35 comments

Beginner SEO Tips for Fashion Bloggers

girl holding umbrella
When you take a look at your analytics, where is most of your traffic coming from? For many blogs, as much as 50% of traffic can come from search engines.  With IFB, 44% of our traffic comes from Google organic search, and 4% comes from Twitter. A majority of  fashion bloggers (myself included) tend to focus on social media to build traffic. Social media is wonderful but it's time consuming, needy, and when compared to SEO, the return on investment is quite dismal.

Social media is wonderful, but it’s time consuming. When compared to SEO, the return on investment is quite dismal.

Not only that, Social media tends to bring in more returning visitors… our “New Visitor” rate among social media sources hover around 30%, and SEO brings in nearly 70% new visitors. Traffic that comes in without constant attention. So in a sense, when half your traffic is coming from SEO and it's reaching 70% new visitors… it's a marketing tactic that reaches a new audience can't be ignored.

Don't ignore SEO…

It's complicated. Technical. Often times the best resources are written using a lot of jargon. It makes my eyes glaze over, to tell the truth. Kind of like flossing, it's one of those things that isn't hard and I should do it, but don't do it as much as I should. When the numbers “without trying” so hard are looking good, why not try maximize the benefits by tweaking content?

But not to worry! There are ways to jump in to the SEO game. I recently found the  Beginners Guide to SEO which had a lot of great information, not to mention great ways of thinking about search engines to improve my tactics.

Think about how YOU use search engines

If I'm treating Google as the source of my answers, why not treat my posts like answers to those questions?

It's funny that we think of SEO is a technical thing, but at the same time it's a tool we all use. I search for specific content on search engines every day. From asking dumb questions like, “What's the difference between a food processor and a blender” to finding reviews on beauty products to decide what to buy, Google answers all my questions. If I'm treating Google as the source of my answers, why not treat my posts like answers to those questions?  The Beginners Guide to SEO, broke it down like this:

Search engines are answer machines. When a person looks for something online, it requires the search engines to scour their corpus of billions of documents and do two things – first, return only those results that are relevant or useful to the searcher’s query, and second, rank those results in order of perceived usefulness. It is both “relevance” and “importance” that the process of SEO is meant to influence.

The guide goes in depth into keywords and linking, which is vital to SEO, but I feel like when starting out, it's good to create authentic content that's also SEO friendly. If you're thinking about how to position yourself in a place to be found on the web, it changes the way you think about your content. It doesn't have to change, just tweaked.

Look at your site like a search engine

I'm a visual person. You can explain all you want, ie, search engines don't see photos or flash files. But seeing how your site looks to a search engine certainly changes the way you look at your site. All those untitled images? Vague post titles?

Here is how IFB looks like to a search engine:

ifb search engine

I noted which content is being pulled and how the search engines scan the site. Note how the navigation is right on top (a reason to pay attention to navigation). IFB needs work, but scrolling down, it was good to see the links, and looking at the links bare on the page helped to visualize the importance of being specific (and appealing) with your post titles, and any link really…

Obviously, there is so much more to optimizing your blog for search traffic, so please read the Beginners Guide to SEO for getting in depth from experts. But in the mean time, start approaching your blog's SEO like an an answer to be found, and you'll start seeing the difference.

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Independent Fashion Bloggers (IFB) is a community of fashion bloggers who share their experiences and resources to build a better blog.

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35 Responses

  1. Barbara

    WOW, I just checked my site too on the SEO Browser and I must say that I was impressed to see my blog post titles in it and also my pictures. I aim to do more to improve it but it is nice to see that I am on the right path.

    Barbara
    http://barbsiesmusings.blogspot.com/

    Reply
    • Jennine Jacob

      It certainly helps, doesn’t it! Good to know you’re on the right track.

      Reply
  2. ron

    very very interesting post, and I think a blogger should have at least the basics of SEO.

    www.thewild-swans.com

    Reply
  3. Tiffy Diamond

    Seriously, THANK YOU for this post. I have been trying to strengthen my SEO skills lately. I find when trying to do research online the articles I read talk to me as though I’m already an expert in SEO. This causes me to look up even more terms just to understand the article. I’m definitely going to checkout this book and the seo browser for some tweaking of my blog.

    xo
    Tiffy
    http://www.CuteLA.com

    Reply
  4. Michaela d'Artois

    You are like the blogging fairy godmother! I love how you broke this down. It’s so true and so helpful!

    xxx
    M

    Reply
  6. Jennine Jacob

    There is a way to access just your home page for free, just paste in your web page, then click on “simple”

    Reply
  7. Devon - InformedStyle.com

    Thanks for posting this – it’s nice to see an article that helps me dip my toe into SEO waters without feeling overwhelmed.

