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Aside from a nice-looking blog/website with interesting and inspiring content, SEO is vital for further increasing your reach and expanding your audience. With effective optimisation you can reach out to, motivate and inspire people. Yes to this, right?! 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it means exactly that – optimising your website and content for search engines like Google and Bing so they can find it and display it to the searcher. To put it simply, SEO means ‘showing off’ your content to Google.

SEO Basics for Adventure, Outdoor and Endurance Sports Bloggers

Okay, I know what it means, and I know I should do it, but it’s time consuming and I don’t where to start…

And I bet you would rather spend your free time in the great outdoors on a crazy adventure or challenge?

I hear you!

Due to the complexity of its rules, SEO on its own is quite a complex task and can be time consuming. There is a lot to learn, from small, to big fixes. So it’s essential to know what to focus on and where your valuable time is best spent.

On Page and Off Page SEO

Google, and other search engines, use a number of factors (over 200) to access your website (your content) and decide whether it is relevant for the searcher and the keyword used. Your SEO efforts can be divided into two categories depending on whether they happen on your blog/website or outside.

  • ON-PAGE – tweaking your website and the content
  • OFF-PAGE – ‘promoting your website’ outside

Off-page SEO simply tells Google what others think about your site. And no it’s not just about getting the links. There are other signals that help Google to understand your website and credibility. Your blog or brand mentions without the links count too!

What type of SEO should I focus on more?

The percentage of time spent on optimising your page (on-page SEO) versus off-page SEO will vary from blogger to blogger. It will depend on your goals and time as well.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers defines 4 personas based on their SEO efforts;

  • The Authority = 70% On-page, 30% Link-building
  • The Perfectionist = 30% On-page, 70% Link-building
  • The Hot Mess = 90% On-page, 10% Link-building
  • The Bad Boy = 10% On-page, 90% Link-building

I get that you’re not bad boy or girl (okay maybe sometimes I am), nor a hot mess, and definitely not an SEO perfectionist. So ideally, I recommend spending more time on your on-page tactics (80%) and making sure your content is fresh, high quality and effectively optimised. By guest blogging, commenting, engaging and promoting your content on Social you already do quite a lot of off-page SEO!

So let’s focus on the on-page elements first. In the next blog post, I’ll dig deeper into off-page techniques, tools and tips.

ON Page SEO – Key Elements

As the name suggests, your on-page SEO efforts will be happening on your blog or website. But it’s not going to be about stuffing your website with tons of keywords. Your website/blog user experience plays a crucial role in the rankings and Google looks at how user-friendly your website is. When it comes to keywords, less is more and quality over quantity of the placement is the key.

On Page SEO Elements for Adventure, Outdoor and Endurance Sports Bloggers

CONTENT

When it comes to content, Google looks at the freshness – how often your blog/website is updated with fresh content. Quality of written copy, the use of key terms, outgoing links and whether your blog post is engaging for readers – in the form of comments.

DESIGN / HTML

Good design / html means that all of your pages/blog posts have optimised titles, a good heading structure, engaging meta descriptions and descriptive alt tags.

TECHNICAL

Technical, as the name suggests, requires coding knowledge. However there are some actions you can take to ensure you’ve got it covered there as well. You know, quick wins… However, as rule #1, I would always recommend to…

Technical SEO for Bloggers - Rule 1 - Befriend a Web Designer

In the next in this blog post series, I’ll show you the key on and off page tactics, tools to use, talk best practice, show how you can do it on your own and what to focus on as a blogger.

We’ve got also lots of practical tips and useful articles specific to outdoor, adventure and endurance sports bloggers and influencer so if you’re one of them, make sure you sign up to our platform.

 

Comments(1)

  • July 29, 2016, 3:24 pm  Reply

    Great summary! I am trying to mess about with some of the “technical” parts to this but in the end a good article sells itself in the long run.

    Can’t remember who said “advertising is the cost of being boring”

    Plenty of bad boy bores out there.

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