We get a lot of questions about SEO here on WordPress.com, and no wonder — you work hard on your site and want to get the word out! SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO recommendations are intended to help your site rank higher and more accurately in search engines, like Google. Say you write a blog about sailboats. When someone Googles “sailboats,” how many pages of results do they have to scroll through before they see a link to your blog? The goal behind having good SEO is to increase your website’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking.

Ideally, you want your link to be on the first page of results. The best ways to accomplish this are:

• consistently publish useful, original posts about sailboats; and
• promote your blog in intelligent ways to people who are looking for information about your topic.

The more traffic your blog receives for sailboat-related searches, the…