Happy Friday Blog Share #2: Plus SEO Tips

What have you learned about writing and blogging this week? This month, I’ve been diving into all things SEO. Today, I’m excited to share a few SEO tips and tools I’ve discovered. But first, here’s our quick update for the week.

Covid Thanksgiving Adventures

Yesterday, our family celebrated a social isolation Thanksgiving. Our household gathered for our traditional Thanksgiving meal. Since there were far fewer people at the table, it felt empty. It also meant more leftovers. But hey, leftovers are the best part of Thanksgiving, right?

The seven of us played plenty of board games, did holiday crafts, walked to the park, watch The Peanuts Movie, and simply enjoyed our time together. We also made a ton of calls to family and friends. Although Thanksgiving felt different, it was good. All of us appreciated the time together. And, we are all happy, healthy, and safe overall—which feels like a pretty big win during this crazy COVID year.

SEO Tips and Learnings

If there is one thing I’m learning about blogging this year, it’s that SEO (or search engine optimization) matters. SEO is how some writers get hundreds, thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of visitors to their site each month. When I first started my WordPress blog, one of the first tools I learned about was Yoast SEO. This was a great place to start. Little did I know, this was just the beginning. Here are a few of my favorite SEO tools and tips.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is easy to install. The fact that it rates each blog post with a readability score and an SEO score resonates with me. I’ve fallen in love with the red, yellow, green stoplight method of instruction. I also like that Yoast SEO gives real-time feedback. It’s fun to get in the moment validation as I write.

This year, I upgraded to the pro version and have fallen in love with the bonus tools. Some of these include:

• A feature that shows which old posts are “orphans” or do not contain internal links.
• A drag and drop feature that creates a table of contents in your post for you. I don’t use this often, but it’s a nice feature for those long posts.
• Related posts, a fun feature that makes internal linking easy.

Like most bloggers I know, I long to be a writer first and an SEO expert second. In other words, I want my writing to be helpful to real, living, breathing human beings, and not just get the attention of the web-spiders who decide where my site will rank. So I appreciate that Yoast SEO lets me know when I’m over-optimizing too.

2. Niel Patel

My second big SEO find is Niel Patel’s free course SEO Unlocked. After learning how to light up all of the green dots with Yoast SEO, I wondered why I still wasn’t getting much organic traffic. One of the most important things I learned from Niel’s course, it’s not enough to simply write an SEO friendly post. It’s also important to make sure people are actually searching for the keywords we use. Niel’s Uber Suggest tool and course have been huge in helping me level-up my SEO game by finding words and titles that people are searching for.

3. Alexa Trafic Rank Extension

The Alexa Traffic Rank Extension is great for tracking SEO growth. I appreciate how easy this extension makes it to track my blog’s overall traffic ranking. I hear the ranking isn’t 100 percent accurate and can be manipulated. I’m not sure what this means and wouldn’t know how to manipulate the system if I wanted to—but I don’t want to. One thing I have learned about myself is I thrive off of feedback. Seeing traffic and ranking growth is huge and keeps me moving forward.

4. Jetpack

Finally, the free version of Jetpack for WordPress is also excellent for tracking progress. I like that it shows where my site traffic comes from. This makes it easy to tell how many visitors come from each search engine a day.

My SEO Tips and Experiment

Since starting this SEO adventure, it’s been fun watching the organic search traffic grow from 1-2 organic visitors a month to a few search-engine visitors a day. Of course, this isn’t massive growth. However, it is enough to let me know my SEO experiment is starting to work. I’m excited to keep this SEO experiment going in 2021 and can’t wait to see where it leads.

This year, I discovered a few SEO tools that are a great fit for my personality and blogging style. I also have some amazing blogging friends who’ve confirmed that diving into all things SEO related has been a game-changer for them. However, I don’t have this figured out yet.

So, what am I missing?

• Do you have a favorite SEO tool that’s not on my list?
• Are there simple SEO strategies that work well for you?
• What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about SEO this year?
• Are there any SEO learnings you had that have been key in getting your website to rank?

Now it’s your turn! If you have any insight, please feel free to leave them in the comments below. I wholeheartedly believe that blogging is more fun in a community. So let’s grow together.

Then, leave your amazing posts in the blogger’s link-up below. I can’t wait to see the amazing writing you’ve been up to.

Happy Friday Blog-Party #2

1. This blog-party is open to everyone. Over the past few months, I’ve met some incredible writers who blog about faith, family, relationships, and even crafting, fashion, homeschooling, and DYI. So why leave anyone out? Blogging is way more fun with friends. So it doesn’t really matter what topic you write about. You’re in, and we’d love to have you share your post!
2. Add 1-2 of your posts (old or new) by clicking the blue button below (It’s easy). I’m learning that old posts need love too. If you’ve been too busy to write this week, I know what that’s like. Simply pick a favorite old post to share.
3. For every post you leave, we’d love it if you would comment on someone else’s post (or two or three). This is an excellent way to make new friends, cheer other writers on, see what fellow bloggers are up to, and blogging within a community is simply more fun. There are no rules on who’s post you should comment on. Just click on the ones that resonate most with you.
4. Finally, we’d love it if you’d grab a button for your site or add our blog to your link-up list. We intend to host every Friday and keep the link-up going all week long. You can find a list of some of our favorite link-ups here. If you’re looking for more places to share, be sure to join in these too!

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Now, use the “Add Link” button below to share your amazing blog posts!