HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR BLOG SEO WITH NARRATIVE

Bloggers have to handle everything from content, marketing, theme maintenance, accounting, contracts, through to social media. With all of that, often alongside other work, it is natural for bloggers to search for ways to improve their workflow and make it more efficient.

In today’s blog, I will be answering the question of how I have slipstreamed my SEO tactics in a way that creates beautiful blog posts with image collages and unique layouts. And the simple answer is through Narrative.

So why do I love it so much? Firstly it is straightforward to use. It is also incredibly quick to place your photographs in different layouts throughout your article to make your post look chic. As I love to work when travelling the Narrative app is perfect as I can work offline on your blog layouts. Since using Narrative, I have improved my organic search and found it the best tool for creating my image-centric blog posts. Unfortunately, with it being new it can be buggy, but it is continuously improving, having updates and working more efficiently with new features.

It takes seconds to get used to using Narrative, know your options and understand how it works as it is drag and drop system. It takes seconds to crop or adjust images, so it fits nicely into the collage. Creating lovely blog layouts used to take hours but now takes seconds. Narrative saves time and optimises my blogging process. You can connect your website to your Narrative app. Mine is WordPress but any platform that allows javascript code injection works. Narrative then generates a HTML link to add to your blog post and immediately uploads the whole layout you’ve built. If you need to make changes or tweaks, you can do it directly inside your Narrative app, and this will update on your website. But the main reason for sharing my use of Narrative with you today is the SEO settings within the software.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way to make your blog appear higher in the result pages of a search engine. For bloggers, this can mean reaching a larger readership and growing your blog interaction. Blogs can incorporate PPC to target their audience, through a PPC consultancy, for quick, and vast exposure as well as organic search SEO. By having good SEO, whether choosing optimisation for organic search, paid media or both, you can influence your rank in the results. After years of testing alternative organic SEO strategies, I fell in love with the solution offered by Narrative. The Narrative app (currently only available for Mac, unfortunately) optimises your blog for search results to ensure search engines best see your posts.

In Narrative, there is an SEO Inspector that help you understand what’s right, and what needs improvement SEO wise. The inspector clearly shows you the different elements of SEO – Focus Keywords, SEO Title, Meta Description, Image Keywords and Text Content to identify the weak spots. While working in Narrative, you start by put in your focus keywords. These are the main words which your blog’s SEO will be focused on. The 3-5 focus works are the basis for the feedback inside the SEO inspector.

Once the focus keywords are set the Narrative SEO inspector can make accurate suggestions for better SEO. This includes recommending that the SEO title includes all of your focus keywords and a minimum of 25 characters and a maximum of 60 characters. Narrative will advise that the meta description use your focus keywords to create a summary of the blog with a minimum of 125 characters and a maximum of 155 characters. Often forgotten about are image keywords, the tags for each image, despite them being an effective way to bring traffic to your website. These can be quickly added through Narrative and are more specific with varying 2 – 5 tags. Finally, the inspector will look at the text in your post and suggests at least 300 words and use your “Focus Keywords” throughout. It is so easy to improve these elements with the Narrative traffic light system feedback. The lights are Green – great!, Orange – maybe revise, Red – needs more work. So when all your lights are green, you know you have good SEO.

So there you have it, Narrative is such a great tool for bloggers to know about. Try it out on a free trial and see how it can help you create blog posts quickly with a unique styling touch. After you do, you won’t be able to look back and do blog posts the old way again!