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70% of marketers say they are actively investing in content marketing as one of their marketing strategies. Writing an SEO optimized blog is not all about keyword stuffing and density, it is more about content relevance. Google looks for web pages with helpful information that matches a search query. Thus, your blog must be clear, unique, and informative that relates to the intent of a search query.
To write a successful SEO-friendly blog, great content alone could not help you to win the top spot of the search engine results pages (SERPs). It also requires one to understand the technical components that affect the ranking of a website that are formed in two approaches, on-page, and off-page SEO.
When both good content and SEO strategy are combined, not only will you earn a higher ranking, but also more traffic, leads, and revenue. It may take a lot of time and effort to be in the top position of the search results, but all this hard work will eventually pay off.
So, how to optimize your blog posts to make them more SEO friendly? Take a look at this article, where we will be sharing the best SEO writing tips to help you optimize your blog posts like an expert.
1. Think Before You Start Writing Your Content
You should first identify the goals of your content before you write. For example,
- What appeals to the interests of your readers?
- What is the main purpose of the blog post?
- What can the readers learn from the blog post?
Answer these questions to outline your content. Make sure the content is aligned with the search intent as well. Because Google shows search results through the intent of a search query and not the exact searched keyword. One of the easiest ways to identify the search intent is by looking through Google for the keywords you want to rank for.
Overall, a content writer should make sure their blog post is always informative, unique, clear, and prioritize the needs of the reader.
2. Write Content Prioritize to Readers and Search Engines
Earlier we mentioned the need to prioritize the desires of the readers. The main purpose is to solve questions for readers and to boost the credibility of a business.
Why? For example, when your mind pops up with a question like “Can pigs fly?”, your curiosity would most definitely lead you to find answers on the search engine. Thus, if you write a blog post answering the search query with valuable content, your website will appear in a higher position on search results.
But how can we write content that adds value to the readers? The first is to make sure your content flows naturally and is easy for readers to digest. You would not want to write emotionless content, just because you want to make it SEO friendly. It should be unique and engaging that establish a relationship with the readers.
If you are struggling to think of the needs of your readers, you can use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords to find ideas. It gives you a variety of terms and phrases that relate to a keyword. It is especially useful when you are structuring your content to make it more informative and engaging.
3. Perform Keyword Research
You should prioritize keyword research when writing a successful SEO optimized blog. It helps to determine the most relevant topics for your business and identify keywords your business is ranking for or could rank for.
Since the way search engines like Google read pages differently. Hence, you should add relevant, keyword-rich phrases to meta descriptions, headers, and images as well. It will allow both your readers and the search engines to understand what your blog post is about. Or else your piece of writing may go to waste.
It is also important not to add too many keywords to your blog post. Keyword stuffing will only cause your website to get penalized by the search engine. You should add a keyword that naturally fits into the content.
This is where SEO tools come in to help you avoid keyword stuffing and to search for your main keyword. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner which allows you to find keywords relevant to your topic and even get an analysis of what words and phrases your competitor are using to bring traffic to their sites. Be reminded that your target keywords will evolve as trends shift. Make sure to perform keyword research regularly and not overlook additional ranking opportunities.
4. Add links to words or phrases
One of the most important SEO techniques is adding internal links whenever you write new content. It is a practice of linking one page to another page under the same website. Many people do not see the benefits of it, but it can help Google discover, index, and understand your web pages more easily.
Other than that, it can also reduce the bounce rate! When you internally link content that is highly valuable and relevant to your blog post, it allows readers to spend more time on the page.
Do not hesitate to link credible and appropriate websites as an extra reference for the readers. Linking out to other web pages not only adds value to your content but also tells Google that you are providing useful content that readers can easily access. The authors may even return the favour by adding links to your site as well.
5. Focus on content quality than quantity
Writing 300 words of a blog post is not enough anymore. You would now find most of the articles written with 1,800 words or more. Because covering in-depth and comprehensive content naturally results in having a long article, thus, longer posts would lead to higher rankings.
