22 Killer Tumblr SEO Tips for Bloggers (Beginners’ Guide)

In this Ultimate Tumblr SEO guide, you will find ways to optimize your Tumblr for search engines.

Tumblr is one of the best micro-blogging platforms in the world, and it grows every year. It’s a superb site to create a blog and publish your stuff on the web. Previously, you found out how to add HTML widgets to Tumblr to make it modern and powerful.

But what about Tumblr SEO?

Sadly, Tumblr does not provide enough facilities to optimize your site for search engines.

If you are new to SEO, optimizing something (e.g.: Tumblr) that does not support SEO would be more challenging.

Luckily for you, in this guide, you will find everything you need to know about Tumblr SEO and how to drive more traffic to Tumblr.

These are actionable SEO tips and tricks – No matter which stage you are on, at least one of them can be helpful.

Before we tap into Tumblr Search Engine Optimization, it would be better to understand the differences between the SEO of blogging platforms and the SEO sides.

When comparing Tumblr SEO vs. WordPress SEO vs. BlogSpot SEO, you can obviously notice that BlogSpot (Google Blogger) and WordPress are far ahead of Tumblr.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be divided into TWO main parts.

1. On-Page SEO: Everything you do inside your blog belongs to On-Page SEO. The good thing is, though, that you can actually control every aspect of on-page SEO. On-page SEO limits content production and involves the best parts of SEO, such as internal linking, image SEO, and UX & UI.
2. Off-Page SEO: All SEO aspects outside your blog belong to Off-page SEO. You can’t control everything related to Off-page SEO. Backlinks, co-citations, and social shares are some of the things that directly cause the ranking status of your site.

Even though SEO looks more complicated, in reality, it is not.

You need to understand that at the end of the day, Google is a business and wants to represent the best results to customers (e.g.: searchers), so you should optimize content to satisfy both users and search engines.

Once familiar with each part of SEO, you can quickly improve SEO for Tumblr and drive more highly targeted traffic to your website.

In fact, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the second most profitable field you’d tap into. Look at these ROIs versus each industry’s chart.

The important thing is that you can control your website ranking merely upon on-page SEO. Backlinks are insignificant if the content is poorly structured and delivered.

So, in this complete Tumblr SEO guide, I will show you exactly how to optimize Tumblr for search engines and people.

One Last thing I ask you to do.

If you enjoyed reading this guide, please consider sharing it with your friends and followers. They might not know that they can optimize their Tumblr for search engines.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to BlogSpot SEO

---

Tumblr SEO Tips: The Complete Guide

The Domain Name

Some people get this idea wrong: If you have a subdomain name (ex: example.tumblr.com), you can rank for every keyword like Tumblr example pictures, for example, Tumblr logo, than Top-level domain (TLD) names.

It’s true that when starting, you rank for these types of keywords very well, probably than TLD domains. But, when your domain gets older and gathers authority, backlinks, and trust factors, the domain name separates from the root domain name (tumblr.com).

And another important thing is subdomain names don’t have massive brand awareness compared to TLD domains.

Think to yourself, would you click on a page from thepitiya.tumblr.com or www.pitiya.com in Google SERP?

Chances are you click on the result page from www.pitiya.com. Also, you might like to link out to a TLD domain than a sub-domain name.

Don’t worry. It’s the nature of human beings 😉 It’s like you don’t ask the world’s 8th-highest building. Instead, you ask about the world’s tallest building.

I am not going to talk with you more about Top Leval Domains. But I’ll explain to you about Keyword Rich domain names.

Let’s take AnyAlternatives.com as an example. AnyAlternatives is a keyword-rich domain name. Any (with the meaning of anything) Alternatives (similar ones).

Also, Anyalternatives.com ranks higher for related keywords, including the “alternatives” keyword. Ex: Semrush alternatives, Tumblr alternatives, any alternative to Canva.

Furthermore, once the site is matured, Google will rank it for synonym keywords such as ‘tools like Semrush,’ ‘sites like Tumblr,’ and ‘apps like Canva.’

You might think, “Okay, Chamal, you’re fairly lucky to have a keyword-rich domain name for your blog. But there are no more TLD domain names to purchase. Someone already buys every domain“.

Don’t worry. I have a technique that I always use for finding keyword-rich top-level (many times .com) domain names for websites. Here I use a different approach to mine keyword-rich domain names. I use three tools. They are;

• Google search engine (Google.com)
• Instant Domain Name availability search machine: Domize
• A tool to find trending and easy-to-rank keywords: Semrush

I don’t use Google’s keyword research tool because it doesn’t provide me with more information about my keywords, such as keyword difficulty, SERP positions in the USA, UK, Germany, etc., and competitor analysis data.

So, first of all, you have to create an account on Semrush to unlock the premium features. I recommend you create a Semrush Pro account to gain in-depth insight into any keyword or domain.

After you create and sign in to your Semrush account, you have unlimited access to find any keyword’s status, such as the trend, SEO difficulty, CPC distribution across GEOs, average Adwords monthly search volume, and SERP positions of competitors.

You can learn more about this fantastic search engine marketing tool by reading this Semrush review. Now I will find a long-tail keyword that someone as a TLD does not yet purchase. As I have no idea what keyword I should use, I started by searching “Tumblr themes” on Semrush.

Here is what I see when searching “Tumblr themes” on the Semrush keyword research tool. Look at the search volume and number of results. It looks like more advertisers bid for the UK over the US for the “Tumblr themes” keyword.

‘Tumblr Themes’ is a competitive keyword. So I will search for a long-tail keyword.

In fact, “cute quotes Tumblr” is not a bad keyword. Let’s see some search statistics of this keyword phrase.

Cute Quotes Tumblr is a less competitive keyword compared with “Tumblr themes.” According to Semrush stats, more than 14,800 times, this keyword phrase is entered in the Google.com search box. Massive potential for driving targeted traffic who want to find Tumblr quotes.

Although the average CPC (cost per click) of cute quotes on Tumblr is zero, the CPC of some keywords, like cute love quotes, is more than $0.00. For example, the $ cost per click for “love quotes Tumblr” is $2.27.

A higher Google Ads CPC bid means that the particular keyword generates money for advertisers. Pay attention to the related keyword report section.

The “Cute quotes Tumblr” phrase seems a good domain name for a micro-blog. Let’s see whether I can purchase one of its Top Level Domains. I will use the Domize.com domain search engine to find available TLD domains. Here is a list of more services to check if a domain is not bought yet.

Our main purpose is to have lucrative long-tail keyword-rich top-level domains. .com, .net, and .org domains rank higher on SERPs than other TLD or country-specific domains. I see this when entering “cute quotes Tumblr” on the search box.

Now let’s check what ranks on Google’s first page for this keyword phrase.

Not any single TLD domain than Tumblr.com ranks for cute quotes Tumblr in the first five spots. So we can work on this domain name.

You know that “cutequotestumblr” is a not-purchased domain name. You can purchase a domain name from Cloudflare, Google Domains, or Godaddy. Alternatively, you can use NameCheap, PorkBun, or NameSilo for domain registration.

I prefer using Cloudflare because of its extra benefits, such as DNS management, CDN, and other cloud infrastructure.

Here is the screenshot of Google SERP for the Tumblr themes keyword. Pay your attention to the tumblrtheme.directory domain name. It ranks on the first page for the competitive Tumblr themes keyword.

Now follow this step-by-step tutorial on adding Custom Domain Name for Tumblr blogs.

It is also important to understand how you will use the particular domain. In our example, we can start a Tumblr-theme-selling service or make money by promoting other themes as affiliates.

High-Quality Content

Have you heard this saying?

Content is king

As decades have gone by, it is still the truth.

Tumblr is a hybrid site with the aspect of both social networking and blogging.

So, if you are creative and produce content, especially for audiences on Tumblr, it could go viral and get more attention to your Tumblr.

But quality content doesn’t appear overnight. They have some specialties that low-quality or mediocre content doesn’t have.

Actually, you can measure whether your content is quality by analyzing the engagements of your site.

How would you identify whether your content is readable?

There are some ways to do that.

Is your website design looking good?: The website design is crucial at this point. Suppose you haven’t written content well by separating each paragraph, adding visual content, adding more white spaces, and, importantly, a well-made, enticing headline. In that case, many of your Tumblr readers will not return.
What’s your website’s readability score?: Readability score is a content quality score that grades your writing using a few factors. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is one of the most important readability factors. If potential users cannot understand your site content, how fast will your site grow?

One of the top ways to improve website engagement is by making your website’s content readable.

Grammarly is one of the best grammar tools for writers. Learn more in this review.

Grammarly’s industry-leading technologies, such as AI proofreading and phrasal predictions, will help you improve blog content and save time.

The performance report represents important details about your written content. However, some of those details are only available for premium users. Learn the pros and cons of Grammarly free vs. paid in this article.

Proofreading articles before publishing is crucial for many reasons. Here are a few of them.

Error-free English articles establish you as a real professional blogger.
Quality content with zero grammar errors increases the possibility of ranking top of SERPs.
Increase conversions.
Readers can understand your message. So, get more social shares and backlinks.
Improve your writing skills.

Grammarly grammar checker sorted it out for me. Although there are dozens of apps like Grammarly to check grammar online, I still have yet to see a good alternative.

Use visuals (a lot)

As a Tumblr blogger, you should try to use visual posts often because they are processed faster than text content by the brain and are shared inside and outside of the Tumblr network.

If you struggle to create beautiful visual content for Tumblr, use services such as Canva or PromoReplublic.

PromoRepublic contains thousands of ready-to-publish content related to niches, events, and special days. Learn more in this PromoRepublic review.

Additionally, use social media management software such as ContentStudio to find trending articles and post on your Tumblr to get followers.

ContentStudio is an all-in-one service for social media and content marketing. The best part is its direct Tumblr integration lets you schedule posts within ContentStudio and automate most things.

Check out this Content Studio review for more details and this ContentStudio pricing guide to find which plan is suitable for you.

Interlinking Posts

Another on-page SEO strategy to boost the authority of other pages on your Tumblr blog is interlinking. If you have done internal linking correctly, you can actually boost your website ranking without backlinks. It is tested and proven. Here is How to interlink blog posts to boost website rankings…

1. Find out your website’s most authoritative web pages except the homepage and other static pages such as about, contact, privacy policy, etc.
2. Find relevant places to add a link. If you don’t have appropriate places, add more relevant content without destroying the main concept.
3. Examine your linking web page. Find out the main keyword and other long-tail keywords. You can use the Semrush keyword analysis tool to do that.
4. Carefully add a relevant link to an internal article without a spam look.

Here’s the step-by-step guide on internal linking to boost Tumblr SEO and blog traffic.

#1: Finding authoritative pages

Head your browser to Moz Link Explorer and enter your website homepage URL, as shown below.

Now click on the “Top Pages” tab.

This example shows Pitiya’s top web pages with high page authority. Except for the first result, I can choose other pages to interlink.

#2: Adding relevant content

Direct your website to one of the authoritative web pages and find the top two links in that post. We find the first two links because they pass the most link juice and authority than the other links below.

• Is it an outbound link? So, remove it and try to add that link at the bottom of the web page.
• Has it linked to a low-quality page? If so, remove the link.

#3: Examination of the website linking to

To improve SEO on Tumblr, you should examine your web page. Find the main keyword and also other LSI keywords. Use Semrush to find your web page’s best traffic-boosting keywords.

#4: Add relevant link.

