Blogging Tips: 4 Easy Ways to Improve SEO in Blogger

There are A LOT of tips out there for bloggers and how to improve SEO! This post is designed to be an absolute basic tutorial on how to improve a few post settings to increase visibility. If you do not know what SEO is, it stands for Search Engine Optimization and can be your best friend. It is an easy way to increase traffic for free and should be utilized by everybody!

If you haven't figured it out by now I am an obvious Blogger loyalist. I know WordPress has quite a following but I am so familiar with Blogger at this point that I can't imagine switching. These are a few things I do to each of my posts to help establish visibility.

Adding "Title Text" and "ALT Text" to Images
My first tip has to do with images. When you click an image the options bar shows up. You want to click on "properties":

Next you want to insert your desired "Title Text" and "ALT Text" into the boxes available. In these boxes you want to type a short description of what the image is.

The Title Text is what will display when someone hovers their mouse over the image like so:

and the ALT Text is what will display if there is some reason the image cannot load. It's also what blind people hear when they use a screen reader. So how does this help SEO? Well, Google, as advanced as it is, cannot identify what each and every picture is. The words help it recognize and categorize your photo making it more visible when people search for things.

Creating a Custom Permalink
Tip number two is about creating a unique permalink for your posts. Permalinks create the possibility of bringing people to your blog through search engines. Including key words relating to your post subject can grow visibility through searches and put your post towards the top of the results.

Here is how to make a unique permalink: On the right side of the page when you are creating a post, under post settings there is a tab that says "Permalink." Click on that tab and choose the "Custom Permalink" option. In this box be sure to include the complete title of your post excluding filler words like "an, a, the, of, etc." and separating each word with a dash. Click "Done" and voila! Custon link to your post.

Adding Tags to Your Posts
The third tip I have is to add tags to your posts. On the right side of the page you will see the "Post Settings" again and click on the "Labels" tab.

Tags are a huge asset for bloggers. They help organize posts within your own blog searches as well as help search engines index and rank your posts, also, they help make your posts more searchable. 

Using consistent tags is important for bloggers. Just using a tag once will not do you much good. Before I tag something I make sure it would be a tag I would use at least five times. If I don't think I'll use it that much, then I don't add it. Avoiding excessive tagging is key to utilizing this feature of blogging. Over tagging really specific items like "salt" or "pepper" will not make your post stand out. I like to divide my tags into categories like meal type, difficulty level, flavors, and possibly one key ingredient like "garlic."

Utilizing Search Descriptions
Search descriptions are the little bits of information that display below your link in a search engine. If you don't use this feature it's not the end of the world but if you're like me and tend not to use very many key words in your first sentence then you should seriously consider starting.
If you're not sure what I'm talking about then here is an example: in the photo below my search description is "16 super simple appetizers with 5 ingredients or less! Perfect for any occasion."

It may seem like a simple concept but in those two short statements I included the post title, the word "simple" and the word "perfect". All of those features are searchable items that will boost my post's ratings.
In order to implement the search description feature you have to enable it. First on the blogger dashboard go to "settings" then click "search preferences." Make sure "yes" is clicked where it says "enable search description."

After you do this you will be able to add a search description to your blog as well as to individual posts like so:

And that is all it takes!

Each of these tips by themselves is a small improvement towards much better Search Engine Optimization!
If you have any other ideas or tips for bloggers leave a comment!