Often when you’re trying to keep up with writing enough content, it’s hard to find the time to do anything extra.

But that definitely doesn’t mean you should give up. If you split your tasks into small chunks, you will be surprised what you can accomplish.

In this article, I’ll show you 10 two-minute tweaks that can help you improve your blog.

1. Make a Title More Compelling

Even if you’re great at coming up with attention-grabbing titles these days, you most likely have some great posts gathering dust in your archives that could use a better title.

Most readers judge your posts by the title. A few small tweaks like adding an adjective, number, or even rephrasing the title to make the benefits of reading the post clearer could give you a huge boost to your traffic.

Here’s an example:

Old Title: Using Twitter Effectively

New Title: Six Clever Twitter Tricks to Save You Time

It’s easy to see which of those is going to get more attention … yet they could easily describe the exact same post.

2. Link to Another Post

Backlinks are good for SEO Here’s a great one for this Post: 4 Reasons Why Blogging Is Important For Marketing and SEO

One great way to decrease bounce rate is to give your users ample amount of opportunities to check out other related content.

You probably have posts languishing in your archives that hardly anyone sees. Take two minutes to find an appropriate place to link them from an existing post.

You can also link to your new posts from your older articles. Perhaps you’ve gone into a topic in much more depth since you first wrote about it, so you should point your readers to your best material.

3. Update Your About Page

When did you last update your About page? If you’re like most bloggers, you’ve not touched it since you created it … and that might have been years ago.

Take a quick peek right now. Is there anything out of date? Look out for:

Biographical details, new updates, press and mentions, etc.
Information about your services and products – you may have ditched old ones or added new ones.

4. Add a Photo of Yourself

Photos can be a great way to help readers connect because it shows them the person behind the words. If you’ve got a good recent shot (it doesn’t have to be a professional one) add it to your About page.

You could even use it in your header or in your sidebar.

Alternatively, you can add images to your older posts. A photo helps to break up the page and makes it easy to read your content.

5. Remove a Widget from Your Sidebar

Most blog sidebars are hopelessly cluttered. Readers often struggle to find the options they actually want (like subscribing to your blog or following you on Twitter) in the middle of all the clutter.

Take a look at your sidebar and find one widget that you could do without – then remove it. Hint: tag clouds and little calendars aren’t usually adding much to your readers’ experience.

6. Deal With Any Comments

Even if you’re not inundated with comments, it’s easy to get behind with dealing with them. Have a two-minute check for any that need a quick reply … or for any spam that’s snuck in past your filter.

Unanswered questions don’t create a great impression for readers.

They make it look like you don’t care about your blog or that you’re an absent blogger. If you find it hard to keep up, you might want to close comments on posts older than a month.

It’s also a good idea to turn off comments on pages (such as your About page) so that these don’t get cluttered over time.

7. Put More Information on Your Contact Page

Some bloggers put a contact form on their contact page and nothing else. While that’s not a disaster, it does create barriers for readers who may want to contact you in other ways.

Depending on your business, you may not want or need to include a phone number or address on your contact page, but it’s often a good idea to add:

Your email address (not all readers trust that contact forms will work, and they may prefer to create their message to you through their email client).

8. Add “As Featured In”

If you’ve been blogging for a while and have guest posted on other blogs, or been interviewed in a blog or podcast, then make sure your new readers know … especially if those blogs or podcasts are well-known names in your field.

My header includes logos of some of the key sites where I’ve been featured.

OptinMonster also does the same on their front page.

You should use your header or your sidebar for this. That way, every visitor on your site can instantly see that you’re an authority on your topic.

9. Fix a Typo

Typos happen to every blogger … but they can create a poor impression. If your posts and pages are riddled with spelling mistakes, you’ll look less professional and potential clients will – understandably – question whether you’re much good at paying attention to small but important details.

Read carefully through your blog articles starting with the ones that get a lot of traffic. If you spot a typo, fix it.

If you’re sure your work is typo-free, look out for sentences that you can improve or images / videos that you can add.

10. Add a Call to Action

When you get to the end of a blog post, it’s easy to just stop … but that’s a huge wasted opportunity. Instead, you may want to include a “call to action” – a prompt for your reader to do something.

You might want them to:

Leave a comment.
Share your post on social media.
Comment on your post on social media.
Take action in their business or life.
Read a related post on your blog.
Check out one of your product or services that’s related to the post.
… or any other action that would benefit you (and hopefully them too).

Each of these tweaks could take you just two minutes – but it could reap you huge benefits.

Wisdom of Syed Balkhi

Save

Save

1. WordPress is the best SEO

WordPress Focuses on User Experience.