Here’s the best part of this interlinking SEO strategy

1. Find the best keyword that has the most search volume for each month. Use the Semrush Keywords Tool, Google Search Console, or Google Analytics. These days, Google Analytics does not provide all the keywords your site is ranking for, but you can unlock them by using a service such as Keyword Hero. Read our review on Keyword Hero to find the exact process to uncover not-provided keywords.
2. Analyze the difficulty of keywords using Semrush’s Keyword Difficulty tool.

Is there any high-authoritative web page such as WikiPedia.org, Entrepreneur, etc.?
So you have to write more content on that page and build more links to outrank them. Remember, it’s NOT EASY work.
Is there any authoritative website with more domain authority than yours?
Just like ranking higher than Wikipedia, you must do some hard work to outrank them. Remember the “great content” part?

If everything looks good, add your link to the authoritative web page you just found on Moz.

Interlinking is not limited to blog post text interlinking. There are other ways, too, in internal linking. It has been proven to work well. If you haven’t interlinked your posts, you must do it today. It’ll boost the overall Tumblr SEO performance and score by decreasing the bounce rate and getting more people to read your old posts.

Keyword Research

To improve Tumblr’s SEO and drive more traffic from search engines and social networks, you have to write what people are searching for.

Unless your idea is too good to get people’s attention, you’re wasting your time and effort if you write and publish your thoughts on your blog.

To make your Tumblr SEO-friendly and grab people’s attention, you must adequately research keywords and utilize them wisely. If you don’t add keywords within post content, how would search engines understand what your content is about?

And if you throw in more keywords, Google will penalize your website for keyword stuffing issues. I recommend maintaining the keyword density in the 0.3% – 3% range. This means at least once or thrice, your primary keyword (the target keyword) should appear in 100 words.

It is fair and doable, right?

Yes, it is better to add more LSI keywords rather than copying and pasting the same keyword in different places.

Four Types of Keyword Research

When you enter Keyword Research, you can find many ways and tools to find search queries for articles. But all of them can be grouped into four types. They are;

1. Head Tail Keywords – ex: “Apple”
2. Middle Tail Keywords – ex: “best Apple smartphone”
3. Long Tail Keywords – ex: “best Apple iPhone under $500”
4. LSI keywords – ex: “Apple iPhone’s new features,” “Samsung vs. Apple”

And when considering the intent of the keyword, we can categorize each keyword in four paces. They are;

1. Informational
2. Navigational
3. Commercial
4. Transactional

Understanding these four paces is very crucial for every business. Check out this picture to get a clear idea of how keyword intent matters for business.

After understanding the intent of keywords, the next thing of a good keyword research campaign is finding keywords with low competition.

Why should you find keywords with low competition?

It is not a secret that information has become widespread so that a new content creator finds a hard time getting attention on Google, presumably ranking on the first page at least for the first few years.

Using lower competitive keywords is one of the best ways to build authority and get quick wins.

These are keywords with little to no competition (ex: underused keywords), so your content would have a greater chance of ranking higher on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

How do you find keywords with low competition (and high search volume)?

Since the emergence of niche sites and event blogging, niche keyword research tools have shaken the market within the last several years.

In addition, new ways to define the competitiveness in organic SERPs are born. Two of those are:

1. All in Title – Allintile is a value that represents how many SERP results are there for a given keyword. Value can vary depending on the GEO location, keyword usage method (e.g.: exact or phrase match), and of course, the user profile. So, you might want to use a private browser window to find non-personalized results. Check these online Allintitle checker services to automate this process.
2. Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) – Keyword Golden Ratio is a special SEO competition calculation methodology that counts allintitle, search volume, etc. Fortunately, there are several KGR keyword research tools to calculate KGR online.

WriterZen is one of those services that provide tools to get KGR and Allintitle values. Check out the WriterZen review to find more details. Watch the short video below.

Also, you can find keywords with low competition using Ahrefs, SurferSEO, Ubersuggest, BrandOverflow, or Semrush. But, I prefer to use Semrush out of those because:

• Semrush contains a more vast amount of data than most of its competitors.
• Numbers of creative ways to generate high volume lower competitive keywords
• Semrush Pricing is cheaper and values for money when compared with other SEO keyword research tools

I recommend you check out these articles to research keywords for your next blog post:

1. How to Use Semrush Keyword Research Tools
2. Semrush Keyword Magic – Find relevant keywords
3. Using the Keyword Gap Tool of Semrush to find underused keywords
4. Best Keyword Research Tools Every Blogger Must Know of
5. How to Find Your Competitors’ Keywords + (Organic Traffic Stats)
6. How to find long-tail keywords

After you find keywords and make a new post to publish on Tumblr, let’s do some magic.

1. Add your blog post’s most important keyword within the first 100 words.
2. Write more in-depth blog posts. So you can combine more long-tail keywords safely. I recommend writing at least 1,500 words in lengthier articles. Because usually, longer articles rank particularly at the top of SERPs.
3. Also, add your main keyword at the bottom of the post.
4. Use relevant visual content. Add images, graphics, and videos related to your keyword phrases.
5. In important places, bold your keywords. And also, italicize long-tail keywords to stand out from other text. Underline keywords when needed. Don’t overuse bold, italic, and underlined tags. That’ll mess up the blog post design and make it not easy to read.
6. When you want to add more keywords to your blog posts, stem your keyword phrases. Keyword stemming is referred to as keyword variations. It is the use of different keywords to understand what your content is about. Ex: If your target keyword is “Convertful review,” you can include more variant keywords such as Convertful pros and cons, Convertful features, Pricing, alternatives, etc.
7. Use question-oriented keywords in your posts. Use Semrush to find question-based keywords.

Keyword research is an important factor in search engine optimization. You can use relevant keywords to improve SEO for Tumblr posts.

Tagging Tumblr Posts

In simple words, if you don’t tag your posts, you might lose hundreds of traffic. Unlike Blogger and WordPress, in Tumblr, you can drive traffic from Tumblr to your Tumblr blog via Tumblr inbuilt search.

The best way to optimize Tumblr for Tumblr search is by adding more relevant search queries as tags. Look at this example.

If you simply search the Google search box, you can see how much weight Google puts on Tumblr tags. Once you optimize your Tumblr around those tags, you can drive even more traffic.

You need to tag relevant keywords in your Tumblr posts to drive traffic to your blog from Tumblr searches.

Let’s take our previous example here: cute quotes tumblr

When searching the “cute quotes Tumblr” keyword on the Semrush keyword research tool, you can see exact keyword phrases and other relevant keywords with their search volumes.

Here is the Google search engine result page again.

What would you determine seeing these two pictures of Semrush and Google?

• If you tag your posts with these keyword phrases, you could get more search traffic from Tumblr and search engines.
• If you create static pages with the title and URL of these keywords, you can get more search traffic (organic traffic) from search engines.

What I recommend you to do is, every time you publish a new post on your Tumblr blog, whether a text post, video, photo album, or music post, find long tail keywords that you can use to rank your Tumblr in higher positions of Tumblr SERPs.

Don’t forget to use those keywords as the anchor text when interlinking. Small Tumblr SEO tricks like these can produce straight, big results.

Heading Tags

Search engines give weight to heading tags. That should be!

In general, H1 is used for post URLs, and other heading tags, such as H2, are used for specifying sections or pages.

Heading tags are a search engine ranking factor that Google uses to rank websites on SERPs. Here is the list of Heading tags listed based on their importance.

How do you use Header tags for SEO on Tumblr?

There are a few ways that you can use to ensure that your blog has properly established header tags.

#1. Examine your Tumblr theme:

If your Tumblr theme design is not well optimized for heading tags, your posts also will not have heading tags.

Go to tumblr.com >> Your blog >> Customize >> Edit HTML and use CTRL + F to find heading tags.

You can start with <h1 and find how many H1 tags are in your theme. Follow the same method for H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags. If you cannot identify and understand heading tags, you can hire a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork.

But I recommend you buy a premium theme for your Tumblr blog. It will give you premium tools and a well-coded theme and let you ask anything from the theme designer, who is invaluable if you’re not a coding geek.

#2. Make sure you use Heading tags in your blog posts:

Your Tumblr theme cannot do everything for you. You have to add heading tags within your blog post manually. The best way to add heading tags in Tumblr is to change to HTML mode and add relevant tags. Here is how you should place heading tags properly.

I suggest not having more than three <H1> heading tags in a post. If you use more H1 tags within your posts, search engines may regard you as a spammer. Here is how you can add heading tags in Tumblr for SEO.

This is how small changes to source code result in the Text post editor. Look at how Headings tags appear. Very enticing, right?

Heading tags help improve search engine rankings and decorate content in a digestible manner that people can read thoroughly or scroll down to particular sections.

Meta Tags

You may already know that search engines find content on your website using a web spider (also known as a crawler). The web spider of Google is Googlebot. Also, for Bing, it is Bing-bot. Others have the same names.

Many times, most Tumblr themes have these meta tags installed. You need to add the title and description in the customization panel.

Log in to your Tumblr account and go to the customize page of any blog you want to implement meta tags. Click on the “Edit HTML” link. Now you can see the source code of the Tumblr theme.

Find the <title> tag in your theme using the shortcut key CTRL + F. If you found any code below, replace it with the below title meta tag.

<title>
{block:PostTitle}{PostTitle} - {/block:PostTitle}
{block:IndexPage}{block:Description} - {PlaintextDescription}{/block:Description}{/block:IndexPage}
{block:PermalinkPage}{block:PostSummary} - {PlaintextPostSummary}{/block:PostSummary}{block:PermalinkPage}
{block:SearchPage} - {lang:Search results for SearchQuery}{/block:SearchPage}
{Title}
</title>

Now find where below Meta description code is located on your Tumblr theme. If you can’t see something similar to the one below, add this code directly below the title tag.

{block:Description}
<meta name="description" content="{MetaDescription}">
{/block:Description}

Adding meta tags to Tumblr will not boost search engine rankings overnight. But, they will increase the possibility of getting more clicks from SERPs. (more about that later)

Custom URL

The permalink or the URL is a search engine ranking factor. See a post ranking on Google with the generic permalink,

Custom URLs help increase SERP rank and click-through rates (CTR).

How do you customize the URLs of your posts?

It is very easy to add a custom URL to your posts. Here are my few tips to add a perfect slug for your Tumblr post/page.

• Your URL should be short.
• Make sure the slug contains your primary keyword.
• Don’t add modifiers to the slug.

Click on the little gear icon at the top right corner.

Enter your custom URL.

Also, don’t forget to research keywords when deciding on a custom URL for your static web page.

Update your blog Posts

You work day and day to find new blog post ideas and waste 75% of your time crafting a new post.

But, as time goes by, it loses its SEO value because new articles try to steal your search engine rank.

How do you eliminate those nightmares and ensure your search engine rank position is permanent?

The best and right answer for that is,

Update your outdated articles.

Yes, update blog posts.

You can renew posts by,

1. Making a Content Relaunch campaign. (add more content)
2. Writing a new post and redirecting the older page to a new article.

Content Relaunch

People love fresh content. So do search engines. Another advantage of updating older content is finding typos, broken links, and irrelevant texts that mislead readers.

When complementing a “Content Relaunch” campaign, you do not update older content but improve the article.

Make your new article better than twice the updated one. That way, you can ensure your article will get a boost in search engine rankings and improve page authority. Here are the basic steps you have to follow to update your content for SEO.

