Guide to SEO Blogging
Free download, updated for 2025
When I started my first blog back in 2014, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing! I simply wanted an outlet for my musings on life, stumbled across a free platform, chose a theme, and wrote sporadically in my free time.
Honestly, back then there was very little to help me learn either. So, I ended up teaching myself and picked up what I could from experts. By 2022, I’d decided to invest in a course to teach me all things SEO (search engine optimisation).
Although I started right at the beginning, now I write regular blog posts for two of my own websites and run a business writing them for other people.
My updated Guide to SEO Blogging shares some of the things I’ve learned along the way.
It’s perfect for anyone writing blog posts for themselves, their business, or their charity. Whether you’re just starting out, or have been blogging for years, you’ll find lots of tips in the guide to help you get the most out of your blog in 2025.
To learn more about my own blogging history, read on…
My blogging background
My first blog was just for fun, so I wanted a price tag of £0. The free options back in the day were pretty much a choice between WordPress (.com not .org there’s a difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org) and Blogger (owned by Google).
To cut a long story short, I chose WordPress.
I have no idea how many people read the posts but if you delve far enough into the archives on this website, you may come across a few. That’s because I added extra business pages when I decided to become self employed.
Eventually, I moved to a paid-for platform but instead of building from scratch, I migrated everything over. Knowing what I know now, I’d have done things differently - but that’s the legacy I’m working with.
If you do stumble across those early words in the archives, feel free to read, enjoy, and see how much my writing style has evolved.
But, if you’re thinking of asking me to help write your content, please take those very old posts with a pinch of salt and check more recent ones!
Growing my outdoor blog
In late 2014, I set up a second blogging site to share my outdoor adventures. By then, I could navigate easily around the WordPress.com dashboard so it was the natural choice.
It was a great way to get started, but comes with a word of caution 👇
As I developed my blog and learned more about tips and techniques, I wanted to add more features. Things like a customised domain name (ie. xyzsite.com instead of xyzsite.wordpress.com) and web analytics.
Moving up the price tier became very expensive. I had a go at migrating everything over to WordPress.org but my techie skills failed me (twice).
Cutting another very long story short, both my websites are now on the Squarespace platform, which I love using. And, unlike my very first blog, I have analytics information dating back years for my outdoor blog.
2014: 18 visitors
2019: 6,500 visitors
2023: 17,076 visits
2024: 108,793 visits
I migrated everything over to Squarespace in 2020 (yep, a lockdown project) so can share a graph below of how the site has grown since giving it a little TLC.
Outdoor-Girl.com website analytics
Writing blog posts is the easy part
One of the big things I’ve learned is that writing is the easy part of blogging. Of course, it depends on the goals for your site - if you’re simply writing for yourself and maybe sending a link to friends/family members, all the other ‘stuff’ is less important.
But, for anyone wanting to grow their blog, there’s a lot to get your head around. And, if you’re wondering why you might want to grow it, here are just seven reasons off the top of my head (there are many more):
Driving more traffic to your business website
Creating brand awareness
Showing your expertise
Creating a connection with customers
Earning an income via monetising your blog
Improving your website’s SEO
Making a difference via content (eg. debt help, environmental issues)
As my blog grew, I realised the importance of sharing and promoting posts, learned about reach, got my head around analytics, and began understanding SEO.
New terminology became my norm. Things like meta tags, URL’s, search engine optimisation, keywords, and more. Navigating my way around all the tech behind the blog became a new skill, and I loved it.
Seriously, I uncovered my inner SEO Geek!
I soaked up information, attended workshops, read online articles, searched forums, went to Google Digital Garage sessions, and chatted with other bloggers in my network.
How to start a blog
Ok, first up, this is a very quick summary. To give you a definitive ‘here’s what to do’ list, it needs to be a whole other blog post. In fact, maybe it could become a future topic - contact me if that sounds helpful.
But in summary, these are the steps to start a new blog:
Decide on a niche
Come up with a name
Set up a domain
Choose web hosting
Select a theme or web building software
Come up with a blog template and brand
Decide on content topics
Share on social media / via email marketing
Understand analytics tools
But there’s a whole lot more around writing the content itself. And that’s what my SEO Guide to blogging covers.
How my Guide to SEO Blogging helps
Blogging and SEO is changing rapidly. The rise in popularity of ChatGPT meant that anyone could write blog posts. Google caught on and changed the search algorithms, penalising thin content - web pages and blog posts with little or no value, low-quality, poorly written, or copied from other sources.
I wrote my first guide to blogging quite a few years ago, so have now updated it for 2025 to reflect this changing climate of generative search, AI Overviews, and more.
My updated Guide to SEO blogging talks about strategy and consistency, through to EEAT, keywords, and top tips for writing blog posts.
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Get in touch if you’d like to chat about your web content.
Read more writing and blogging posts:
8 things you must check before hitting publish on your blog posts
How Google’s helpful content guidelines can improve your blog