2 Simple Ways To Supercharge SEO

Today’s post is for all my fellow bloggers out there who see the letters SEO and kind of panic. If your eyes are already glazing over – WAIT! I promise. This will be helpful. I was that way for a really long time until I realized that SEO is the only tried and true way to push visitors to your blog. You can push content on social media all day long, but as so many of us are learning – social media changes all the time! It’s not as reliable of a source for readers and optimizing your blog content to make it easier for Google to read is worth the time. Trust me. There are hundreds of articles on SEO basics for bloggers, but to be honest, these are two of the most beneficial tactics I have used to boost my traffic and the best part is that they are super easy to implement. So, today I’m sharing 2 simple way to supercharge SEO for your blog.

2 Simple Ways To Supercharge SEO

Let’s get one thing straight – I’m not an SEO expert. In fact, it’s really only been this year that I have really buckled down with it thanks to a giant push from Erica + Chelsea. Writing for SEO is not something that comes naturally to me, but I wholeheartedly believe that some of my content can be useful for people (planning trips to Hawaii, traveling, etc), so I wanted to make the best possible effort of having Google recognize my content as valuable, too, and thus rank it as a reliable source! That’s where SEO comes in. If you’re completely lost, SEO means “search engine optimization”. It’s fancy-speak for having your blog posts pop up when someone Googles any given topic. Hint: YOU WANT IT TO POP UP IN GOOGLE 🙂 Why? Because you want people to find your blog/website and read it.

SEO always overwhelmed me. I thought it was for people who were really tech savvy or who were much more well-versed in blogging than I am, but the more I read, the more I learn and today I am really excited to share two easy ways to boost your SEO.

1. Photos. It’s so easy to simply upload your photos into your blog portal and then put them into your post. In fact, I had been doing it this way for many, many years. But listen up – adding ALT text to photos is a super simple way for Google to recognize your site. Why? Because in addition to crawling the text of your blog post, Google crawls the text on your photos. What text? The ALT text! Does it sound like I’m speaking gibberish? Here’s what it looks like on my computer:I blog on WordPress, so when I go to “Add Media”, this is what pops up in the right hand side of my screen. From here, I add in keywords that fit the post and all the potential “search phrases” that I think will help people find my post. For example, a post on how to save money on a vacation to Hawaii included the blog post title first, followed by keywords I found by searching Pinterest. “Cheap Hawaii: How To Visit Oahu On A Budget – Hawaii On A Budget – Cheap Hawaii – Oahu On A Budget – Cheap Oahu – Planning a trip to Hawaii on a budget – planning a vacation on a budget – Hawaii Vacation – cheap flights to hawaii – cheap hawaii vacations – cheap trips to Hawaii – Affordable Hawaii vacations”

When Google is crawling, or searching, through the internet, it will recognize not just your blog post content, but your photos as well as hits for this sort of content. It’s a very simple way to make sure your posts are getting the attention they deserve! I do this for every single photo within any given post.

2. Updating old posts with anchor text links. What is an anchor text link? An anchor text link is a clickable link that has a relevant phrase attached to it, based on the content you are linking to. For so long, I would type things like: “For more information on best Hawaii hikes, click here” and “here” would be linked. THIS IS BAD. By using an anchor text link, the new phrase would be “If you liked this post, don’t miss my post on the best Hawaii hikes!” where “best Hawaii hikes” would be hyperlinked. This makes your post SEO-friendly and alerts Google to the fact that you have multiple, relevant pages with reliable information.

The more I find out about SEO, the more I want to learn. If you are an SEO expert or have any SEO tips or tricks you think would be helpful, I would love to hear them! I hope this post was helpful for anyone who is puzzled by SEO or just too intimidated to even dive in!