1. Examine your current blog post to find out what primary keyword brings most of the traffic to the post, backlinks, and social shares. You can use Google Search Console to find Keyword phrases that bring you the most traffic and backlinks.
2. Check the SERP rank for each keyword that makes an impression. Don’t worry if they don’t drive traffic to your blog. You’ll also find that some non-optimized keywords contribute to organic traffic.
3. Check SERP’s top 10 results using the Semrush competitor analysis tool. Or you can use the keyword research tool as well.
4. Analyze the top 10’s pages of SERP. Look for content patterns and which details are included. Use the Semrush Keyword Gap analysis tool to find missing and underused keywords against competitors.
5. Now you have your keywords and your competitor’s keywords as well. Count the keyword density of each page, including your web page, and examine allintitle and golden ratios of keywords, particularly for the primary keyword.
6. Add this information to a spreadsheet. Check for what keyword your article can rank easily. They are usually low-competition keywords with low KGR and allintitle scores. Highlight them in the spreadsheet.
7. Go to your Tumblr dashboard and start re-editing the post.
8. Remove older content, add relevant text, images, and videos, and interlink other pages. You would use keywords that you highlighted on the spreadsheet.
9. After renewing your older post, change the published date.

Ranking for any keyword is not smart as not all keywords with equal drive value to your business. WriterZen is a tool that provides the potential values of keywords. See the screenshot below.

Why should you change the published date of a post?

There are a few reasons:

• People don’t like clicking on older post pages on SERP usually. Therefore, posts’ Click-through rate (CTR) rate will decrease dramatically as time goes by. To continue improving CTR, you should change the post-publish date. Or remove the publish date from the Tumblr theme so as not to display it on search engine result pages.
• The SEO fresh factor: Google gives more weight to recently updated articles.

Here is how you can change the post-publish date for SEO benefits.

Website Loading Speed

Google uses website loading speed as a ranking factor. (Source)

Here are a few tools to check your Tumblr loading speed and recommendations.

1. Page Speed Insights – Google
2. Website Speed Test – Pingdom
3. Website Speed and Performance Optimization – Gtmetrix
4. Website Performance and Optimization Test – Web Page Test

Core Web Vitals are also SE ranking factors used by search engines to determine the page experience of your site.

Use a Crawlable Comment Form

This is one of the best Tumblr SEO tips you might learn. The more content on each page, the more chances to rank your landing pages for targeted Long tail keywords.

Have you seen that Amazon product pages rank for many lucrative long-tail keywords in Google? It is because of user-generated content.

You can find some Amazon products that have got hundreds of reviews. They are user-generated content. Nowadays, many Tumblr blogs use the Disqus comment system. It’s a good sign, as search engines can crawl text within comments.

Another way to drive traffic from social media and search engines is adding a Facebook comment box to your Tumblr. You can easily moderate comments and hopefully get more traffic from Facebook too.

Many popular blogs rank for most untapped keywords (probably for some keywords not optimized in the post) because they got hundreds of comprehensive blog comments. Those keywords ultimately help in driving tons of traffic from search engines effortlessly.

Optimize Images for Search Engines

Tumblr is a perfect social networking site. No doubt that. You can post any images there, and surprisingly they get more engagement.

So, why wouldn’t you optimize images on the Tumblr site for search engines? If perfectly implemented, image search alone can drive a tremendous amount of traffic every day.

Here are a few tips to optimize Tumblr for image SEO.

• Add relevant keywords in the image file name: Ensure the image is properly described in the file name. Don’t name photos with weird names like image01.jpg, image02.jpg, or image03.jpg. Instead, name your image by adding obvious keyword phrases. Ex: dog-in-car.jpg, SEO-for-medium.jpg.
• Compress images before uploading to Tumblr: Not every internet user has the same internet speed as you. So, to load images quicker in every location, compress images to reduce the image size. I recommend ShortPixel.com for that. It reduces image size maintaining the photo quality.
• Search Engines can read the text in pictures: Yes, that’s true. Most search engines nowadays are very intuitive, so they can read and understand the text in images. So, by sharing images with text, your Tumblr pages can rank for certain keyword phrases. For example, check out these Network Marketing Quotes and Email Marketing Quotes posts. Both posts have well over 100 picture quotes. Therefore, those posts are getting traffic from image searches.
• Share high-quality pictures: By sharing high-res images, your Tumblr will rank for most image keyword phrases on many occasions. I recommend using a good graphic editor such as Vista Create, Canva, or Offeo to make high-quality graphics. Use services such as Canva or Stencil app to design quick quotes, graphics, and featured images for Tumblr.
• Use unique images: Don’t copy others’ works. Instead, use your images so your Tumblr will rank for most keywords.
• Use image keywords: Yes, some unique keywords limit image search. Ex: brand names, logos, pictures, quotes. Use these keyword phrases with pictures in your content marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your Tumblr from Image searches.

Image SEO is not hard to incorporate into your current SEO strategies. By combining both techniques, you can improve organic traffic at one time.

The organic traffic statistics chart demonstrates how much traffic Pitiya received from Google Image Search during the last 12 months.

Promote Your Tumblr

You might be now thinking about what benefits you will receive by promoting your Tumblr blog from an SEOs perspective.

Here are a few reasons why promoting Tumblr can affect Tumblr SEO.

More chances to see your blog by most people. So, they will probably link back to your posts, add a comment, and share articles with friends. These are direct and indirect SEO signals.
Repeat visitors are just a few steps away from becoming your blog’s loyal readers. Think of it this way. If someone comes to your Tumblr repeatedly, they might consume your content and increase other SEO factors. For example, in Pitiya, returning visitors make a difference in the engagement ratio. That’s not too much. But it still adds up.
Increase co-citations. As the SEO space has evolved in the past few years, search engines found other ways to gauge web pages to rank pages on SERPs. One way is co-citations. When someone mentions your website on the web, not just by linking out, but by citing your website (name, website URL without linking out) boosts search engine rankings.

How do you promote your Tumblr?

There are numerous ways to promote the Tumblr blog to get more referral traffic and increase organic traffic over a long time.

That’s why I have compiled a complete guide to promote Tumblr for more traffic, attention, and conversions. I recommend you to check it out and follow the 18 tips to promote your Tumblr.

