SEO has changed a lot over the years—thanks to things like Google’s Helpful Content Updates, AI content, more competition and so on—but the basics remain the same.
Getting organic traffic to your website through search engines is one of the best ways to attract your ideal readers to your site.
Not to mention, it can also help you qualify for ad networks, monetize through affiliate links and much more.
It makes me so happy that this blog that I started over 12 years ago is not only still something I enjoy contributing to but that also is a true money maker for my business.
10 Steps to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
Optimizing your blog doesn’t have to feel overwhelming—I swear! To prove it to you, I’m breaking down the 10 most important things you can do to optimize your site.
And the great news is that many of these are quick and easy tasks you can check off as you go.
With the right strategies, you can improve your blog’s performance, attract more visitors, and create content that resonates with your audience.
Let’s eliminate the overwhelming amount of advice that’s out there and focus on this 10-step checklist to optimize your blog.
1. Get connected
Start by connecting your blog to two key softwares: Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
These tools provide essential data to understand what’s working:
Google Analytics: Tracks your website traffic, monthly visitors, and audience demographics like location, age, and gender.
- This can tell you additional important information like how much time someone is spending on each page of your blog.
Google Search Console: Shows how your posts rank on Google and which keywords bring visitors to your blog.
- Google Search Console can also be a great tool to figure out which blog posts are ranking lower down on Google so you can go back and optimize them to see if you can bump them up higher.
Both tools are free and invaluable for monitoring your blog’s performance and understanding what is working well and what maybe isn’t driving more traffic to your site.
2. Find your domain authority (DA)
Your domain authority (DA) is a score out of 100 that reflects how trustworthy your site is to search engines.
Here are a few examples to help you understand how domain authority works for blogs:
- A brand new blog will always start with a DA of 0. This isn’t a bad thing, it just means search engines like Google don’t know anything about your site yet and need more time to understand who you are writing for in your posts.
- An established site like The New York Times may have a DA of 95, while niche blogs like Into the Gloss may score around 70.
- My blog currently has a DA of 31. I still draw thousands of readers to my site monthly and make money from my blog even though I’m not competing with sites like The New York Times.
Use a tool like Moz to check your DA for free. Knowing your score is helpful for keyword research, which we’ll discuss later.
3. Test your site speed
No one likes a slow website—think about how quickly you would click away from a site that took more than even a few seconds to load. Who has the time?!
Use a tool like Pingdom to test your blog’s speed.
Slow load times can deter visitors and lead to a high bounce rate, so identify areas for improvement and work on speeding up your site.
When my blog was hosted on Squarespace, I had awful site speed because of large image files that weren’t properly compressed.
Look into whether or not your site uses gzip which can help compress images for faster load times.
4. Repair broken links
Broken internal links can hurt your SEO and frustrate visitors.
Use tools like Dr. Link Check to scan your site for links that redirect incorrectly or fail to load.
- Manually check links on your most popular pages.
- The free plan checks up to 1,000 links, or you can pay for a month to fix everything in one go.
- If your blog becomes important to you, you can even hire someone to help with SEO to go back and review and replace broken links.
5. Optimize your bio
Your about page is likely one of the most visited sections of your blog for new readers.
Make sure your about page includes searchable keywords and helps tell the story of the person behind the blog.
For example: my bio mentions New York City, fashion and beauty, and Nylon magazine—all terms people might use to find me. Tailor yours with keywords relevant to your expertise.
This is also a great tip for your author bio as well on your blog.
Adding an author bio that appears at the end of each blog post helps Google see the content was written by a real person (not an AI tool) and lends credibility to the topic you’re writing about.
6. Create a posting schedule
Once you’ve decided what you want to blog about, it’s time to figure out how often you’re willing to publish new content.
A weekly posting schedule typically works well for new bloggers since it helps show Google you’re willing to show up each week with new content for your readers.
When it comes to blogging and getting noticed by search engines, consistency and depth matters more than frequency.
By focusing on long-form, evergreen content, you don’t need to feel pressured to post every day.
I would also suggest diving deeper with the word count on blogs so that Google and other search engines have all of the info they need when they scan your site to figure out who to recommend your content to.
These days, it’s rare that I publish a blog post with fewer than 1,000 words. (this one is about 1,400 words for reference.)
7. Add metadata
One thing that your readers won’t notice but Google will is metadata.
Don’t forget to complete all of the sections of metadata that you can before you publish a new blog post.
Filling in metadata—like tags, descriptions, and internal links—makes your content more discoverable.
These small details give search engines the context they need to rank your content effectively.
8. Highlight your best content
Direct visitors to your most valuable posts by featuring them on your home page. For example:
- Add a section for Top Blog Posts or Most Popular Content.
- If you create videos, curate a YouTube playlist with your most-watched uploads.
This helps distribute what’s known as link juice—a fancy way of saying you’re maximizing the visibility of your best-performing content.
9. Audit your content
Review your blog posts from the past 6–12 months to get a better sense of what blog posts tend to attract new readers and keep them on your site. Ask yourself:
- Which posts have the most views?
- Which posts have the fewest views?
- Are there any patterns in your top-performing content or your low-performing content?
Use this data to refine your strategy and focus on creating more of the content that resonates with your audience.
For example: I have a blog post on my site that always drives a good amount of traffic each month about styling ankle boots. When I decided to write a similar blog post about tall boots, I also saw my traffic increase.
10. Do keyword research
Keyword research ensures your content reaches the right audience. Here’s how to get started:
- Look at your top 5 blog posts and use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to identify which keywords were driving readers to your site.
- Once you’ve identified a popular keyword that helps drive traffic, brainstorm 3–5 related topics for each of your top 5 blog posts from step 1.
- Use tools like Keywords Everywhere to find related keywords with high search volume and low competition that you can use to inspire your next batch of blog posts.
I hope this helps break down SEO in a way that feels beginner-friendly and approachable.
It took me a long time to start learning SEO strategies for my blog because in the past I thought that SEO was complicated and boring.
Now don’t get me wrong, there are certainly more advanced SEO strategies that we can talk about another time.
The goal here was to help you get started.
Want to take these strategies to go? Download the PDF version of this checklist to make sure you cover every step to optimize your site.
What is your blog about? Tell me in the comments!
yours,
Austen
Related video:
