SEO Checklist 2021 | 10 Best SEO Tips for Bloggers

Hello! Are you a blogger or small business owner looking to drive traffic and ultimately make more revenue in 2021 from your online website? I hope you are!

I am listing out the 10 Best SEO Tips for Bloggers and small business owners in this blog post. This post includes an awesome SEO Checklist 2021 edition.

Ever since transitioning my own blog (this one you are reading right now) from Blogger to WordPress last year, I’ve seen a significant improvement to my blog traffic.

What is SEO?

With my new WordPress blog in motion, I chose to spend time learning about SEO in 2020. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Why is SEO so dang important? Well, it helps your beautiful, lengthy blog posts show up in a search engine so more people can click on it.

More people clicking on your blog posts can mean many things. For influencers and fashion bloggers like myself, it means I can drive affiliate sales and make money through platforms such as LIKEtoKNOW.it.

For small business owners, it can mean spreading the word on a new product launch.

The power of strong SEO can honestly make or break a business in 2021. Back in 2019, I barely made any affiliate sales on my blog. I continued to spend hours paying photographers to take outfit photos for me and writing out detailed blog posts only to see nothing in return. No sales, no page views, nothing.

Why You Need to Care About SEO for Your Blog or Website

Creating blog posts is only part of the process to grow and expand your online business. No matter how detailed or informative your blog post is, you need to back it up with basic SEO strategies to draw in more page views.

I am explaining the importance today of SEO because it truly makes a huge difference and I’ve experienced it first-hand with my own business, Affordable by Amanda.

By including basic SEO strategies to all of my blog posts in 2020, I drove up blog post traffic by 300%. I am now making at least $500 per month in affiliate sales from my blog posts alone.

10 Best SEO Tips for Bloggers

Establish The Basics

A couple of initial steps to start creating a successful blog?

Web Hosting and Domain Name

Making sure you host your website on a platform and have your own domain name. These are two crucial steps to make your website rank higher on Google.

For my blog, Affordable by Amanda, I host with Bluehost and I purchase my www.affordablebyamanda.com domain name on a yearly basis renewal for $16 through Google.

Using a hosting website helps provide faster page speed and response time which are two necessary factors for improving your overall SEO ranking on Google.

Install The Yoast SEO Plugin

I will break down what to include in your blog post with help from the Yoast Plugin later on, but I want to make sure you have it installed. The Yoast SEO Plugin does roughly 70% of the SEO work for you. It’s a FREE Plugin available for most platforms and I have it installed on my WordPress account.

10 Best SEO Tips for Bloggers

1. Research a Topic to Write a Blog Post About

Some days I run out of ideas on what to write about for a new blog post. It happens to all of us! A few ways I get inspired? I use Google Trends and Answer the Public to look up what other people are asking for advice on or help with.

Google Trends allows you to search for popular search queries.

For example, I plugged in the phrase “spring fashion” and found related key words to include in an upcoming blog post. I will most likely include the phrase “spring fashion 2021” in a new blog post because that was listed as a breakout search term!

2. Find The Perfect Focus Keyword For Your Blog Post

The first step in creating an SEO-friendly blog post: finding the perfect focus keyword to use. Some tips I have for figuring out your ideal focus keyword are to perform simple Google searches.

Whenever I plan out a blog post, I head to Google to see what people are searching for with my blog post topic in mind. For example, I recently wrote a blog post on reviewing Briogeo Shampoo and Conditioner.

When I started typing out the word “Briogeo” into a Google search, the next few words that came were  “Scalp Revival” and “Shampoo and Conditioner”. Since my blog post was going to mention the Briogeo Shampoo and Conditioner, I decided to choose those keywords to integrate into my blog post.

I hope you realize how simple this is!! It’s as simple as making a Google search with relevant search terms. I seriously do this for all of my blog posts and it makes the biggest difference.

3. Add Your Focus Keyword to Your Blog Post

Let’s continue on with my Briogeo blog post example, shall we? For my blog post covering reviews of the Briogeo Shampoo and Conditioner, I chose the focus keyword as “briogeo shampoo and conditioner reviews”.