Improve CTR

Click-through rate or CTR can drastically improve your search engine rankings. The higher your search CTR more people demand your content.

In the meantime, search engines also think that if your articles get higher CTR than other top-ranking pages, then Google will rank your page higher on SERPs. (it is more relevant to a particular keyword or keyword phrase)

This SEO technique improved my search engine rankings and indirectly improved rankings for specific extra search queries. Yes, when a particular keyword phrase starts to rank higher on SERPs, other keyword phrases will get a boost. How awesome is that?

But here are a few essential tips to improve your search CTR.

1. Add Numbers in the title: Research and case studies have shown that headlines with numbers get higher organic click-through rates. (Pitiya headline A/B test chart)

2. Add modifiers: Using words such as “best, top-notch, interesting, popular” not only results in high CTR but also ranks for more long-tail keyword phrases.
3. Use Meta description to intrigue search visitors to click on: You can display a custom text on the description under your page title in SERPs. Make use of 160-character limits in a better way to get more clicks and brand recognition.
4. Understand the psychology of search visitors: There is a significant difference between people who seek “premium Tumblr themes” and “free Tumblr themes” Some visitors are willing to buy themes. In contrast, others expect to get themes for free. Tweak your post title accordingly to get quality clicks from search engines.
5. Add a short title: People have a short time, so your title should be shorter to get readers’ attention effectively.

Improving organic CTR is a surefire way to increase organic traffic effortlessly. Since Tumblr is not user-friendly regarding SEO, you have to use an alternative method to split-test title performance. You can create a spreadsheet and track results to find the best SEO title and meta description, converting highly.

Build Backlinks

Link building is still the #1 Google ranking factor. That’s one reason the SEO landscape has become more competitive: small businesses can’t grow as quickly as large websites.

Inbound links increase Domain Authority. Domain Authority is a search engine ranking factor built by Moz, and it is based on backlinks. A properly set link-building strategy can improve your organic traffic; irrelevant backlinks can ruin your business overnight.

Yes, Now the Google Penguin update is a core part of the main Google algorithm. This means unnatural and irrelevant inbound links can drastically drop your SERP rankings.

You can find tons of articles and guides related to link building. Here are a few great articles that contain actionable link-building techniques.

• What Is Link Building & Why Is It Important? — Moz
• Link Building for SEO [The Definitive Guide] — Backlinko

Improve User Experience

User experience is now a Google ranking factor. Design and usability play a big role in SEO.

Although backlinks are always a BIG ranking factor in the Google algorithm, the new ranking factor, User experience, or UX, undoubtedly plays a significant role.

Here’s why?

• Google wants to make the internet a safer and more accessible place for everyone.
• If you show up annoying ads (e.g.: popups, lightboxes), people won’t easily consume your content.
• Thereby, most people will click on the back button, go to the Google search result page again, and click on another link.
• This will signal to Google that your content is inappropriate for a particular keyword phrase and/or your site isn’t usable.
• More inaccessible pages mean that people tend to use other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, losing Google’s revenue.
• To provide highly valued content for people, Google wants every site to comply with webmaster guidelines which mainly advocate that every webmaster should provide high-quality content that is accessible easily and consumable.

That’s why Google added new factors to their algorithm to rank web pages on SERPs. User experience plays a BIG part in it.

How do you make sure your Tumblr Blog provides a good user experience?

You can determine whether your Tumblr provides a perfect user experience in a few ways. Here are a few of them:

• First, make sure your blog is mobile-friendly: Mobile-friendliness is a Google ranking factor. Make sure you optimize your Tumblr blog, so mobile visitors can access your site without issues. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to see how you can improve your Tumblr.
• Keep an eye on important website KPIs: What are your site’s average bounce rate, page views per session, and time spent per session? Make sure you track them with a website traffic tracker such as Google Analytics.

Here are a few tips to optimize Tumblr for users for optimal results:

• Use a responsive Tumblr theme.
• Don’t use annoying advertisements (e.g.: popups)
• Don’t display pop-out boxes or lightboxes for mobile visitors excessively.
• Write short sentences. Break down each paragraph to improve readability.
• Do not use fancy fonts.
• Use an optimal font size. (Not every person can read articles in 11px size. Test font sizes to find the optimal best one)
• Use white spaces correctly.
• Use a good menu and page navigation system.

Improve the Dwell Time

There is a HUGE difference between “short clicks vs. long clicks.” Let me describe it a bit further.

If someone lands on your site and sees nothing helpful information on your page, they might probably click on the back button or exit from your page.

Dwell time is the total time that a person spends on your site. Google takes dwell time very seriously with many other ranking factors such as bounce rate and average time spent on the page.

Here are a few tips to improve the dwell time of your Tumblr blog to increase organic rankings.

• Reduce website bounce rate: If 100 visitors landed on your site and 98 people exited without viewing another page, that’s not good from many points of view. There are exceptions, such as when you want someone to leave your site and visit an external website. But you should maintain an optimal bounce rate. The lower is healthy.
• Use lots of visual content: Visual content such as pictures, screenshots, infographics, SlideShare presentations, and videos can drastically increase critical metrics that matter to you, and search engines use them as a basic foundation.
• Add relevant links to other articles: Always try to get people to click on an internal link and read another page. It could be a photo post, a quote page, or a video page on your Tumblr.
• Use a related posts widget: Display associated posts at the bottom of your Tumblr posts.

Now you know a few ways to improve your site’s dwell time. But do you know the best way to enhance engagements?

It is direct visitors. If someone entered your Tumblr by typing the URL into their browser, there are more chances that they’re more convinced about your writing skills and blog, right?

In fact, I, too, saw rapid growth in Pitiya’s organic traffic after increasing the number of direct visitors. Here are a few ways to get more direct visits to Tumblr.

1. Start building an email list
2. Create social media profiles
3. Use Tumblr post queue and schedule feature
4. Increase Tumblr Followers

Now I will briefly discuss how those particular methods can increase direct visitors and implement them in your Tumblr marketing plan.

