SEO For Bloggers: The Ultimate 2022 Guide

Search engine optimization is more relevant than ever, being one of the strategies that benefit bloggers, readers, and search engines alike. As such, it constantly grows to bring the best experience to all parties involved. While it’s necessary to stay in the swim with new methods, certain strategies must remain as firm footing. Out of all marketing techniques, SEO for bloggers seem to run unstoppably forward – which is precisely where this guide will lead you. Whether you are just starting your blogging career or are already a seasoned blogger, you will surely find this article interesting.

The driver of traffic, conqueror of leads, the almighty SEO for bloggers

Why SEO? If you’re making your content to be seen, you want it on the first page of search results. According to Forbes, the results on the first page of Google search get between 70 and 90 percent of all clicks. The results on the second page – less than six percent.

To make your blog content visible, you need to rank your page highly enough, and to do that, you need to apply SEO to your blog. While SEO for bloggers who are just emerging may seem like a digital jungle, it is not that difficult to navigate.

Starting with a strong foundation, it takes some time to build up traffic, but once it drives toward your blog, it grows exponentially. With that in mind, here’s what you should point your attention to in the beginning:

• Create unique content. That is also a helpful, well-organized, and up-to-date copy of optimal length.
• Build backlinks as a part of off-page SEO. Quality content will make your blog more attractive and authoritative, and link building easier.
• Optimize your keywords. It means to spread the relevant keyword in your content and add it to your URL, headings, meta description, alt text, and title tag.
• Match the search intent with the right type of content. If you create a how-to, make a list post. If you design a tutorial, create a video.
• Optimize your blog pages’ loading speed. Investing in website maintenance as well as site security is essential for a few very good reasons.
• Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly. If you want to drive the accelerating traffic coming from mobile device users to your blog, make it accommodating.
• Organize your site structure. A well-structured website with a site map greatly eases web crawlers’ work and helps your visitors find what they came for.
• Grow your domain authority and promote your blog. Letting more people know about it will help new content on your blog to reach your desired audience and potentially enlarge the backlink base you sorely need.
• Ensure excellent user experience. All the above serves one purpose: enhancing user experience. That is what Google cares about and what you should care about, too.

Bear in mind that, aside from those mentioned above, there are over two hundred factors Google takes into account when ranking content. Covering all of them at the start wouldn’t be time-effective. This is because most of the factors don’t contribute significantly enough to affect your blog’s rankings. The best course of action is to apply the most vital features first and then mix in with the rest as you grow more fluent in SEO.

What can SEO-dedicated bloggers expect in 2022?

New trends, of course. Google is tirelessly working on improving (and adding) its ranking factors. It is creating a competitive atmosphere where new quality blogs can rank quickly and surpass those offering outdated or irrelevant information. With the help of important metrics, features, and content optimized for search engines, you can expect to remain in the race and fare relatively well in 2022.

What’s in the store when SEO for bloggers is concerned? So far, there are at least four trends that are likely to take the SEO world by storm this year:

1. Development of reverse image search.
2. Ranking of content sections (passages).
3. High ranking impact of core web vitals.
4. Content optimized for featured snippets.

Evolution of image search

Visual recognition tech is going to skyrocket with the growing use of Google Lens. The relatively new product is about to change the way we search for images. What’s the place of Google Lens in SEO? To find something online, a user needs to formulate a search intent which sometimes isn’t simple at all. Guessing the right keyword is not going to be the problem anymore because your camera will do half the work.

Optimizing your blog images for visual search includes creating a comprehensive base of quality photos that also include your logo and standard SEO elements. After all, alt tags will not become obsolete because the visually impaired and web crawlers will still need a way to navigate visual content.

Google passage indexing

With the help of Google passage indexing, your extensive post has a better chance of ranking for various keywords. Simply put, if only a single passage in your post explores a query, it can still rank in Google search and boost your entire post’s ranking.

You don’t have to worry that this update will drastically downgrade your blog’s position. However, it is recommended to slice your posts into short, meaningful passages, which is something you’re likely already doing.

Higher impact of core web vitals

Loading time, site responsiveness, and visual stability are currently designated by Google as core web vitals. The holy trinity of user experience, these metrics test but also rank websites. As excellent user experience is what drives Google, these metrics will be used alongside others to gauge page experience. While not a crucial ranking factor per se, the core web vitals will have an increased impact on rankings in 2022.

Featured snippets and SEO

It is vital to distinguish between featured and rich snippets, as they may confuse beginners. A rich snippet presents a search result in a visually enhanced way. A featured snippet is an actual answer that shows above other organic search results. How to make use of the highly sought-after position zero?

For Google to extract your passage and show it as a featured snippet, the section needs to be relevant to the query and contain the keyword that ranks your page in the first ten results. In other words, if your SEO for bloggers already ranks you highly, your keyword must land in the 60 words long text tailored for a featured snippet.