5 Best SEO Analysis Tools For New Bloggers

Unless you’re prepared to jump in the deep end
and spend hundreds of pounds on SEO analysis
tools from big companies like Moz and Majestic,
when you start out you’re going to have to rely
on some cheaper (though not always less
thorough) tools.

1. SEMRush

Your first stop for a clear and concise graphical
representation of your site’s SEO campaign
should be the free report generator over at
SEMRush . The tool delivers an insightful
overview into how your site is performing
through both organic and PPC traffic in location-
based data.
With extra insights such as a keyword phrase
report, Ad overview and backlink overview,
SEMRush is an excellent free tool if you want to
see how you compare against competition.
These tools are available for free but lack the
detail offered in the paid-for plans which start at
about £55.

2. MajesticSEO

With Majestic you’ll find that many of the
standard features are off limits to you as a non-
paying user. But there are still plenty of handy
tools available to you that will give you a good
insight to your site’s progress.
Majestic allows you to keep an eye on your
backlinks and keywords, giving you a little
insight into how your site is performing.
Majestic isn’t quite as user friendly as SEMRush-
and without paying, you are unable to directly
compare your website to others.

3. SEOBook

A free account with SEOBook gives you
access to (and they’ll tell you this a lot) over
£300 worth of software. In reality, this is
probably a good choice for those of you that are
working your SEO campaign with the Firefox
browser, as three of the tools that come with the
free account are Firefox extensions.
The rest of the tools at your disposal are useful
and laid out cleanly and are easy to use. From a
Spider Test tool to a handy “Typo Generator”,
there are a few handy web-based tools for you to
use.

4. Copyscape

Some people don’t realise that duplicate content
can hurt your site. And if someone steals your
content to use on your site, Google’s spiders will
flag this up.
Copyscape is the web-based tool that can help
you avoid, locate and identify anyone that is
copying your content. This can be fairly useful –
and serve as a reminder to regularly update your
web-content, but its practicality is limited.

5. Google Keyword Planner

This is the big daddy of free SEO analytics tools.
Google’s keyword planner is the go-to tool for
those seeking to progress their rankings in the
search engines. After all, who knows their
keyword algorithms better than Google
themselves?
Of course, Google are famously interested in
improving their algorithms to provide the
searcher with well-written content , so we
advise that you use the Google Keyword Planner
with care.

Summary

These are just a handful of the numerous free
tools out there available to the new SEOer, but
they represent some of the most in depth (and
user friendly) options available.
Starting out in SEO can be pretty tough to begin
with, and the right tools will help you along
the right path . But what is most crucial is a
keen understanding of the statistics that the
tools deliver and an intuition on how to use
those stats to your advantage.
Developing an SEO brain doesn’t happen
overnight. And if you need things to happen in
your favour quickly, it is sometimes best to ask
the experts for help. But don’t let that deter you
from learning more about SEO in the long term –
you never know, you could be the expert in the
future.

10 Tips To Change Blogger Layouts

1 . Vertical Alignment. When something sticks
out, you notice it. And when a picture or text
sticks out from the rest of the column, it looks
like a mistake and it becomes a distraction.
Things look right when paragraphs and images
all fit into their columns precisely. Images and
paragraphs should be the same width and this
applies to sidebar elements, too. There are times
when a design may intentionally call for doing
otherwise, but in general, it's good practice to
keep things lined up.

Quick Tip: For the content area of your blog (this
is where your blog posts reside), choose a
common width for all the images and make sure
that your paragraph widths are the same. Left-
justified paragraphs are recommended for
readability. Although the text may look ragged
on the right side, that's okay.

If you have sidebars, the same tip applies ---
choose a consistent size for your images and
make sure they line up vertically. Images that
stick out make the the page look cluttered.

2. White Space. A crowded page can feel
claustrophobic and overwhelming, even when it's
well-organized. Having white space --- or well-
spaced page elements --- makes those sections
easily identifiable and easier to read.

Quick Tip: You can control the space between
the elements or sections of your blog by adding
some margins and/or padding. If you're
comfortable with adding code to your blog, you
can control the space between elements with
the margin and padding CSS attributes.

3. Uncluttered Sidebars. Navigation usually
refers to the links we include in our horizontal
navbars and sidebars. Navigation's purpose is to
make it easy for readers to browse and
"navigate" through your blog. Since the navbars
and/or sidebars are visible on every page, the
information we choose to include in these areas
has to be meaningful and useful. It's easy to fill
up these areas with every conceivable link to all
our static pages and favorite blogs and websites.
However, since these areas have a finite amount
of space, we have to be mindful of what we put
there. If fill up these areas with a lot of
information, it tends to confuse. So, we have to
curate these areas with good links and keep
them neat and tidy and easy to read. Keep your
sidebars uncluttered!

Quick Tip: If you have a blogroll on your
sidebar, consider moving it to its own page and
then add a link to it from the sidebar.

4. Accessible Info. Sometimes you need to ask a
blogger a question and you want their contact
info ASAP. I've come across many blogs that
don't provide any way to contact the blogger,
and if it was there, I couldn't find it. Make it
easy for your readers to find the information they
need by providing visible and easy-to-find links
to your about page, contact info, and RSS feed.

Quick Tip: Keep important links in plain view ---
categories, featured posts, search box, links to
archives, and other links to resource/static
pages.

5. Short Description. Your blog banner is the
first thing visitors see when they arrive at your
website. It's nice when a blog has a short
description on the banner that tells what their
blog is about. For example, Nubby Twiglet ,
Shutterbean , SFGirlbyBay, and Creature Comforts
have short descriptions in their banners. These
well-chosen words remove all ambiguity and give
the reader a clear idea of what to expect.

Quick Tip: If you don't already have a short
description for your blog, browse through your
old posts and observe the topics you've written
about the most. The theme of these posts
constitute the primary subject of your blog and
is a good place to start when drafting a short
blog description. This short description can be a
comma separated list or a phrase.

6. Typography. It's good to limit the number of
fonts to no more than three --- one for post
titles, one for the sidebar titles, and another for
the post body. Too many fonts tend to make a
page look really busy. Additionally, when
choosing fonts for your text, aim for legible fonts
in a readable size. Now that web fonts are
popular, I've seen some sites that use script
fonts that are really hard to read. Whatever font
you choose, keep legibility in mind.

Quick Tip: The most readable font under 14px is
Verdana and larger than that, Arial is the most
readable.

7. Colors. Colors are great. They're magnetic and
draw attention. For our blogs, it's best to choose
colors that direct attention to the areas where
we want the eye to go. A splash of color in the
banner and little dabs of color here and there
place visual markers of importance for our
readers. However, using too many colors can
become a distraction --- there will be too many
places for the eye to go and it can cause
attention paralysis.

Quick Tip: I personally like to keep my blog
layout neutral so that I can go color wild in my
blog posts. I LOVE color, but I minimize it in my
blog layout and the reason is this: If both my
layout and blog posts are colorful, it becomes
confusing because there isn't a focal point the
eye can rest on. So, use colors wisely and place
them carefully in areas you don't want your
users to miss --- like your content (your blog
posts).

8. Profile Photo. I used to think profile photos
were unnecessary until I read an article about
how the Wikipedia decided to use contributors'
profile photos to show that real people were
working behind the scenes to create all the free
content we enjoy. I realized then that using a
profile photo adds a lot of humanity to our
online life and this especially applies to our
blogs. Profile photos can be on the sidebar or on
your about page. When I say photo, I mean a
real photo, not one of those cartoon avatars that
were so popular a few years back. :)

Quick Tip: I get really self-conscious when other
people take my picture, so I usually take my
own! :D Elsie has awesome tips on how to
take better self portraits .

9. Fast loading pages. It's really frustrating to
visit a site with a lot of great content, then find
it painfully slow to load and navigate through.
There are many factors than can make a blog
slow, but this problem is especially common with
image-rich sites.

Quick Tip: One way to help pages load faster is
to use images that are optimized for your blog.
Some blogs I encounter load images that are far
too large for viewing. For example, the image
width may be set to 600px, yet the image that
loads is actually 1200px! To make it worse, there
may be 5 images per post and 12 posts per
page, which turns out to be quite an extra load!
So, we help our pages load faster by uploading
images with dimensions that fit our posts
perfectly. Another way to help your page load
faster is to limit the number of posts per page.
And one more thing, you can add a "Read More"
link after the first couple of images and an
excerpt.

10. Backgrounds. Background Patterns are great
and they can add a whole lot of fun and
personality to a blog. However, background
patterns that don't tile look like mistakes. I
mention this because I once designed a site on
a laptop with a small screen. Some time later, I
saw the site on a pal's large monitor and I
realized that the background covered only half of
the screen real estate! It wasn't the end of the
world, but it looked amateurish.

