While thinking about optimising your blog for SEO can certainly be a move in the right direction when it comes to an effective marketing strategy, we understand that the process itself might appear slightly intimidating, especially when you have never done it before.
That is why we have created a mini-guide, directing you step by step on what is important for successful SEO optimisation and the measures you should take to ensure that your next blog post will be inviting, visually appealing, informative and most importantly, SEO-friendly. We’ve previously explained why you should optimise you blog posts for SEO, so we’re now explaining how to do it!
What Is An SEO-Friendly Blog Post?
In the simplest terms, optimising blog posts for SEO is a practice to help you rank higher in search engine results and increase the visibility of your content, so it can reach your target audience and help you achieve your goals organically.
It is important to remember that, first and foremost, the algorithm of search engines aims to provide the highest level of user experience. It works in your favour. Your only job is to keep up with recent updates and adjust all necessary measures to create the best conditions for your current and potential audience.
Don’t be intimidated by the algorithm. Oftentimes, it simply encourages you to engage with your users on a deeper level and helps you understand their needs. Properly implemented SEO for your blog post is, therefore, an incredibly beneficial marketing practice, because it can meet these expectations and implement effective solutions to their problems. And this is what you wanted to achieve with your blog post in the first place, right?
How To Optimise Your Blog Post For SEO?
Below, we listed a few useful tips on how to write an SEO friendly blog post to help you understand what makes it stand out from the rest:
1. Optimising Your Blog Post for SEO Involves Performing Thorough Keyword Research and Analysis
SEO-friendly blog posts are optimised by performing keyword research and analysis, to answer potential queries of the users and target your chosen topic from the best angle. During this process, you can learn what problems or doubts your audience may encounter and therefore, be able to construct an effective strategy and provide proper solutions. A fantastic practice is to make great use of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and long-tail keywords which give you a blueprint for your potential paragraphs and help you construct satisfying answers for your audience.
While preparing your list of relevant keywords, you need to pay attention to their search volume and competitiveness in order to assess if your content has a realistic chance to rank higher for the chosen phrases. The most desirable keywords are those that have a relatively high search volume and low level of competition. On top of that, make sure that your phrase is not too generic and that it directly reflects the specific content of your text. Another useful practice is to perform a competitor analysis to gain an objective insight into what strategies work best for your website and what changes need to be implemented for better results. These comparisons can help you understand, for instance, what the main difference is between their content and yours, or why your competitor ranks higher for your desired keyword.
There are various tools you can use for keyword research such as SEMrush, SE Ranking or Google Ads Keyword Planner. All of them will provide you with reliable and detailed data.
2. SEO-Friendly Blog Posts Have a Positive Impact on E-A-T
Writing content for your blog using SEO can have a positive impact on building E-A-T which stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of your website. In other words, your content is covered in-depth, indicates an exceptional level of understanding of that particular topic, stands out from other competitors, and provides sufficient information to prove the legitimacy of your website. The more you write high-quality and informative content, the more E-A-T your website will gain. For instance, if your content is shareable or quoted on other platforms, it indicates that users find your site valuable and reliable. Having information about the author is another factor that should be visible in your blog post so that you ensure your audience know that your content is written by a person who has knowledge, experience and expertise in the relevant topic. If you want to strengthen the E-A-T of your website and attract more visitors, you may also consider adding a separate section for comments and reviews.
Although search engines prefer metrics that are easily measurable, websites that reflect a high level of E-A-T tend to be favoured by the algorithm because having these characteristics indicate that your site meets all needs and expectations of your current and potential users. For that reason, while optimising your blog post for SEO, it would be very beneficial for you to keep this point in mind.
3. Don’t Forget to Optimise Meta Description to Increase Your SERP Ranking
Meta description is a short summary of your website, or, in this case, the content of your blog post. When you scan the search engine results page, the title and the brief paragraph below is your meta description. Ideally, your title should not exceed 60 characters (or 580 pixels), while your description should range between 120 and 150 characters (no more than 990 pixels). It is equally important to incorporate relevant keywords and your brand name, when necessary. If you want to make sure that your text is clear and fully visible, you can insert your potential meta description to a tool such as Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool.
Blog post optimisation for SEO is content that has been created to not only meet the needs of its readership, but also search engines. A good meta description can increase click-through-rate and search engines tend to reward platforms that perform well in SERP. That is why optimising your meta description for SEO is a crucial next step in your effective marketing strategy.
4. SEO Headlines Will Make Your Blog Stand Out
The previously mentioned frequently asked questions and long-tail keywords bring you a fantastic opportunity to develop eye-catching headlines for your blog posts in order to direct your message specifically to your target audience. SEO-friendly headlines, similarly to any other segment of your content, should contain the most relevant keyword. For instance, an interesting alternative for a gripping headline is to use your key phrase in combination with numbers and words like tips, hacks or facts. When you open your HTML code, it is important that your headline should also be coded as a Header 1 (H1) tag.
