We’ve spent a lot of time researching our best SEO Tips for Blogs 2021.
We all know how important it is to rank as high as possible on Google, but are there genuine ways to rank higher, faster and more easily? We have all been stung by empty promises, but there are ways to do these things.
Otherwise why would so many businesses happily pay SEO specialists to help them do so?!
After thorough research on and offline, as well as testing various methods we have compiled all the latest and up to date ways to rank higher, faster and more easily on Google in 2021.
Table of Contents
1 SEO Tips for Blogs – Choose Your Battles
2 SEO Tips for Blogs – Keyword Golden Ratio
3 SEO Tips for Blogs – Allintitle Search Results
4 SEO Tips for Blogs – Understand How the SERPs Work
5 SEO Tips for Blogs – Adopt a Hands On Learning Approach and a Steely Mindset
6 SEO Tips for Blogs – A Final Word for WordPress Users
Choose Your Battles – Low Competition but Decent Search Volume Keywords
In life, as in SEO, there are some battles we could win and some that we can’t. It’s wise to choose your battles and give yourself a fighting chance. For most of us choosing the right keywords will mean those with volume roughly between 200-1500 visits per month. Websites with higher Page Rank and Domain Authority will naturally have the better chance of ranking, and the number of backlinks will be an important ranking factor also. (More on this later)
Less than 200 visits a month will barely be worth your effort, and above 1500 could be too competitive, so this range gives us a good chance of ranking. Some say that your KD (keyword difficulty, also called SEO Difficulty) should be 0-20 but we have found that if there enough options of search volumes of 200-1500 with KD of 0-5 there is no reason to make it harder for yourself unnecessarily. Keyword Difficulty is calculated by how many backlinks your site needs to rank in the Top Ten on Google Search, and we have been able to find a number of keywords with a KD of 0 with decent search volume to know that it is possible, and worth delving into.
Although you can use Google Keyword Planner if you have an active ads campaign, and there are free Keyword Research tools out there, you will save yourself hours and hours by using paid options.
Our particular weapon of choice is Semrush, which has all options you could ever need for SEO and Keyword Research, and probably more. You can find out more and sign up for a free trial at this link:
Keyword Golden Ratio – A Formula to Rank Quicker and Higher
An interesting idea which has been around for a while, is the Keyword Golden Ratio. It involves a fairly straightforward equation to discover keywords that will rank within positions 1-50 as soon as your blogpost/website page is indexed. Some claim that means it can rank within 48hours of the page being published, however we found the quickest we were able to appear in positions 1-50 was 3days, with some of our blogposts taking up to a week or even two to appear in the results.
That being said, this approach in general has meant ranking more quickly and actually more highly as well. We had one blog first appear in the rankings at No.15 and soon steadily climb to No.6 in the SERPS.
Obviously it all depends on when Google indexes your site. We recommend that you submit your sitemap for indexing after you have published your article, even though this is no guarantee of how long it will take to index it again. We have found it does seems to help it get indexed quicker however.
For the Keyword Golden Ratio equation you need to divide the allintitle search results by the overall search volume of the keyword, which needs to be no greater than 250 in terms of search volume. We’ll break this down step by step.
First of all let’s look at how to find the allintitle search results.
Allintitle Search Results
If you want to Google to understand your keyword the best place to put it is in the title of your page, particularly the first part of your title. If you want to rank highly for a keyword then you will put it as the first words of your title, and many people realise this. If you want to know what the competition will be like for your keyword then you want to know how many websites have this keyword in their title, hence the allintitle search.
You simply type the phrase allintitle:(keyword here) in Google search as shown in the photo below. Our chosen keyword here is “How to Do SEO.”
As you can see just under the search bar our allintitle search result is 13,400 results which is WAY too high. We would be trying to compete against ALL of those websites which doesn’t give us our fighting chance.
However if we use the keyword phrase “how do I improve my SEO fast,” we have a more workable number.
Allintitle results in and of themselves are a fantastic indication of keywords that you could potentially rank for.
Here is the exact Keyword Golden Ratio formula so you can try your own calculations.
If you want to find out more about the Golden Ratio this informative article is well worth reading:
https://mangools.com/blog/keyword-golden-ratio/
Understand How the SERPs Work
If you are going to have a chance of ranking well in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) it’s important to be able to understand how they are set out and if it would be possible for you to rank on the first page. After all, you are simply wasting your time otherwise.
If you find a keyword you would like to rank for and type it into Google, and the first result is Etsy, Ebay, or Amazon you can forget it. You won’t be able to compete against these giants due to their extremely high number of backlinks, high Page Rank and Domain Authority.
If you find WordPress blogs or blogs in general you have a much better chance of ranking. The best way to find out how difficult your competition will be is to install a Chrome extension, such as Moz Bar or Semrush’s SEOquake to give you further information. From these extensions you can discover the Page Rank and Domain Authority (both of these are out of 100) and even the backlinks these websites have.
If the Page Rank or Domain Authority is 50+ then it is unlikely you will be able to outrank the site. However you can outrank sites with high authority at times with long form content which is more authoritative or useful in Google’s eyes. We have managed this a few times with content that is longer, links out to other websites and is fully optimised. Again, this not always the case and it’s worth seeking out the best possible opportunities in the best possible timeframe to keep you focused and give you the best chance of success.
Adopt a Hands On Learning Approach and a Steely Mindset
If you are going to learn how to rank more quickly, highly and easily you will need a steely mindset. There will be hits and misses, and perhaps most frustratingly of all there will be near hits and misses.
There is no one size fits all, get rich quick approach. SEO is a long game, not a show up, dazzle and leave model.
We have had the painful experience of ranking at No.5 on the first page of Yahoo and Bing briefly and then disappearing out of the top 100 visibility very quickly. This only happened once and admittedly it wasn’t Google but these are the times where you have to dig in, dig deep, grit your teeth and just keep going.
Even the blogposts that we have achieved the top 5 for need to be kept an eye on because you can be sure somebody underneath you hasn’t rested on their laurels even if you have. There is a lot of competition out there because the top spot is always worth striving for!
You need to go back and optimise every so often, especially if your rankings change – and you should be keeping an eye on your rankings regularly.
Remember consistency + intelligent application = success
A Final Word For WordPress Users
If you are using WordPress you will find an SEO plugin to be invaluable. Many like Yoast, we favour Rank Math but regardless these plugins are soooo useful for optimising your posts/pages and giving incredibly useful suggestions.
They remind you to link out to other pages externally and internally, to properly edit your snippets, meta description, title and give you a useful score out of 100 to guide you. If you don’t know what these aspects of SEO are, you soon will with these user-friendly plugins.
Further research – watch this SEMrush video on looking for the right keywords:
If you enjoyed this article please feel free to check out our other articles “SEO Tips for Artists, Parts 1-3” here:
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