to load. So annoying! I found myself having a hard time with image optimization because pictures become a bit more pixelated this way. I can circle back at this since it has been a while and hopefully the technology improved! Thanks for sharing these SEO tips!
Nancy ✨
Site loading speed is my absolute bugbear, mine isn’t fast enough and I need to get it down! I hope your image optimisation is easier this time around!
Thank you so much for sharing all of these tips. These are very helpful.
New Post – https://www.exclusivebeautydiary.com/2020/07/ysl-rouge-pur-couture-17-rose-dahlia.html
You are welcome, I’m glad they are helpful 🙂
SEO is so important,and it’s always evolving and changing, which makes it a constant learning process. Thanks for sharing these tips!
Yes indeed, SEO is a learning process, you’re right!
Thank-you for these tips Lisa, they’re so helpful!
You’re welcome, I’m so pleased they’re helpful!
These actionable SEO tips are really amazing. I will try these out for sure!
Wonderful Post!
Allurerage
Thetrendybride
I’m glad they are helpful 🙂
Oooh I love these tips, I’m going to check to make sure Ive done these!
Love, Amie ❤
The Curvaceous Vegan
Yay, I hope they’re helpful! 🙂
This is all stuff that I need to do, because I currently do none of it. Ooops?
Excellent tips, and I’ll definitely be taking them on board.
Cora | https://www.teapartyprincess.co.uk/
SEO is a many-layered game so I’m sure you’re doing other stuff that counts, haha!
Hey Lisa, I’ve personally seen that most bloggers actually fall at the header tag. This is easily one of the most important elements in SEO yet it’s never given proper attention. Yoast is good for pulling in Blog titles, however this assumes that the blog was titled properly with SEO in mind. Great Article.
Thank you so much, Terrence, I’m so glad you enjoyed the article 🙂
These are some great SEO tips for bloggers. I’ll definitely keep in my mind when optimizing my blog post. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you, Lomash, I’m so glad you found them useful!
Totally bookmarking this! Thank you for sharing
You’re welcome, glad it was helpful!
This is very informative and helpful.
You’re welcome 🙂
Thanks for sharing these helpful tips ♥
Ann
https://roomsofinspiration.blogspot.com/
I’m glad they are useful 🙂
Great advice! Thank you!
I’m currently in the topic of increasing the speed of my page, so taking in all your tips 🙂
You’re welcome, page speed is my bugbear too 🙂
Thank you for sharing this information. This information is very useful to us.
I’m glad it was helpful 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing all of these tips. They are helpful.
New Post – https://www.exclusivebeautydiary.com/2020/09/marc-jacobs-decadance-mugler-aura.html
You are welcome, that’s great it has been useful 🙂
I’ve just started having a focus on my SEO and it’s so satisfying to already be seeing some of the results. There are some seriously useful tips here and I’ll definitely be checking out some of those plugins and trying to utilise some of these. Thank you!
SEO is such a long game, isn’t it? But that’s great, I’m so pleased this post was helpful – thank you!
Thanks for sharing this actionable post. I used them for one my clients niche oriented sites. You’ll get the good amount of content and can use that for blogging for your brand. I enjoy following your post.
Thank you much, I’m glad this post was useful for you!
Choose the correct keywords; if possible find less competitive Keywords with high search volume. Choose Key phrases, single word keyword cannot garner visits for you but appropriate keyword phrases will increase online visibility.
Yes, those are good tips for content writing, thank you.
Hey Lisa,
Superlative collection of SEO Tips! I love the way you provide info in this article and audience who will come to read or finding such information may also like it.
Thank you, Robert, I’m glad you think so 🙂
Wonderful information about the actionable seo tips for your blog. Your blog gives the best and the most interesting information. I wonder if we can gather such practical information about it, a great post definitely to come across.
Thank you very much, I’m glad you found it useful 🙂
Very useful and helpful insights about SEO tips and strategies. Great Blog. Thank you so much for sharing this blog.
You’re welcome, I’m glad you found it helpful 🙂
Great advice! Thank you!
I’m currently in the topic of increasing the speed of my page, so taking in all your tips 🙂
Thank you, I’m glad it was helpful – good luck!
I have learned so much from your article. I encourage you to keep on posting.
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Thank you, glad it was helpful.
Wonderful article on actionable seo tips for your blog. I found this to be very informative. This is very helpful.
Thank you so much, I’m very pleased you found it useful.
Great Article! Thank you for sharing this is very informative post, and looking forward to the latest one.
Glad you found it useful 🙂
This post is a goldmine of handy tips. Thank you, Lisa! SEO has been such a learning curve for me, and sometimes it’s only been through posts such as this that I’ve learnt what I have. In good news, I finally score A on GTMetrix 🙂
That’s great, I’m so pleased it was useful, and wow, congrats on that A score, whoop!
Great advice! Thank you!
Good to learn new thing from this blog
You’re welcome, glad it was helpful.
Superb guidance! I’m grateful.
I learned a lot from this blog.
You’re welcome, I’m very pleased it was useful 🙂
Thank you for demystifying the intricacies of page titles! Your advice on optimizing them to be concise, unique, and containing relevant keywords is invaluable.
You are welcome, glad it was helpful 🙂