#1: Start building an email list

The most powerful way to drive engaged visitors to your blog (latest posts, updated posts, etc.) is by building your email list.

There are lots of reasons why you must start building your list today. I am not going to discuss them here. You can find a few benefits you’d receive by building your email list in this article.

Why build your list?

Building a list means capturing loyal readers/potential customers’ contact information, such as name and email. So, whenever you update your Tumblr blog, you can simply let people on your list know by sending out an email message.

You might have many followers on Tumblr, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, or even Facebook. But most of them don’t see your message. It is a fact. Organic reach has dropped to nearly zero for many content creators, especially on Facebook.

But, in email marketing, everyone on your list can see your message clearly and in time. No worries!

So, how do you start building your list today?

It is very easy to start building your list.

• Sign up for an email marketing service
• Capture visitors on Tumblr

Among many email marketing services, I recommend Aweber as it’s affiliate-friendly and has a free plan.

An email marketing service allows you to send broadcasts and manage your list, schedule messages, set up RSS to email campaigns, and automate email sending.

Capturing visitors is essential as it allows you to build a targeted email list. Use email capture tools such as Convertful, ConvertBox, OptiMonk, and OptinMonster.

Convertful

Convertful lets you easily create gamification widgets and target visitors based on numerous options. Find out more in this Convertful review.

ConvertBox

ConvertBox is another robust on-site conversion rate optimization tool with a drag-and-drop builder. Check this article to find its pros & cons and comparisons against competitors.

Comparing prices, ConvertBox is currently on a lifetime deal where you can purchase the tool for a one-off fee. No subscription fees. Click here to find out more.

Now you can hold a weekly or monthly newsletter and share links to top posts on Tumblr via email.

#2: Create social media profiles

Social media marketing is a great way to drive referral traffic to the Tumblr blog without hassle. The good thing is, if done rightly, it can increase dwell time and boost search engine rankings.

In fact, social media marketing can indirectly improve search engine rankings. More social shares mean more people recognize your brand. And so they might search for your brand on Google and other search engines.

In that way, you increase brand recognition; some people could link to your Tumblr site. Currently, I use ContentStudio for all of my social media marketing activities. Read my ConentStudio review and tutorial to learn how to use it to improve your Tumblr SEO and traffic.

Also, I recommend you use these social media marketing tools to amplify your audience reach and increase social media marketing ROI.

And if you’re a Twitter lover and want to be a Twitter power user, I suggest you use these best Twitter tools to bump up your Twitter marketing plans this year.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to create your social media accounts on these social media channels.

• Facebook — Create a Page
• Twitter — Sign Up
• Pinterest — Business Account
• LinkedIn — Add a Company Page

#3: Use Tumblr post queue

You can use Queue 2.0 on Tumblr to schedule posts to be published for a certain period of the day.

This process will maintain the posting consistency of your Tumblr and will receive lots of positive results, such as loyal readers, increased followers, and organic traffic.

#4: Increase Tumblr Followers

Unlike other blogging platforms, Tumblr allows you to connect with other Tumblr bloggers to share each post easily.

It is a very effective way to increase direct readers and engagement. Those activities help in an indirect way to improve Tumblr SEO without any investments.

In fact, you can increase Tumblr followers very easily. No cost at all. I have made a simple infographic to show you how acquiring new followers on Tumblr is.

One of the best ways to grow email subscribers, social media fans, followers on Tumblr, and direct visitors is by running a social media contest.

Among many social media sweepstake apps, UpViral, SweepWidget, and Gleam are the best to run a contest on Tumblr. All allow running contests on your site with their embeddable widgets.

We are using UpViral primarily because of its ease of use, feature-richness, and value for money compared with sites like UpViral.

Check this article to find out UpViral’s features, pros & cons, etc, UpViral prices start at the $1 trial, and you can get an annual discount from here.

Use Webmaster Tools

Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Baidu provide various tools for web admins and bloggers to optimize their websites for search engines.

Webmaster tools are the number one tool that many website owners use to get more search traffic to their sites.

Even if you are a Tumblr blogger, you can still use webmaster tools to get more views on Tumblr.

You can also add your website to Google and other search engines without registration. However, you should submit a blog to webmaster tools to receive more benefits and drive more search traffic to your Tumblr.

In fact, I have shared an entire article series on how to add your blog to each webmaster tool. I recommend you check them out and follow the steps accordingly to improve Tumblr SEO.

1. Google Search Console – Submit your Tumblr to the Google search engine.
2. Bing Webmaster Tools – Submit your Tumblr to Bing and Yahoo search engines. (Yahoo prolonged the search deal for more than ten years)
3. Baidu Webmaster Tools – Submit your Tumblr to Baidu Chinese search engine
4. Yandex Webmaster Tools – Submit your Tumblr to the Yandex search engine

Many webmaster tools provide similar tools to optimize websites for search engines. For example, you could analyze which keywords your Tumblr ranks on SERPs so you can make necessary changes to improve Tumblr SEO.

Not only that, find websites that link to your blog. And one of my favorite tools of webmaster tools is the “fetch-as ___” tool. This allows any webmaster to submit not-yet-indexed web pages to search engines.

Using the Inspect URL tool alone, I got Google indexed one of Pitiya’s posts in under TWO minutes…

Here’s the proof:

You can find other ways to get Google indexed your blog pages quicker by following the techniques in this tutorial.

Track Your Results

You can expect an increase in traffic by following basic Tumblr search engine optimization tips, such as adding keywords, writing high-quality articles, and promoting posts. You should track results and SEO campaigns if you want to stand out from your Tumblr SEO strategy from others and get better results.

Luckily for you, there are tons of SEO analyzing tools out there.

But, the most popular and recommended analysis tool is Google Analytics. Most website owners use Google Analytics to track how websites serve readers and make conversions.