While optimising your blog post, don’t forget that you write for other human beings, so make sure your own voice sounds like a human one too. Oftentimes, it is easy to get caught up in creating content perfect for SEO that we tend to forget to add a genuinely authentic, emotional, and interesting undertone to the text.
5. Remember About Internal Linking
By playfully interacting with your older posts and incorporating internal links to the content, an SEO-friendly blog post exposes your target audience to all important sites on your website. Well-developed internal link building is also a great opportunity to organise your content around specific topics and connect them with each other through relevant topic clusters and pillar pages. It is very likely that your potential reader will be interested in other topic-related articles, so make sure you provide easy access to them.
Most importantly, internal linking is necessary for easy indexation and crawling of your website. By uploading a new blog post and linking it to your older, topic-related articles, you enable search engine bots to discover your new content faster, easier and more efficiently. For that reason, it is extremely important to choose not just any links, but the ones that are relevant to the topic of your blog post.
6. Visual Content Will Enrich Your Text and Attract Visitors
Plain text not supported by any additional content such as an informative video, infographic or SEO-friendly image might be slightly overwhelming for your users, especially when you are dedicated to covering your topic in-depth. That is why adding a relevant visual segment can be a crucial factor that will transform your blog post into a high-quality piece of content.
Lastly, for proper SEO optimisation, do not forget to add alt text to your image. Alternative text is a written description of your visual content. It does not only facilitates crawling and website accessibility for search engines but also allows your visually impaired readership to understand your blog post.
7. Proper Formatting Will Make Your Blog Post Clear, Compelling and SEO-Friendly
Blog posts that are optimised using SEO are neatly formatted, with separate paragraphs and proper subheadings. They are conscious of how the title should be constructed and what is the intention of the text. The length of the blog post also matters. Usually, search engines tend to favour a piece of content that is longer and covers information in greater detail.
Don’t be afraid to use transition words, bullet points and lists, or highlight your most important content in a bold font. The most crucial factor here is to make your text visually appealing, perceptive, and easy to read.
8. Search Engines Will Favour Your Simplified URL
A URL is a tool that conveys valuable information about the content of your site and directly sends your audience to its source, so it is important to ensure that it represents it in the best way possible.
One of the strategies to make your URL more SEO-friendly is to pay attention if it contains a relevant keyword and hyphens as opposed to a sequence of characters, numbers, and capital letters.
9. Beware of Duplication
Unique content is an extremely important factor in terms of optimising your blog post for SEO. Your text should be written entirely by the author as copying content from other sources can negatively impact your overall performance and ranking in SERP. By other sources, we mean not only text from external websites, but also your own content already published on another site within your website.
10. Remember About the Technicals
Another important factor is to make sure that your preferred URL is canonicalised, that is to say, in the presence of duplicate content and multiple URLs, there is one URL that is prioritised over the others. Keep an eye on broken links and redirects, and always update Google bots if something has changed. And last but not least, notify search engines that your blog is mobile-friendly by adding the sitemap to the mobile version of your URL. The technical side of SEO can make a huge difference in the successful optimisation of your blog post.
11. Be Consistent and Up-To-Date
Post consistently and regularly monitor and re-optimise your content so that your blog constantly interacts with recent trends, industry updates and algorithm changes. That way, your content will not disappear into the void and will remain a piece of relevant information in the future.
An effective strategy is to schedule your content in advance and construct a monthly content calendar that will help you upload your blog posts regularly and make it easier for you to track the overall performance of your website. Another important point is to choose topics that are relevant to the current period and interests of your audience. For instance, if your niche is fashion, writing about winter looks in the summer season will not attract any desirable traffic to your blog post. Staying up-to-date in your industry is a necessary step towards the success of your marketing strategy.
Bonus Tip
If you want to get to know your audience and what are their current interests, a good strategy is to use a tool such as Google Trends.
After choosing the topic of your potential blog post, Google Trends enables you to see the performance of that topic over the span of months in any particular part of the world.
Google Trends can also help you learn about related topics and queries relating to your target audience, ensuring that you will construct your article in alignment with their expectations.
Conclusion
Optimising your blog posts for SEO is an effective way to stand out from other competitors. Thanks to a few strategic tips and tricks such as optimised meta descriptions and well-implemented URLs, you can transform the content on your site into high-quality and attractive pieces of writing. Keeping the above-mentioned points in mind, you give your targeted audience a chance to find a website that meets their needs and expectations. What is also important, it greatly impacts your online presence and helps you achieve your own objectives in the long run.
If you think you need professional assistance in the optimisation of your content, do not hesitate to contact us at GA Agency. Our wonderful team of experts will ensure maximum customer satisfaction and great results.
