It takes practice to produce optimised blog posts that are friendly for search engines and users. It’s a skill that you can improve with time.
Some people find SEO daunting, but it’s not as difficult as they believe. You can make sure your site is search engine friendly by following a few simple steps
Sometimes engaging with the code of your site might seem like a daunting task. But trust me, you can do it if you want to. In fact, it’s not as hard as you think since most major things are easy to change – title? Change it! Formatting? Spruced it up real quick!
This post outlines my 10 step process for optimizing blog posts for SEO.
To set your mind at ease, let’s talk about two key things that many people often have questions about and misunderstand.
First of all, an SEO-friendly blog post is also user-friendly.
Many believe that blog posts made for search engines are less user-friendly than other types of blogs. This is false
SEO is about publishing content that both search engines and readers can understand.
You have less chance of getting high rankings if you don’t meet these conditions. Your readers will be more inclined to ignore your posts.
If you want more visitors to your blog, meet these criteria: your posts will rank higher on Google, and users will spend more time reading them. They’ll also add comments & share the content on social media. This increases traffic and conversions.
Secondly, not all posts created through SEO are quality, great content.
SEO is more effective if the blog posts have high-quality content. A poorly optimized blog post can rank lower in search results, while one with good content will be more likely to rank higher in Google searches.
A blog post should rank well on Google’s first page because it has good content and SEO (including offpage SEO).
Optimized blog posts are so important when it comes to SEO. This tutorial will tell you how you make your blog posts search-friendly before publishing them
Here are 10 tips for blog posts that are SEO friendly:
- Before you begin writing, think about what you are doing.
- The structure of your blog post should be created
- Create the URL and title
- Headings should be used correctly
- Keep your paragraphs brief
- If it makes sense, add links
- Use keywords, but not keyword stuffing.
- Optimize the length and content of your blog posts
- Optimize your meta description
- Optimize images and other media elements
01. Before you begin writing, think about what you are doing.
It’s time you save by spending time, in the beginning, planning what you want to write about in your blog posts.
Here are some of the things I do to make sure I can consistently publish on a regular basis. First, I save interesting topics that could make a good blog post. Then, I compile them into my publishing schedule at the beginning of each month and review any saved posts.
You need to decide on a schedule for the topics you want to cover first. Once you have a set of topics and dates, create a Google Calendar where you can input those information. When it’s time to write, take one of the topics and do some in-depth research into it so that you can answer these questions:
- What are the most important topics you want to discuss in your blog post?
- What’s the purpose of this post? Get higher rankings for a keyword, get more subscribers, promote my SEO courses, etc.
- What will my readers gain from the new post?
It is best to answer these questions ahead of time and move on to the next step.
02. The structure of your blog post should be drafted.
Next you need to create the structure for your blog post. Framing refers to the different sections within your article, which allow you to more easily break up and focus on individual sections at a time. It helps writing get done faster because it divides the word count into manageable chunks.
You can work on posts more quickly with a writer. Not only do they have subject expertise in this type of content, but you also have the opportunity to delegate articles that don’t require too much effort.
This is an example of how I structured the blog post you are currently reading.
You can break down the main section into several parts. Take a look at the structure of the post and scroll down to see the final result.
You can see how I divided the central part of this article (10 Tips to Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts) into separate parts
03. Create the URL and title
SEO Guidelines for Blog Post Titles & URLs
If you feel the title should be first, and then the structure of the blog, then you can follow the best approach for your case.
A good title is essential for SEO and user-friendliness.
SEO is all about title optimization. This helps search engines to understand what a page is about so they can return the best results on their search engine
A great title should include the following:
- It can be displayed without breaking in the SERPS with a character length of 55-60 characters.
- It contains your target keyword but is not keyword-stuffed.
- It accurately describes what the blog post is about
- It’s interesting for users to click on your entry when it appears on search engine result pages.
The article’s title and intro paragraph both mention the keyword ‘SEO-friendly blog posts’. This is to make it easier for search engines and readers to find what you’re writing about.
The use of power terms in blog titles has been shown to optimize blog posts and drive more traffic to your content. The screenshots below show other examples of blog post titles that include power terms.
The URL is simple.
- To separate URL words, use “-.” You will need to modify your permalink structure if this is not the case on your blog.
- Make your URLs shorter and remove unnecessary words. Usually, your CMS will generate the URL based on your title. You can manually modify the URL (permalink) and remove certain words before publishing a blog post.
For example, this post’s default URL is /how-to-write-SEO-friendly-blog-posts but I have better optimized the post for SEO by changing the title to just ‘SEO Friendly Blog Posts’.
Although many studies support this, Google has repeatedly stated that URL format is not an important ranking factor. Important: To maintain your rankings, add 301 redirects after a published post
04. Headings should be used correctly.
Headings in a well-optimized blog article can have the following rules:
Use headings with a hierarchical structure: The title tag of the post should be the h1 tag, followed by the main sections, which should have an h2 tag, and the subsections, which should have an h3.
The order of the tags should therefore be H1->H2->H3.
It’s easy to give your blog a well-organized structure. Take a look at the screenshot below, which shows how I added headings in this post.
