5 Easy Steps to Improve Your Wedding Blog SEO

Business, SEO, Showit, Tips & Tricks, Wedding Professionals

Sometimes it’s hard to fit blogging into your calendar as a wedding pro, especially in your busy season. Marketing experts tell you how important it is to blog each wedding, but is it contributing to your bottom line?

Are you seeing a long-term impact when you create wedding blog posts?

Without proper wedding blog SEO, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs, for short). Since so many brides go straight to search engines like Google when they’re looking for wedding vendors to work with, you can’t ignore SEO.

So, how do you make sure your SEO strategy is built to last?

I’ll help you get started with five easy steps to improving your wedding blog SEO. I’ll also break down the meaning behind the jargon words that no one takes the time to define. Consider this your beginner’s guide to SEO!

After you read through these easy-to-implement tips, you won’t have to struggle with blogging about weddings anymore! From now on, every wedding-related blog post will be optimized for search engines and the brides you want to reach. 

That way, you aren’t just blogging about weddings because you’re “supposed” to. You’ll do it because you know the content will have a lasting effect on your wedding business.


Keep an eye on your word count

It’s recommended to keep your content at a minimum of 300 words so it’s search-friendly, although I suggest writing around 500 to 1,000 words when possible. Long articles are proven to rank better in search engines than short articles because they give your audience more value.

When you are brainstorming for your next round of blog post ideas, think about how you can create a variety of content. If you’re blogging a wedding, you might keep your content around 300 to 500 words since you will be including several images from the wedding.

However, you could also include how-to educational guides for brides who want to learn more about a specific topic that relates to your niche.For example, if you are a wedding stationery designer, you could create a 1,000 to 1,500 word guide that helps brides understand which elements go into a full invitation suite. A wedding planner could write the same number of words to help brides create an optimal timeline for their wedding day.

This intentional mix of content will help you keep a freshly updated blog while helping brides find exactly what they need. To take it one step further, think about pairing each article with a designated blog category so you can organize all of your content in a thoughtful way.

Not sure what to write about? Keep it simple by jotting down your ideas in one place. I usually keep a spreadsheet of potential blog post ideas in my Google Drive so I can revisit it whenever I need more creative inspiration. 


Choose a targeted keyword for each blog post

You may have heard the term “keyword” before but people don’t often talk about how to actually find them. But let’s back up for a second and talk about what a keyword is. 

A keyword is a commonly searched term or phrase, like “wedding planner nyc” or “wedding florist cost.” When you type these keywords into a search engine like Google, you’ll see a curated list of various website pages to freely explore that are optimized for the specific keyword you typed in.

One of the best parts about blogging for SEO is that you can use what we call long-tail keywords to better rank your blog posts.

For example, if you’re a wedding planner in New York City, it’ll be difficult to rank for “wedding planner nyc” because it’s such a highly competitive keyword in a saturated market. With so many other wedding planners trying to rank for the same keyword, what do you do?

This is where long-tail keywords come in handy. Instead of using “wedding planner nyc,” you could add another qualifier to your keyword like “how to plan a wedding at tribeca rooftop” for a specific wedding venue you want to rank for. This will make it much easier for you to rank because there’s less competition but brides who type in keywords like “wedding planner at tribeca rooftop” will find exactly what they need: your services!

The process of finding these targeted keywords and long-tail keywords is quite easy once you get the hang of it. I’ll show you two different ways to approach keyword research. Let’s start by going straight to Google!

Let’s say you wanted to write an article to help brides find their ideal wedding dress. You could start by typing in “wedding dress” to see what comes up on Google’s search page.


This is a more generalized list of highly competitive keywords, so let’s see what happens when we type in another word to specify our search, like “wedding dress fit.”


This gives you a few more ideas, but then you may be inspired to type in a similar keyword like “wedding dress style” to see if any other ideas come up.


You now have a whole list of keyword options you can choose from!

If you’re looking for even better keywords for your blog posts, I recommend using a free search tool like Answer the Public. All you need to do is type in a keyword (long-tail or not) and it will gather a full list of related keywords by organizing them into a mindmap.

With this same topic, if you only typed in “wedding dresses,” you might get an overwhelming amount of potential blog post topics like this…


But if you typed in “wedding dress fit” instead, you’d see a narrowed down topic list that relates to how brides are currently searching on Google.


Some of these potential topics include:

  • How should my wedding dress fit
  • Which wedding dress would fit me
  • How should a wedding dress fit
  • When your wedding dress doesn’t fit
  • How to make a wedding dress fit


If one of the topics from the list above seemed like a great fit (no pun intended), you could include it in your blog title (which I’ll talk about next – stay tuned!) along with these other elements:


Then your blog post will be optimized with a target keyword! In the future, you might want to do advanced keyword research when measuring keyword competition and monthly search volumes, but this is the simplest way to start.


Write a blog title that’s optimized

You can write the most high-quality content in the world, but if your blog title doesn’t make brides want to click on your link, they won’t ever see it. 

