We have written a guide on how to Keyword Research using Google Keyword Planner, so we thought it useful to follow up with what to do with them! If you are running a WordPress hosted site and write a blog from it, here’s a great guide on how to Search Engine Optimise WordPress blogs. As mentioned in the title, it’s a basic guide, but it is also a tried and tested useful one!

1) Find your target keyword (see article mentioned above).

2) Install WordPress SEO (Yoast) – it’s the most effective SEO plugin available to WordPress users and comes with many other features, such as connecting up Webmaster Tools and easy sitemap configuration.

3) Write your blog post. Write it with your target keyword in mind. For this guide, my keyword is ‘SEO WordPress blogs’. You can see it in the title and the url, and I craftily just added it into last sentence! Be careful not to overuse this keyword, it’s going to appear only one more time in the body copy.

4) Upload article and get to work with Yoast plugin. You can add an exact title, target keyword and meta description. The plugin also comes with a colour coded (traffic lights) SEO check just above the publish button, so you can see how well the article is optimised before pushing publish.

The ‘snippet preview‘ is also helpful to see how your listing will appear in search results. Remember, that meta description is good for SEO, but it is also useful for reaching out to the human reader and trying to pull them to your site over others listed. Be personal, but professional here and the clicks will come.

That’s how you SEO WordPress blogs to help them appear higher in search results. Remember, the less competitive the keyword, the better chance you will have of ranking on the all important first page of Google – Good luck!

We have produced a guide on how to get even more exposure for your WordPress blog, which should be useful if you are interested in taking your blog to a whole new audience.