Are You SEO Ready? The Complete SEO Guide for Bloggers
Good news, SEO doesn’t need to be complex or difficult.
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I’ve been using a minimalist approach for years — and it works. Like the Pareto Principle says, 80% of results come from just 20% of actions.
So this is my complete SEO guide for personal bloggers. These are the simple things that actually move the needle and will optimize your personal website for sustainable organic traffic.
This is how to make your blog SEO ready in 2024 (and beyond).
Now let’s do this!
What is SEO?
SEO, search engine optimization, is how you optimize a website, blog post, web page or peace of content for search engines and online discovery.
SEO is the language that search engines like Google, YouTube and Pinterest speak. So to rank in these places (i.e., to get traffic), we need to speak their language too.
This is what being SEO ready means. And luckily, it’s pretty simple.
SEO Triangle
My 3 Cornerstones for Good SEO
The content. This is the quality of your writing, your content strategy, authenticity and branding intention.
The reader. This is writing and optimizing for the reader’s search intent, pain points and values. It’s the art of creating a positive experience.
The technicals. This is how you optimize your content for ranking — for example, using your target keywords in the right places.
The steps below will ensure you cover all three cornerstones of the SEO triangle.
The Importance of Being SEO Ready
Even if you’re a new blog, starting off on the right foot (with good SEO) is important. Here’s why:
Avoid wasting time fixing mistakes later on
Rank quicker
Start establishing niche authority
Be more competitive
Build good SEO habits
Optimized content just looks and reads better
Make your content more intentional
Look more professional
Have better topic organization
Get more traffic
Start gathering and tracking key data
Improve the performance, reach and impact of your content
SEO for Blogging (5 steps)
1. Crawlability + Indexability
Crawlability is a search engine’s ability to access your site. Indexability is a search engine’s ability to analyze a page and index it.
Personally, I’ve never run into any issues with crawlability or indexability. Most modern site builders and CMS platforms ensure you’re SEO ready.
You would likely have to take some deliberate action to make a site non-crawlable or non-indexable. For example, disallowing crawlability in a robot.txt file, having a “rel=nofollow” tag or adding a “noindex” tag.
Still, there are ways to spot issues.
One of the first things I always do with a new website is connect it to Google Search Console and Google Analytics (GA4).
This lets you monitor performance, discover any issues and request new content for indexing.
I also use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free), which monitors my pages and site performance and sends me periodic reports to review.
So when you have a new blog, just make sure it’s discoverable and indexable.
2. Keyword Use
Content SEO is how you optimize your content for ranking and performance. And a big part of this is using your keywords in the right places.
This is one of the most fundamental parts of SEO. Luckily, it’s pretty straightforward to do:
Titles. Your H1 and meta titles should always include your target keyword. Try to keep it towards the front too.
Meta description. Your meta description is what shows under your title in the results. It’s good to include your keyword here.
URL slug. Your URL slug should contain your target keyword (and nothing more). Delete extra words to make it look cleaner.
Intro. Try to use your target keyword early in your blog post — within the first paragraph or ~100 words.
Body text. You’ll naturally use your keyword while writing (in headers or within text). Just don’t overdo it — prioritize natural writing over SEO.
Explore more:
➤ Keyword Research 101 (how I do things)
3. UX
“You could have the perfect keyword and the perfect content, but if your UX sucks, then people will leave and you’ll struggle to rank or grow real authority.”
UX, user experience, in blogging is how a reader interacts with and experiences an article. And it’s super important for SEO.
A few signals that your UX (and content) are good are a low bounce rate (people stay a while), high views per visit (readers click through to other articles) and longer session times.
Luckily, most modern website builders make it pretty easy to optimize for UX. But it’s still important to keep a few things in mind:
Good formatting. The average person spends 52 seconds reading a blog. It’s an on-demand, short-form world, and good formatting suits the modern reader. So use blank spaces, clear headers, bullet lists and bold text. Avoid long-running paragraphs and make things scannable.
Images and infographics. If you can, go for custom images — even simple phone photos or Canva edits are more authentic. Custom infographics are also great for summarizing large blocks of text.
Accessibility. Website accessibility ensures anyone with a disability can enjoy your content. For example, including alt text in your images.
Speed. If your website and blog is slow, this will ruin your UX and SEO. So be sure to optimize for page speed. A couple ways to do this is to compress your images (I go for <500KB) and consider using a CDN.
Engaging elements. Provide a more engaging experience with video, quizzes, surveys, CTAs, interactive widgets or social share buttons.
Mobile-first. Most people are reading your blog from their phones. So always check your posts and pages look great on mobile.
4. Modern SEO Writing
“Good writing is good SEO. That means writing authentic, helpful content that sounds like a real live human.”
Good writing is the foundation of your blog. While this is a skill that takes practice and time, there are a few things worth paying attention to sooner rather than later.
This is what good SEO writing entails:
Matching the search intent of your keyword and the user
Content that is actually helpful and unique
Using firsthand experience and unique insights
Covering topics in full — include secondary and related keywords
Writing actively and without fluff — less is more
Easy to read — again, have good UX
If you just get these things right, you’ll be most of the way there.
5. Create Topic Clusters
The topics you write about should all support each other. This is the foundation of a solid content strategy. And topic clusters sit in the center of this framework.
Topic clusters are groups of related articles that interlink between and support each other. Together, they create strong topical authority in your niche, which improves SEO trust, credibility and ranking.
For example, here’s a small topic cluster based around a core pillar post:
The Complete SEO Guide for Bloggers (pillar post)
Why SEO Matters in Blogging
The Role of UX in SEO
10 SEO Mistakes to Avoid
8 SEO Trends to Watch for
How to do Keyword Research
6 SEO Metrics Bloggers Should Know
One perfectly optimized article by itself is weak for SEO. But 10+ that are all interlinked and supporting each other? Well, that’s some powerful stuff.
So be sure to choose articles that make sense and actually go well together. I talk about this topic more in my post on how many blogs you should launch a website with.
Explore more:
➤ How to Grow a Multi-Niche Blog
Later ✌️
SEO doesn’t need to be hard. Pulling a few key levers should be plenty to get you sustainable organic traffic.
You can always optimize things further as you grow and develop a more complex content strategy and site architecture.
For starters, I focus on covering three key areas (my SEO triangle): the content, the reader and the technicals.
Writing genuinely helpful experience-based content, using good keywords in the right places and providing a positive experience will have the biggest impact on your SEO performance.
And as with anything, stay consistent. Build topical authority with clusters of articles and simply never quit.
SEO (and blogging) is a long game. But rest assured, it’s far from dead.
