Improving Your SEO // For Bloggers & Beginners!

SEO is a constant changing world and something every blogger is trying to keep up with. It's all about being top in search engines and allowing new visitors to be able to find your blog. Search Engine Optimization is something that consists of many easy and advanced elements that bloggers can do to make there SEO much better. Today I thought it would be a good idea to do one full post including all of the things that I do and things that I encourage you to do to help improve your SEO. While these tips and tricks are pretty basic it's always important to search for your own content and see where you fall in search engines. This allows you to see where you are in comparison to others and what more you can do to improve or change. You might also want to talk to other bloggers who have good SEO and ask them if they might be able to give you some tips and tricks and pointers to help improve yours.
Titles; The first basic 'rule' to SEO is to make sure you title your posts properly. Don't title them with tons of fancy words or punctuation. Title them with exactly what you are going to be talking about in your post. For example, if my post is about the Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette and my title of the post is 'Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette Review & Swatches'. This tells my readers exactly what is going to be in the post as well as catching their interest by including something like swatches - which as beauty bloggers we all know everyone loves. 
Quick Tip; If your post isn't titled properly how do you expect old and new readers to find it? Include exactly what the post is about in the title.
Links; This one is pretty basic, be sure to link back to your older posts on your blog. When spiders go to crawl on your blog to find new content to index in a search engine, these spiders follow these links to find new pages and new content.
Quick Tip; Also try linking back to products on websites, other blog and other unique websites.  This will also help improve the truthfulness and relevence of your content.
Keywords; This, is one of the main influences on whether your website is searched by spiders. Keywords are identifiable words within your title's or post that relate to your topic and that show up multiple times. Again if I am writing a post on the Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette and not once do I say the brand or palette name chances are spiders don't know what my post is about and won't index it properly. This goes the same for your post title and headings within you posts.
Quick Tip; While including keywords is super important don't overload the post with the same words over and over again. Make the keywords or phrase appear multiple times but make sure the posts makes sense and flows well.
Images; Did you know images can be searchable by spiders as well and that they can be indexed in search engines? The easiest way to do this in Bloggers is to make sure your images have an 'ALT Tag' and a 'Title Tag'. Make sure when you upload your images into Blogger then you click on the image and select 'Properties' once this happens you get a pop-up that contains both the 'ALT Tag' and Title Tag' options. This is where you can put in your titles, but make sure that you keep them short and to the point. The longer the title the harder it would be to find.
Quick Tip: Also try and add keywords into these titles so that searchers can find them easier. Using longer non-keyword titles for your images can result in a more defined search which generally people don't do.
Labels & Tags; We all know those little labels and tags we put on blog posts or Instagram images or even Tumblr posts in hopes we get noticed. But did you know that spiders don't search those tag's to index your page like you think they do. When going to tag your post don't tag it with everything that you need to include, try keeping tags and labels to a max of 3 this way spiders look at your post and take it seriously and continue to search it for other things like keywords.
Quick Tip; Don't overload your post with tags and labels, this just looks bad for other individuals seeing your posts loaded down with tags. These tag's are generally just used to separate content on your blog as needed.
Custom Blog Description; One, of the other really important things you can do as a blogger is to make sure your overall blog has a detailed by condensed description. Blogger allows up to 150 characters for there description and its a great way to use those keywords again and tell everyone what your blog is about.
Quick Tip; To add this blog description go to Setting>> Basic >> Description - this area is where you will write what you want to say about your blog. Remember to make it short, sweet and descriptive.
Custom Post Description; Just, like adding a custom blog description it's really easy to give the same description to each of your posts. If you have ever used Google (duh) then you might have noticed the small one line or two lines of text that come under the link part of the search. This is essentially what you will be adding to your post and this will allow your searchers to get a basic idea of what your post might be about in a more detailed fashion.
Quick Tip; To add a custom description on your posts make sure you are in post editing mood and on the right-hand side of your screen you will see 'Search Description', click this and simply add your text. This does also have a limit of 150 characters so use keywords and keep it detailed and short.
Custom Permalink; And, if all of those things weren't enough for you  there is also a setting on Blogger that allows you to customize your post URL link. While Blogger assigns a post URL to all of your posts these can be vague and can sometimes distract from what your post might actually be about.
Quick Tip; To customize your post URL make sure you are in the post editing screen and on the right-hand side you will see the word 'Permalink' click on this and then select 'Custom Permalink' and you will then be able to add your custom URL.

* Some of these tips and tricks were stated in a previous blog post, however, I wanted to make an updated post combining all of the tips and tricks that are useful to bloggers. All of these tips and tricks will help improve your viewability to search engines and in turn drive traffic to your blog*