Organizing your content this way should make it easier for search engine spiders and users to find it.
05. Keep your paragraphs brief.
Do not just put large paragraphs on one page and hit the publish button.
Make small paragraphs (between 2 and 3 sentences) and use the different formatting options, e.g., Bold, Italic, and Underline, which will make your text more interesting.
06. If it makes sense, hyperlink it.
If you want to improve your SEO rankings, it is important to have a lot of internal links in your posts.
- Link building is defined as the process of acquiring links that point, on a reciprocal basis, to the page you would like included in the search index. By improving your anchor text and by paying attention to which backlinks are pointing at your site, you can help search engines discover new pages that they can add to their index.
- This is another way to give the search engine crawlers a hint about the content of a page. For example, if I add a link such as SEO Tutorial to a page, I tell them what it has to do with SEO tuts
- It is an excellent way for users to have the option to click on a link to learn more about a topic.
- This is one of the many techniques that you can use to lower bounce rates and keep your users on your site for more extended periods.
The anchor text for links in your post is unimportant. Google and Wikipedia do it and there is no penalty.
07. Use keywords, but don’t stuff them.
It’s important to include your target keywords in your posts so that Google can properly categorize and rank them. You can also add variations of your keywords as long as they are relevant.
You may have noted at the start of this article that keyword stuffing is not recommended.
It is important to choose the best words for your text while also making sure they are relevant and that you’ve included a few keywords.
A lot of people ask me what are the “best” places to add keywords. I always give them the same answer: everywhere!
- The title of this post
- Your main headings should be included in your post
- In the context of the post
- The ‘conclusion.
Here’s a hint
You can avoid keyword stuffing by not repeating the exact keywords repeatedly. To do this, visit Google Keyword Planner or SEM Rush and search for your primary keyword
These tools will provide you with a list of closely related keywords. It would help if you mentioned these keywords in your blog post.
08. Optimize the length and content of your blog posts
Studies have shown that people find it more appealing when they are reading a longer post, which means they tend to rank better in search results and receive more mentions on social media. However, that doesn’t mean shorter posts won’t rank well. You need to focus on the quality of the content and not the length.
Know that there will be many blogs on the same topic as yours when you write a blog post.
It’s time to take your blog posts to the next level and make sure that they are getting promoted correctly. Your main goal is to attract people’s attention and you don’t want them going to other blogs either.
Google isn’t too worried about the number of words on a page. Instead, it looks at whether or not that page has enough quality links pointing to it.
A post that is well-written, has good images/references, studies, and valuable information is more likely to be promoted than a shorter and less exciting post.
To learn the actual length of your blog posts, open up Google and enter your key words to check out the top 10 entries on the first page. Note what type of content they’re used for and how many words are densely packed into each entry. This will give you a rough estimate as to what you should be striving for with your own pieces.
Click the publish button, and then use any white-hat methods to drive visitors to your blog.
Do not expect instant results. It takes time for Google to rank your blog.
09. Optimize your meta description
Point 3 on optimizing your URL/Title will help people find your post. Optimizing your description is just as important to get the same results.
A description tag gives a short description of a blog post which usually can’t be over 240 characters in length. Google might show your description tag in search results, so it’s important that it grabs the attention of users and gets them to click on your blog and read it.
10. Optimize images and other media elements
There is a wealth of content about the best images to include in blog posts to make them more attractive and readable.
Google has made it clear the limitations of their search engine, and that they can’t crawl or understand images with context. But many admins don’t listen to guidelines on optimizing their images for SEO.
It is enough to use meaningful file names and a user-friendly /ALT TEXT.
Image SEO Alt Text Example
If you publish an image showing SEO stats for 2020 to 2021, don’t call it img001.jpg. Instead, rename the image to something more meaningful like SEO-statistics-2021.jpg.
The ALT TEXT should not be left blank. Instead, write a few words to describe the image. SEO Statistics 2020.
Including text in the ALT attribute for images can be a good way to include similar keywords.
Keep your content up-to-date
Many people ask in forums: “How often should I update my website?” & “Is freshness a ranking factor?” I can understand your concern, but don’t worry – here are some tips.
Although it’s great if you could find a way to automate this process, in reality, you’ll need to update your blog quite often. No one wants to read an out-dated post.
For a variety of reasons, you need fresh content for your blog.
- This will allow you to have more pages in the Google index. This will make your website and domain more powerful.
- This is another reason for users to return to your blog.
- It’s a great excuse to reach out to your subscribers.
- It is one way to keep up with your peers or get ahead of them.
- This will improve your writing skills
- It can generate more pages.
Conclusion
This blog post teaches us the following:
Spend some time research before you start a post.
One way to increase your SEO’s score is by following these steps in order to create SEO-friendly blog articles. If your blog posts currently lack optimization, it may be time to go back and alter them accordingly.
If you create a publishing schedule in advance that follows this one, you should find yourself very comfortable with it. It will soon become routine and habitual.
Some people are new to SEO and may not see a good return for their initial efforts. Don’t give up though! Dedicating yourself to publishing high-quality content will eventually lead to fruitful traffic.
