I have never really paid much attention to SEO and statistics. I blogged because I enjoyed it and wrote about things that I wanted to remember.
My blog began as a hobby and the first time someone offered me payment for my writing I thought it was a joke. I just waffled away in my own little corner of cyberspace and the idea of someone wanting to pay me for it amazed me!
Now, several years later, my blog is my business. I make a steady income from it and I still can’t believe that I lucky enough to make a living doing something that I love! It is also perfect as I can work from home and I don’t require childcare for these two angels.
Occasionally I am asked for my DA. The first time I was asked for this I had to turn to google. I had no idea what my DA was. DA stands for Domain Authority. I still don’t fully understand what this means but I do know that the higher your DA the better your blog is. My DA was usually around 36 and I was led to believe that this was a good score.
The DA is updated every so often and a few weeks ago I read a post on social media about people experiencing a big drop in their score. I was curious and I checked mine. It had fallen to 27! That seemed like such a big drop. I hoped it had been a mistake but I then read a comment that said they had changed the way they calculated the scores. The current one was supposed to be the most accurate.
I started to worry! My blog may have started out as a hobby but it is now my business and we rely on the money that I make from it. I started to fret that I wouldn’t get any work with my lower score.
I wondered how I could increase my score. As I said, I hadn’t thought about stats previously so I had no idea how to go about this. Again I turned to google. They informed me that your DA score was linked to SEO. This didn’t help me a great deal as I didn’t really know what SEO was. I knew that it stood for Search Engine Optimism but that was all.
I started to look into it but I quickly became baffled! I found a plug in that measured the SEO of your site and I soon realised that mine was awful. Apparently all of my images should have an ‘alt text’. Once I found out how to add this I realised that it would take me forever to edit every single one of my images. I have hundreds already uploaded to my blog.
I also found out that the titles of my posts should literally say what the post is about and the words from that title should appear in the first paragraph. I like to be quite creative with my titles and they are anything but literal. I wrote a post the other day about trying to grab some me time and I entitled it ‘Mermaids & Bubbles‘. I think a more SEO friendly title would have been ‘How to grab some me time when you have a newborn baby’ but that wouldn’t have been half as magical.
I started to wonder if I would ever be able to get my head around SEO and if my blog would suffer because of it. I will keep trying and maybe look at getting some help.
Fortunately the work has still been coming so maybe 27 isn’t as bad as I thought. I am looking forward to being back in the 30s though!
Disclaimer: This is a collaborative post.
I may be wrong but I am pretty sure that you can have a SEO title but mask it with a more appealing mermaids and bubbles title. In on blogger and I think you do it by just picking a custom url rather than it making one from the title xx
I am still learning to get to grips with SEO. it can be so confusing at times
SEO is really mind boggling isn’t it – I can never really seem to get my mind around it all, I just do and hope.
Some lovely tips and advise. SEO I find mind blogging its so difficult to put into action everything.
27 is definitely not bad. I was hit by the drop too and mine has dropped massively. I was really disappointed as my blog is my income too. I’m in the same position now, trying to do all that I can to bring that number back up!
I often worry about SEO on my blog too.
Mine dropped from 40 to 30 I was gutted but I have over 200 broken links that I can’t get through 🙁
I think that plays a major part too.
I don’t think I will get my head around it either.
I have 8 years worth of alt tags to be editted. Post by post. I do not want to think about it!
Me neither! Wish I had known about it when I started. Having said that I probably would have forgotten as I keep forgetting to add them to new images. x
It is true SEO is so important. Do you mind me asking how you make money from your blog I want to start earning.
Mine dropped from 32 to 26. So annoying and frustrating but working hard to get it back up as I rely on my blog too.
I find SEO so complicated so your couple of tips that you shared here are actually really helpful xxx
This is something that I am struggling to my head around. The way you’ve explained it makes far more sense to me. I need an idiots guide 🙂
Oh man, SEO I am just awful at it! I only found out recently about alt tags on pictures too! Someone said you do dut them on don’t you and I was like er sure yeah! I just can’t quite get to grips with it all and just want to blog for the fun of it rather than all of this added into the mix
It is confusing, but your figures sound great. DA of 27 is something to be proud of. I have been working with digital marketing for nearly 7 years and must say I have learnt more since I started blogging. You are doing a good job.
Thank you! It’s great to hear that from someone who knows what they are talking about. x
Yes yes yes. SEO is KEY! Can be hard work sometimes, just gotta get into the habit 🙂
I feel so lucky that my blog is now my job too 🙂 SEO gives me headache though. Luckily my DA didn’t drop thank goodness. Great post. Kaz x
It’s difficult wrap your head around isn’t it. It certainly confuses me! My DA stayed the same for month and it was really frustrating!
Ive been reading about SEO type stuff after my DA dropped as well and essentially boring titles seem to be a huge help, so I have been slowly changing mine to be more relevant (and more boring) to my posts x
Some great tips here, shall put them to the test x