    Will need to engrain the mantra “I have the questions, and the blog has the answers”

    Devon
    http://InformedStyle.com/blog

    Reply
  8. angelique sainz

    I found this video and it was easier for me to understand!

    thank you for sharing I had no idea of that!!!

    http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

    Reply
    • Kenneth Jacobs

      Thanks for sharing the video. I’m going to have to watch it and try to understand it myself. I’m having a hard time understanding SEO’s! 🙁

      slowly but surely!

      Kenneth <3

      Reply
  9. Winston & Willow

    Just the post I was looking for! SEO is such a confusing thing for new bloggers such as myself. This article came at the right time! x
    Charlotte
    www.winstonandwillow.com

    Reply
  10. Eilidh MacRae

    Some really good tips! Every fashion blogger should practice some SEO to encourage more traffic and targeted traffic.

    Reply
  11. Clever buttons

    I rely on SEO for my blog, it does help that I work as a copywriter for an SEO company, but it is so important to keep everything fresh and up to date with any SEO activity.

    Great post!

    Thanks C xx

    Reply
  12. The Science of Happy

    Thanks so much for this, I’ve seen numerous posts on this and yes my eyes glazed over for every single one until I read this!

    For anyone interested, my MAC giveaway is still running!
    http://thescienceofhappy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/mac-prize-release-birthday-giveaway.html

    Reply
  13. T.Monet

    (Sigh of relief)

    Where would we be without IFB?

    You are all God-sends. Whenever I feel discouraged about blogging, uninspired, lacking motivation and consumed with frustration. I come to IFB for a therapy session, you all help me each and every single time. It’s amazing how you all already know what what challenges we’re facing and when. I love you guys! Thank you
    XOXOXOXOXOXO

    Reply
  14. Sana Shahid

    Thank you so much! I never really understood SEO and honestly never paid attention to it. A few days back, I sort of filled in words and saw views flowing in. Though they aren’t major but it certainly helps!
    So thank you for your posts. Will love more breakdowns on these. 🙂

    Reply
  15. MOSTAFA

    thank you i think this article is useful for those how want to learn seo
    http://inter-net-world.blogspot.com/2013/04/4-seo-tips-and-3-most-common-wrong.html

    Reply
  17. Amy

    These tips are incredibly useful! Thank you so much.

    http://voguetteblog.com

    Reply
  18. Vijay Kumar

    Yes. Thanks for sharing the information and great article. Also please write some white hat tips on SEO for websites.

    Reply
  19. nicholas.mick

    That is something what i call, stand and deliver, good points shared.
    the best one is, if you can see like a search engine then you can make things better for your site or blog. i mean every one now a day’s know about keywords and meta, but this is something which is very basic but very helpful.

    Reply
  20. Maegan Anderson

    I like the valuable information you provide in your articles Jenine! Just want to add one-To be found on the Web and communicate with your customers, you need to speak their language and address their particular needs. It’s much easier to optimize web pages for keywords relating to a niche market’s needs.

    Reply
  21. jainul

    this is a nice and wonderful seo blogsite.I think there is not any kind of user who will go from hear with empty hand

    Reply
  22. Ronald

    This is the best way to explain how SEO works and you have done a good job. SEO strategies have to be fine-tuned to become more relevant and deliver results because of the Panda and Penguin updates. This article will help SEO executives to learn the best technique for increasing website traffic.

    Reply
  23. Nasreen

    I thought I knew some what about SEO and this was a great refresher! thanks 🙂

    http://lazyobsession.blogspot.ie/2013/05/hot-summers-day.html

    Reply
  24. WalkerEdwards

    Hai.. I’m new to SEO services this post helps me a lot to know about SEO information..
    Thank you so much..

    Reply
  25. Jonathan Rodriguez

    This is a great post. I am an SEO guy and I work with a lot of bloggers. Most bloggers think that they know everything about everything, so when I make seo suggestions, they think that they were the ones that came up with the site optimization recommendations. Great post.

    Reply
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  27. Karishma Chopra

    Your blog is so inspiring that i am literally noting every thing you are mentioning. i LOVE YOUR BLOG and i have to thank you for sharing this with readers and bloggers who are starting out. It is a great help.

    Reply
  28. Manik

    Hi Jennine,

    Great Post indeed. All points are well described and easy to follow.

    Thanks for the nice post.

    Reply
  29. Liv

    This was soon helpful! I have been wanting to understand SEO from a Fashion Blogger point of view for sooo long and your example of answering a question and labeling photos all made the learning curve less steep! Thanks for sharing your insight! I’m so thankful!!!

    Reply