Blogging Challenge Week 2: Blog Optimization & Prep

This is the 2nd week of our four-week blogging challenge. This is building off of our Intentional Blogging workshop from the TpT Conference.  Over the next several weeks, we will focus on helping you with blog optimization and writing intentional blog posts. It's OK if you missed the conference workshop, this challenge will work for any TpTer. If you are just joining us, make sure to check out Week 1 here and join our mastermind group for blogging accountability as we work through the challenge: www.growwithusmastermind.com.

Week two of the blogging challenge is all about prepping and optimizing your blog for success. Having quality blogs is important, but you want to make sure your site is set up and ready for when people show up. You want your audience to easily find out about you, see your posts, and find your resources.

Let's get started...
Blog Optimization with SEO
Yes, you want to include your SEO keywords within your blog posts, but blog optimization requires to go even further. You need to think about things like your link structure. This should be SEO friendly as well.

What you're looking for is a link that looks like this:

YourBlogName.com/keyword-phrase

Keep your links short, simple, and use your SEO keywords. I just recently got all of my links redirected and switched over. All of my old structured links now redirect to new SEO friendly links.

I actually paid someone to help me with this (learn more about outsourcing in episode 14). If you can redirect your existing blog posts, that's great. But, if that's not something you have time to worry about right now just use this strategy moving forward.
Blog SEO resources
We are going to dive further into SEO keywords next week, but SEO is an important part of prepping and blog optimization. So, here are a few resources:

Past Grow With Us Podcast Episodes

Episode 19: Tips & Tools for Optimizing Your Blog Traffic
Episode 17: SEO Tips with Guest Noelle Pickering

SEO keyword finder tool

Uber Suggest is a great, and FREE, resource! You can enter in a topic that you're interested in and it provides you with a list of ranked keywords.

Challenge resources

Angie and I compiled a list of SEO resources and included them in our Blogging Challenge resource list. You can find them on the main resource page for the challenge here or at the link below. There is one list with SEO for Blogger and one that's SEO for Wordpress.

www.growwithuspodcast.com/challenge/

Prepping your homepage
You want your homepage to me more than just a list of your existing blog posts. When your audience arrives at your homepage, they should be able to find out who you are, what you do, and what you stand for.

There should also be a call-to-action (CTA). You want people to easily be able to sign up for your email list, training course, or anything else that you have as an option for people to opt in for.

You need to include a way for people to interact with and engage with you. If you're just starting out with your blog and haven't created an opt-in yet then encourage them to follow you on social media. The main goal is to make sure that you have a way to continue interacting with them once they click off your blog. You don't want to lose them forever.
Optimizing your contact page
Your "Contact" page is a way for people to easily reach ou