Quick Tip: If you're going to have a background
pattern, make sure it tiles. What I mean is, make
sure that no matter how large the monitor, that
your background will tile from top to bottom
and/or left to right. Take a look at your site from
monitors of varying sizes. If your monitors are
pretty much the same size, take a look at your
blog the next time you visit a computer store
and view your blog with the largest monitor you
can find.

Steps To Write Blogger Posts For New Blog Authours

Research Your Blog Post

Before you write a single word you
should spend time properly
researching the topic or subject that
you want to cover. Now a lot
depends on what your post may be
about, but even if you were writing
about yourself or your own personal
experiences, research can be done.
The first thing you should look
closely at is what keywords or
keyphrases you want to aim for .
This is something that many
bloggers seem to forget about, yet I
can’t stress enough how important
this is.
In order for people to find your
posts online you need to understand
what people are typing in to the
search engines to find what they are
looking for.
The best place to start is the Google
Keyword Planner tool that lets you
research keywords and keyphrases
that you can use for your articles.
Spend some time looking through
existing posts on the subject that
you want to cover yourself. The
point of this isn’t to just copy what
other people have written (you don’t
want to do that!), instead you are
looking to find what all these posts
aren’t saying.
There may be a million posts
already online that cover the same
subject that you want to write
about, but if you can do something
different or approach it from a
different angle, then you can help
yourself to stand out from the
crowd.

Plan Out The Structure Of Your
Blog Post
Once you have finished researching
your article it is time to plan out
the structure of your post. Just as
you would plan out a beginning,
middle and end when writing a
story, you need to plan out the way
you want your article to flow.
Everyone does this differently but I
always try to come up with my
subheadings first. That way I can
structure out my post into easy to
follow sections without repeating
myself.
I find that it also helps when
writing to have split up my post like
this into sections instead of trying to
write about everything in one go.

Get Writing

This should be the easy bit, so I
don’t really need to say much about
this here. If you have done your
research and planned out the
structure of your post previously,
then this should make the whole
writing process even easier.

Add A Title, Introduction & Call
To Action

Arguably THE most important step
is next as you need to come up with
a decent title, introduction and call
to action. Many of you may do this
during the writing or planning stage
of your article, but I find leaving it
until now helps.
This stage is so important as the
vast majority of people will see
these first and make a judgement
about the rest of your article based
on them.
In order for people to find and even
think about clicking on your post
you will need a good title.  It needs
to be interesting, enticing, include
keywords/keyphrases that you are
aiming for and instantly convey
what your post is about.
Coming up with a good title is by no
means easy, but always remember
this: a bad post with a good title
will always get more clicks than a
good post with a bad title.
Your introduction needs to do the
same as your title, only you have
more words to play with. You have
a couple of paragraphs (at the most)
to sum up what your post is about
without giving the whole game away
and encourage them to continue
reading.
If your introduction isn’t up to
scratch then people will simply click
back and navigate somewhere else.
Think of your introduction as a
synopsis on the back of a book that
you read before you buy it.
Your call to action is to be added at
the end of your post.  The aim of
this is to encourage viewers who
have read that far to stay on your
site and/or promote it.  You can do
this in a number of ways;

1. Encourage them to leave a
comment,

2. Point them in the direction to
other relevant posts on your site,

3. Tell them about an offer/
competition/service/product on
your site,

4. Ask them to subscribe to your
email newsletter.

5. Get them to share your post via
social media with their friends.

Your call to action doesn’t need to
do all of the above, it is simply an
encouragement for them to take
further action after your post. The
last thing you want is someone that
has read through an entire post to
navigate away and forget about your
site never to return.

Add Images/Video

I always like to view this next step
as adding window dressing to your
article.  No matter how good your
overall post is, you need something
visually appealing adding to it to
attract viewer attention.

Adding images is the simplest way
of doing this. This helps to break
up your post and make it look more
interesting rather than just a big
mass of text.
Videos are equally as good at doing
this especially when they are
informative and relevant to what
you are writing about.

Edit, Edit, Edit!

When you think you have finished
your post remember to spend time
editing and going over what you
have written. This is a great time
to add things like inbound and
outbound links, or even affiliate
links where appropriate.
Publish
Only when you are 100% happy and
have thoroughly read and re-read
your post to check for any errors or
mistakes can you hit the publish
button.
Always be aware of the fact that
your blog posts are a reflection of
you and your website, you need to
make sure that they are up to your
high standards before you upload it.