WordPress’s themes and plugins work together to make websites professional, user-friendly, and attractive.

The result?

Visitors enjoy the experience they get on a WordPress site.

They stay longer, decreasing your overall site bounce rate.

If you’re looking to improve your site’s SEO ranking, this is excellent news for you. Google wants to reward websites that provide a great user experience.

2. Optimizing Images for SEO Is Simple on WordPress

Images are essential to your blog posts. One or two of them, used in a timely way, breaks up your blog into interesting, readable sections.

But images don’t only lead readers into the heart of your text.

They’re also powerful tools for SEO, especially when you use WordPress.

WordPress allows you to “create alternative text” for each image you use. This means you can plug in your keywords as image descriptions that’ll be noticed by search engine crawlers.

3. WordPress Is Optimized for Mobile Users

Mobile usage has grown rapidly in the past few years

The great news is if you’re already using WordPress to power your site, you don’t need to do anything extra to make your website accessible on mobile devices.

Why? Most WordPress themes are already optimized for mobile users.

4. WordPress Helps You Integrate Your Campaign with Social Media

Social media is gigantic today, and it’s one of the best platforms for marketing your brand.

What’s more, success in your social media campaign will indirectly improve your SEO ranking.

On WordPress, you can create customized social media buttons for your blog so it’s easier for readers to share your content.

You can add a social media feed to your site.

5. WordPress Has Awesome Plugins Made Specifically for SEO

When you use WordPress, optimizing for higher ranking becomes simple. All you need is to install the right free plugins.

Thanks for your wisdom Julia McCoy

WordPress is the industry leader when it comes to content management systems. In fact, at last check, 29% of all websites are built using WordPress (the next closest competitor, Joomla, stands at just 3%).

Not only is it arguably the most user-friendly platform, it’s unparalleled when it comes to SEO. Even right out of the box, all the basics of SEO are covered.

That said, with the help of a few other strategies, you can take your WordPress SEO to the next level. Following are 9 ways to make sure your WordPress site and content are optimized to the fullest.

1. Set your Permalink structure to Static

By default, the permalink (or URL) structure in WordPress isn’t great for SEO or for users. Right out of the box, it will look something like this: http://example.com/?p=N.

Fortunately, it’s easy to change your default settings to something more search engine friendly – like http://example.com/your-post-title.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings –> Permalink Settings, and select “Post Name”. This will keep your URL structure simple and clean, and will ensure that all your new post URLS are automatically optimized.

2. Use your keywords in the two most important locations: Title & Header tags

You should obviously be using your keywords (and variations of your keywords) throughout your content. Just remember: a well-optimized piece of content won’t simply use a single keyword again and again. Rather, it will include a wide variety of words and phrases related to the main topic of that individual post.

That said, you will likely have one main keyword phrase that you’re focusing in on. Arguably the most important location to use this phrase is in your title tag (which should by default also put your keyword in your URL). Preferably, use those keywords as close to the beginning of your title as possible.

Header tags (H2, H3, etc.) ensure Google and your readers know what your content is about. WordPress makes it easy to use header tags simply by clicking on the text formatting drop down box in your Visual Editor (Note: if you don’t see this box, click on the “Toolbar Toggle” button and it will show up).

By default, your page or post title will be your H1 (most important) tag. You should only have one H1 tag per page or post.

For the main sub-headings of my posts, I typically use the H2 tag. For instance, in this post, the main headings are enclosed in the H2 tag, while I used H3 for the numbered items. Any sub-headings beneath the numbered items would be enclosed in H4 tags.

3. Upload an XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps aren’t, strictly speaking, a necessity for getting Google to navigate and index all your pages and posts. However, they can make the process more efficient, ensuring your new content is found as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, there are some great plugins that will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your WordPress site. The best is Google XML Sitemaps. It notifies Google each time you add new content, so your sitemap will always be up to date.

4. Make sure you’re set up with Google Search Console

If you haven’t yet set up your site in Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster tools), you might be missing out on important SEO warnings or notifications.

If Google experiences issues accessing, crawling or indexing your content, this is where you’ll be notified. This will also be where you’ll see any manual actions (penalties) leveraged against your site.

Your Search Console is also where you’ll be able to view some of the links to your site, as well as some of the keywords that drive traffic to your site.

5. Focus on the right content length for your keywords

There has been tons of research done over the past few years on the ideal length for content. Most of this research suggests that higher-ranking content tends to be in the 2,000+ word range.

The trouble, of course, is there are many examples of content that’s much shorter, and that still ranks near the top of the SERPs.

