Search Engine Optimization for Mom Blogs

By Wendy Piersall from Mom Blogging For Dummies

Really simple, common-sense writing skills can double your traffic in a fairly short amount of time. Search engines scan your blog posts for keywords, title tags, and heading tags in order to classify the content.

Think of SEO like this: While search engines have very sophisticated technology for sifting through websites and separating the spam from the quality content, they’re also kind of like a frazzled mom with too much to do and too little time on her hands.

If you were late getting the kids to school, trying to grab a cup of coffee, and had a baby sitting on your hip, but you had to classify an article before you could head out the door, you would

Read the headline
Read the first few lines of the article
Read any subheadings
Try to find a pull quote, photograph, or caption to get an idea of the best information in the piece
Look at the end of the article to find out what the point of the message was

Search engines treat your blog posts in pretty much the same way. You can write a long blog post with lots of great words that people commonly search for, but ultimately what will define your work is by how it can be scanned and understood in just a few seconds.

The good thing about this is when you make your content easy for search engines to scan, it also makes your content much more readable to actual human beings.

You need to understand the definitions of a few components of search engine optimization so that SEO is easier to understand:

Keywords: The word or phrase that people type into a search engine to find what they are looking for. It could be as simple as summer snacks or a whole phrase such as how to get my baby to take her medicine.
Page title: This is usually (and customarily) the same as the title of your blog post, and should be. A really poorly designed blog template may not handle this matter; if so, you may need the technical expertise to change it manually. It’s also called the title tag. It appears at the top of your browser window and when you mouse over the top of the window.
Heading tags: These function in the same way as heading tags would in a Word document. Heading 1 tags (or H1 tags as they are commonly referred to) should be only used once and will be your blog title. Heading 2 (H2) and Heading 3 (H3) tags can be used more frequently throughout your posts to group your paragraphs into related subjects.

Basic search engine optimization comes down to this: You want to include your chosen keywords in your writing as much as possible without it sounding awkward or unnecessarily repetitive. Keywords are especially important to use in the areas that search engines pay the most attention to: title, introduction, subheadings, quotes, and captions.

You don’t want to use the same phrase over and over again, but weave the keywords you choose (and related keywords) into your natural written language. Most themes on both Blogger and WordPress will make sure that your page title and heading tags are placed where they should be. It’s up to you to write your own subheadings as they relate to your content.