Your blog title is often the first thing someone sees before reading your blog post. It can be up to five times as effective as your body content, so it’s important to lead with clarity while incorporating your keyword whenever possible.

Writing blog post titles doesn’t have to feel like rocket science. Once you have your blog topic and keyword, you can plug it into any of these blog title formulas:

  • The Ultimate Guide to [Keyword]
  • How to [Keyword] as a [Style] Bride
  • [Bride’s Name] & [Groom’s Name]’s [City] Wedding at [Venue]
  • Falling in Love at [Bride’s Name] & [Groom’s Name]’s [City] Wedding
  • Winter Wonderland at [Bride’s Name] & [Groom’s Name]’s Wedding at [Venue]
  • # Things You Don’t Know About [Keyword] as a New Bride
  • Styling Your [Keyword] So It’s Ready For [Keyword]
  • What No One Tells You About [Keyword]
  • A Newly Engaged Bride’s Guide to [Keyword]
  • What Brides Need to Know About [Keyword]


Need even more ideas? You can use blog headline generators like Hubspot, Blog About, and Title Generator. Once you have a blog title, you might want to assess its effectiveness using CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer tool.

I usually recommend writing at least five to ten blog title variations before you choose a winner. Your first blog title isn’t always your best one, so give yourself room to experiment with different titles until you find the perfect fit.


Include relevant internal and external links

Next, we’re going to talk about links! Did you know much of the strength behind your website’s search performance comes down to your linking strategy? If this is the first time you’re hearing about the importance of linking in blog posts, I’ll give you the basics.

You’ll need both internal links and external links to create a successful blog posts. Internal links refer to links that direct users to your own website pages or blog posts. External links, however, direct users to other resources that are outside of your website. They’re both important when you want to strengthen your website.

Let’s say you decide to write a blog post helping brides choose their ideal floral arrangement. You might want to link to your floral design services page somewhere in the blog post along with a floral design quiz you created on another landing page. You’ll have an opportunity to include links to other relevant blog posts you’ve written, too.

Your internal linking strategy would then be covered, but what about adding external links? You probably don’t want to link to your competitors but you can find resources on other websites that are loosely related to what you do.

When possible, try to link to blog posts and resources from reputable and well-respected sources like The Knot and WeddingWire, for example. This will show search engines that you’ve done your homework with content research before writing.


Don’t forget about your alt tags

As a wedding professional, so much of your blog post’s success comes down to your beautiful imagery. Since most wedding pros feature several photographs in their blog posts, it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of your images. This often comes down to your alt tags. 

Way too many wedding pros are forgetting to use alt tags and missing out on the SEO benefits, but I want to make sure you aren’t one of them!

Alt tags (or alt text) refer to written content that explains the context of each image on a website page or blog post. It is revealed whenever an image fails to load on a user’s screen, helping visually impared visitors in their user experience and allowing search engines to better rank your website because of the long-term SEO value of alt tags.

Let’s put this new knowledge into practice! 

Look at the bridal portrait below. What’s the difference between a good alt tag and a bad alt tag for this photograph if we were using it for a wedding blog?

Bad alt tag: wedding dress nyc lake wedding (reason: broad and unrelated keywords)
Bad alt tag: smiling woman wearing white dress (reason: not descriptive enough)
Good alt tag: bride holding floral bouquet wearing wedding dress standing on lake dock


It’s best to take this approach when you write alt tags for each photo you’re blogging about. This may take some time, but it’s easy when you remember that you only need to explain what is seen in each photo. You’ll get the hang of this quickly!

Here are a few more best practices for alt tags:

Don’t try to stuff in as many keywords as you can. This is appropriately called “keyword stuffing” and it’s a no-no for search engines like Google. A long list of keywords in your alt tags isn’t doing anything for your SEO.

Not every alt tag needs to have a keyword in it. You might want to sprinkle the target keyword into a few alt tags but you don’t need to do it for every single photograph. It often won’t fit the theme of each photo, so keep this in mind when you blog a new wedding. 

Keep your alt tags to fewer than 125 characters. Remember, we’re talking about characters here instead of words. The alt tag should be descriptive but still easy to read!

Simply write about what someone sees in the photo. You don’t need to introduce the imagery by stating “Image of… “ or “Photograph of…” before your description. The best way to write an alt tag is to plainly explain what the photo is illustrating.

 

Are you a checklist’er like me?  Snag our free Showit SEO Checklist to ensure you don’t miss a thing when you set up your website SEO!

 


Ready to take your SEO strategy one step further?

After you optimize your wedding blog SEO, you might be wondering what you should do for the rest of your website pages. 

Do you need to add alt tags to every image? Should you be adding new titles or descriptions, and how in the world do you get started with incorporating better keywords?

All of these questions are answered in my affordably priced Simple Showit SEO Course! It will teach you everything you need to know about optimizing your Showit website for SEO.

Inside the course, you’ll receive:

• 14 bite-sized video tutorials

• A corresponding 25-page workbook

• A 2-page progress checklist

SEO has never been simpler.

Click here to learn more about Simple Showit SEO!



5 Easy Steps to Improve Your Wedding Blog SEO

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