So, instead of focusing on your exact content length, focus on just writing really good content that answers the question(s) your reader is asking. Rand Fishkin of Moz gives three great tips for evaluating the optimal length for your content:

1. Investigate what’s working for your chosen keywords. Check out the top-ranking content and see how long it is.
2. Ask yourself: Can I do an even better job of covering that topic?If you can do so in less words, go for it! If you think a longer post would do a better job, then that’s the direction you should take.
3. Match your content to your readers’ goals.If they have a quick question they need answered, you should probably just answer it quickly in a 500-word post. If their questions are more complex, writing a 3,000 word+ post may be optimal for this particular topic.

6. Switch your site to HTTPS

If your site gives your visitors the option to input text or other info through contact forms, opt-in boxes or payment fields, you need to make sure you’re using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).

This will ensure any sensitive personal info your visitors leave on your site is encrypted and therefore protected.

But not only is this important for protecting your visitors’ private information, it’s now an official SEO ranking factor. In fact, if you haven’t switched over to HTTPS, Google may now show a “not secure” warning to visitors when they go to your website.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve switched to HTTPS, check with your web host. They usually offer an easy way to switch over and will be happy to help.

7. Optimize your WordPress site for Speed

Not only is site speed a ranking factor, it’s extremely important for user experience. abandonment increases.

I’d strongly recommend using a plugin (or two or three) to tackle different aspects of your site speed. The ones I usually recommend are WP Fastest Cache. WP Super Cache, and WP-Optimize.

8. Internal Links

Linking to relevant content on your site helps spread link equity throughout your site, and also helps improve user signals like bounce rate, pageviews and time on site. And while user engagement may not be a direct ranking factor, the indirect benefits to your site and business are huge. Just don’t overdo it!

9. Install the ALL IN ONE SEO PACK plugin

If you only do one thing on this list, it should be this one.

Use All in One SEO Pack to optimize your WordPress site for SEO. It’s easy and works out of the box for beginners, and has advanced features and an API for developers.

First created in 2007, see why AIOSEO is one of the all-time most downloaded plugins for WordPress.

• XML Sitemap support – submit your sitemap to Google and Bing and improve your SEO
• Image XML Sitemap submitted to Google and Bing to improve your Image SEO
• Google AMP support (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
• Google Analytics support
• Support for SEO on Custom Post Types
• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Redirect attachment pages to parent post
• Automatically notifies search engines like Google and Bing about changes to your site
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY free plugin to provide SEO Integration for e-Commerce sites, including WooCommerce
• Nonce Security built into All in One SEO Pack
• Automatically optimizes your Titles for Google and other search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything to optimize your SEO
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• Compatibility with many other plugins
• Translated into 57 languages
• PHP 7 100% Compatible

Final Thoughts

After making sure the technical features of your WordPress site are optimized, most of your ongoing SEO work will be focused on creating excellent content that attracts links.

All of the SEO strategies that worked last year will still work in 2019, so if you’re already ranking well, keep doing what you’re doing!

The only major shift this year will be to make sure your site is moved over to HTTPS. If you haven’t already, I’d strongly encourage you to do this before the new year!

Thanks for your Wisdom John Rampton

For a while now, SEO has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the marketing world. But in truth, SEO is more than just a buzzword: it really works. Despite SEO’s ubiquity, for some business owners, deciphering just what SEO entails can be a challenge. This is especially true as the algorithms search engines use continue to evolve and improve over time. Whether you’re a new business developing an initial marketing plan, an established business seeking a marketing revamp, or a successful business ready to grow to the next level, SEO must remain a centerpiece of your marketing strategy. Quality content is a key component of any successful SEO strategy.

There’s No SEO Without Quality Content
Think of SEO as a chain of interlocking links: you are only as strong as the weakest component of your digital marketing plan. Hiring a designer to improve your website’s structure, searchability, and look is important, but it doesn’t mean much if you don’t have the written content to back it up. Search engines crawl through the written content on your website, social media platforms, blog, business listings, and other digital presences to determine whether your business is what a customer is searching for. This is why it’s important to build out written and visual content in all directions: it helps your business make an impression.

What is Quality Content?
There are several best practices for creating and posting quality content. Some of the characteristics of quality content include the following:

• Fresh, original content updated on a regular basis
• A stream of new content placed on your website in the form of a blog
• Social media posts geared towards what your customers want and need
• Original, interesting writing with an authentic voice
• Factual information that potential customers will find to be of use
• Content that integrates well with the visuals you use
• Error-free, readable content
• Content that links to reputable, authoritative sources that are not competitors

Thanks for your Wisdom Shirley Wilson