Use Google Analytics reports to find top-performing (and worst-performing) pages, geographic, demographics of users, and behaviors, including average session duration, bounce rate, etc.,

You might want to use a solution such as Keyword Hero to unlock not provided and not set keywords in Google Analytics.

If you want an alternative to Google Analytics, I recommend checking out this post which lists a few real-time website traffic monitoring tools. Using any website tracking software will take your Tumblr SEO to a new level you never experienced.

Analyze Competitors’ Tumblr SEO Strategies

You’ll receive a few benefits from analyzing competitors’ SEO techniques.

• If you’re new to blogging, you can find which SEO approaches your competitors use, such as specific post types (list posts, How-to guides, or any other content type) and keywords.
• If you want to broaden your niche, you can quickly tap into new niches without thinking twice.
• Find high-performing keywords for your competitors
• Backlink resources your competitors use to build backlinks
• SERP ranking fluctuations
• Find out your main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses
• Track keyword position changes of your and your competitors
• And much more…

How do you make a competitor SEO analysis?

There are two ways actually to do an SEO competitor analysis completely. They are;

1. Manual way: Track keyword(s) positions for you and your competitors. For this case, you’ll have to use a VPN program such as HMA VPN or private IP.
2. Automatic way: Use a competitor analysis tool to determine competitors’ SEO strategies.

You might realize that the manual way is not easy and is not recommended in most cases. I, too, used to use that method at the beginning. Searching on Google for each keyword, I wanted to find competitors’ search engine rankings.

Fortunately, the SEO industry has evolved a lot in the past few decades. There is an easy method for most manual tasks.

My favorite tool for SERP rank tracking is Semrush. Additionally, you can use services such as Ahref. But, Semrush is completed when it comes to SEO. Learn more.

I will briefly show how to find competitors’ organic keywords using Semrush.

Step #1: Go to the Semrush website and create your account. Semrush offers a free plan that allows you to track up to 10 keywords under one project. If you want more quota and break the limits in a free subscription, I suggest you upgrade to one of their premium plans, such as “Semrush Pro.”

Step #2: Enter your competitor’s website or web page URL. Here I entered a page URL of my competitor’s web page address.

My purpose here is to find organic keywords for which a particular web page ranks on Google.com (US). After entering the website/web page address, click on the search button.

Step #3: Now, you can see keywords that contribute to a significant percentage of a particular website/web page’s traffic. I will export those keywords into a CSV file and then incorporate those keywords into my blog post.

Check out this complete guide to Semrush Keyword Gap to find out how to deeply analyze competitors’ keyword profiles.

Social Media Marketing, Content Syndication, and Curation

Even though Tumblr is a social networking site, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tap into other social media sites.

Social media networks such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn can drive referral traffic and increase brand recognition, increasing organic traffic.

The best way to utilize social media marketing for Tumblr is content syndication and content curation. There are tons of content syndication websites out there. To name a few: SlideShare.net, Paper.li, and Flipboard.com.

How do you curate content across all other social media channels?

It would become tiresome work when you have lots of social media accounts. Luckily for you, there is always an alternative method for any method.

You can use IFTTT to curate content.

IFTTT (If this, then that) works on defined statements. They are known as recipes in IFTTT.

Currently, more than 350 recipes exist for every type of work. If you can’t find the one for your needs, you can build it yourself or hire someone on Fiverr to do the job for you at a low cost.

For example, this IFTTT recipe will share your latest Tumblr posts on your Facebook page.

Two recipes below will share your YouTube videos to the Tumblr blog automatically.

And share pictures on Pinterest.

In some cases, you have to manually syndicate content on other publishing sites such as SlideShare and Reddit. These tactics will increase brand recognition, and in some cases, your Tumblr will get a few quality backlinks too, which, in return, will improve Tumblr SEO.

Advanced SEO Audit

When you blog for a while, there are more chances to get stuff messed up, such as lots of 404 errors, linking out to redirect pages, and images with no alt attribute.

You can conduct a simple SEO audit just using a few SEO tools, such as Webmaster tools. However, you must use an SEO audit tool to scan your Tumblr blog further and find unknown errors.

One of my favorite tools to run a website audit is Semrush Site Audit.

Semrush bot scans your website (or specific pages) and finds internal and external errors.

Here’s the SEO audit report for Pitiya.

I could easily find broken links.

Learn more in this Semrush site audit review. Alternatively, you can use a dedicated site audit software like SEO Powersuite WebSite Auditor.

You should improve the overall score to make your Tumblr SEO-friendly (and user-friendly).

If you’re serious about Tumblr search engine optimization performance, I recommend you do an SEO audit at least once monthly. This way, you can ensure your Tumblr is optimized for search engines.

Conclusion on Tumblr SEO

Although Tumblr is not SEO-friendly, you can optimize your Tumblr blog for search engines using the above search engine optimization techniques. You might not be able to follow all of the above SEO tips.

However, you can use keywords, improve user experience, create valuable and digestible content, and build backlinks.

If I were you and wanted an excellent starting point, I would align with content marketing first. I would produce content that is helpful, actionable, and share-worthy.

Tumblr is a perfect blogging platform for niche blogging. By optimizing your blog for search engines, your website will not only receive traffic from search engines but also from Tumblr too.

Remember that Tumblr is a social hub. Your posts could go viral on Tumblr and get more notes, reblogs, and quality backlinks.

If you can become a better content marketer, you can dominate Tumblr marketing. Remember that “content marketing” does not limit content production. Many more things are involved in understanding the prospect’s intents, content quality, visual properties, content promotion, content revisions over time, and different content types.

Practice the Tumblr SEO tips above, and let me know how these SEO strategies worked out. So what’s your best takeaway from the above SEO tips? Share your opinions in the comment form below.

If you enjoyed reading this tutorial, please take a few seconds to share it with your friends on social networks. I appreciate your help! 🙂

Tumblr SEO FAQs