Where to Add Your Focus Keyword

1. Add your focus keyword to your blog post title
2. Add your focus keyword into the first 100 words of your blog post
3. Weave your focus keyword into your Meta Description
4. Add your focus keyword into 2-3 H1 or H2 headers in your blog post content
5. Add your focus keyword into your image titles

4. Resize Your Blog Post Images

Since page speed plays a factor into search engine optimization, it’s also necessary to resize your images if they are large files.

For reference, I typically use a resize website called Simple Image Resizer (for free) and change the dimensions of all of my blog post images to: 1365 x 2048. That is width by height for typical professional photos taken with a DSLR camera. For iPhone photos, I don’t mess with the dimensions because they load faster.

5. Add Descriptions to All of Your Blog Post Images

Did you know that Google images can also help drive traffic back to your site? I love to include a lot of visually appealing high-quality images within all of my blog posts to boost my SEO Google ranking.

With each image I upload to a new blog post, I make sure to include a helpful description. I include my focus keyword in the ALT Text for my image, too.

See an example where my image and blog post show up in a Google image search for the Briogeo Dry Shampoo.

It’s so exciting to see all my hard work actually pay off and show up in a simple Google search! You will bask in this rewarding feeling as well once you apply these 10 SEO strategies to your blog.

6. Write Long Form Content

Google praises long form content. Every few weeks, I will sit down and write a blog post with at least 2,000+ words otherwise called “long form content” to improve my SEO standings with Google.

The longer the blog post, the more likely Google will show it to people because it’s valuable. Even if 2,000+ words seems insanely difficult to reach, I recommend writing out posts with at least 500 words.

It will pay off for you in the long run, I swear! A couple of my long form blog posts are currently sitting at the top search position on Google. I see recurrently traffic from these lengthy blog posts on a daily basis.

7. Weave In Relevant Blog Posts as Internal Links

Another SEO factor to help improve your search position on Google: internal links. You want to weave in at least three links to relevant blog posts within your new blog post.

Adding internal links also helps direct readers to similar blog posts. Once they wrap up reading one blog post they can start reading another one!

For example, whenever I post about beauty, I normally include relevant blog posts where I talk about other makeup or skin care products. Internal links are easily one of the best SEO practices, too.

Your FREE SEO Checklist 2021

8. Narrow Down Your Blog Niche

With all of your blog posts you should narrow down your niche. Cover a couple of topics to make yourself known as an expert in an area according to Google.

With my own blog, I focus on affordable fashion and beauty as well as blogging tips. These are the only topics I cover on my blog. Sticking to a niche encourages Google to acknowledge you as an expert.

Keep similar topics with your niche in mind when creating new blog posts. Don’t just start randomly writing about food recipes if your blog primarily covers style.

9. Use a Mobile Responsive Theme

As soon as I switched my blog from Blogger to WordPress I started my hunt for a beautiful theme to represent my brand. Thankfully, my search ended up at EmPress Themes and I purchased an elegant and responsive template to run my site with!

It’s 2021 and you must operate a mobile-responsive, or mobile-friendly, site. Most people will be searching Google on their phones. You could lose out on potential customers if your website isn’t mobile-friendly.

My current EmPress theme on WordPress includes a modern layout filled with drop-down menus, shopping tabs, and a break down of topics for every single person to navigate with ease.

10. Share Your Blog Post on Social Media

Finally, we’ve made it to the last tip! Don’t think this one is any less important because it’s number 10. Sharing your shiny new blog post on social media can draw in new traffic sources.

Sharing your blog post on social media can look like a Facebook post, Instagram swipe-up link, Pinterest pin, e-mail newsletter, or Tweet. Social media can also impact your overall SEO ranking on Google.

Personally, I have a few blog posts that show up higher in ranking solely because I’ve shared to my blog page on Facebook. Social media drives traffic back to your blog when people share it.

Once again you are growing an organic reach by sharing your blog posts onto social media and having new eyes on your blog content.

Final Thoughts

I hope this blog post covering SEO (search engine optimization) helps you out in some way! Let me know if these tips bring more traffic back to your blog in the comments. I’d love to hear from you! If you have any other questions on SEO also leave them in the comments.

Be sure to “Pin” this photo to spread awareness to these tips for other bloggers and small business owners!