3 Ways to Transform Your Blog Into a SEO Machine.

Getting any blog off the ground can be an extremely difficult process. Even if you have the necessary focus and high quality content, it can be hard to get noticed among the vast sea of noise that is the Internet. Therefore, it is extremely important that you learn how to design your blog for SEO purposes. Smart SEO design will not take away from the quality and integrity of your blog, but it will help to ensure that your hard work gets the maximum exposure that it deserves.

Here are the top 3 tips for turning your blog into an efficient SEO machine.

Focus on 1 or 2 Long-Tail Keywords

Optimizing your content for keywords is not about using as many keywords as you possibly can, which will actually damage your SEO ranking and lower the quality of your content. Rather you want to use your keywords intelligently and in a way that does not appear forced. A good rule is to only focus on one or two keywords for each blog post. This will keep your content focused on a clear goal for each post.

The use of long-tail keywords will ensure that you are standing out from the crowd and your readers are looking for exactly what you are providing. This will mean more hits and conversions, as the people who come to your site are more likely to stay and click through. There are a number of great articles out there on how to do long-tail keyword research, so take some time to familiarize yourself with the process involved.

Next, be sure that you include these keywords in specific parts of your blog posts. The four essential places to include your long-tail keywords are the headline and sub-headers, body, meta-description and URL. This will ensure that your keywords get the maximum exposure for SEO purposes.

Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly

It has been one year since Google commented that a greater share of searches are performed from phones than from desktops. This is extremely important because phone-based queries will display the results that are mobile-friendly first. A mobile-friendly design for your blog makes good sense for its own sake, but it is now also crucial for SEO purposes. Take the time to ensure that you have a responsive design for your blog and that it is easy and enjoyable to read from a phone.

Optimize Your Meta-Description

A meta-description is the extra text that appears in SERPs, which will let your readers know what the link to your blog is about. The meta-description provides searchers with the information they need to decide whether your content is what they are searching for. Not only should your meta-description be relevant and compelling, but it should also include the long-tail keywords that you are focusing on, which should also be representative of the content that you are writing about. By making a reader-friendly meta-description that features the natural inclusion of keywords, you will make it easy for search engines to prove the relevancy of your post in SERPs.