However, it does not mean that shorter posts would not rank at the top position of search results. You should focus on content relevance instead of length. Google is now prioritizing more on high-quality content that answers to search queries. Depending on the topic, we recommend around 1000 to 2000 words when it comes to writing for SEO. It is also important to add images, videos, and references to make your article more attractive and interesting to read. To figure out the optimized length for your blog posts is Google search for your primary keywords and analyze the results through a competitor.
6. Structure your content depending on readability
Readability makes a huge impact on SEO. A blog post that is easier to read usually gets a higher ranking since it has a good user experience.
The statistic shows that 73% of users just scroll through blog posts while the others read through them. Thus, a content writer should improve readability to make it possible for readers to easily scan through a blog post to find their answers.
There are a few tips on improving your page’s readability:
- Write in shorter paragraphs – do not stack massive information in a single paragraph.
- Straight to the point – do not add unnecessary content just to make your article longer.
- Use headings and subheadings – use headings tags to enlarge your font size and highlight the main points.
- Use bullet points – allow readers to skim through important information easily.
- Use images – make it easier for readers to understand what you are trying to convey.
One of the easy ways to check on your content’s readability is by installing the Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress. It can assist you to write SEO-friendly and readable blog posts such as in copy, title, meta description, alt text, and URL.
Make sure to check your grammar, spelling punctuation by using tools like Grammarly. It can also help you to identify your content’s readability by correcting sentence structure problems and misused words.
7. Get More Links to Your Blog Posts
Since Google ranks a site by looking at the number and quality of your backlinks, you would want to get more people to share your blog posts on credible sites or social media. Not only that, but you will also reach a wider audience and make your site appear more authoritative in your industry.
So, how can you get more people to share your blog posts?
You can start by establishing social shares to drive more traffic to your blog posts. Even though social media does not directly affect the SEO ranking factor, social shares can increase brand exposure.
Post engagements such as the number of likes, shares, and comments send social signals to search engines that give an impact on your ranking.
Thus, it is important to create valuable content that benefits them. It will make people share them and in return, you will get more LINKS! You can add a scrolling social button to allow readers to easily share your blog posts.
8. Keep Your Content Updated
You would be asking a question like “Would it affect my search engine rankings if I do not update my blog regularly?”
I think it would be every content writer’s dream to not need to constantly update their blog since it would make everything much easier. But unfortunately, that is not the case.
Google loves fresh and up-to-date content. Newly updated content tends to get a higher ranking on the search engine. If you are only publishing new content on your site without updating your old content, you are more likely to lose your rankings on search engines.
Writing several new contents does not mean you would be getting higher rankings on Google. Fresh content is what matters to Google. It allows Google to crawl your site more frequently. The more it crawls your site, the more likely your blog posts will be on top of the search results.
So, update your blog and keep it going! Do not feel discouraged about the results yet if you are just starting to optimize your content with SEO. It takes time for Google to crawl and index your page. The result may look bad for the first few months, but the traffic will eventually increase.
9. Monitor Your Website Traffic
To better perform SEO, you will need a tool to monitor the results. Fortunately, there is an easy and free tool to do it, which is Google Analytics. All you need is a Google account, and it will track your website performance such as page views, conversions, bounce rates, etc.
It also gives you an insight into the average time spent on a page, the most popular content on your site, and the traffic sources of all pages. By analyzing these stats, you will get an idea of the best way to fully optimize your website with SEO. When you see one of the pages is performing well, you can just replicate the type of content to improve SEO.
Start Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO today!
Always remember to do your research before writing. It gives you a clear direction of what you are writing about and what goals you are trying to achieve. Also, make sure to write quality content to maximize the SEO friendliness of your blog post.
The results may not seem good for the first few months. But if you keep publishing high-quality content and keep your content updated, your website traffic will eventually increase. So, DON’T LOSE YOUR PATIENCE!
We hope this article gives you an idea of how you can get your blog posts SEO-optimized. If you have questions about SEO or are too busy to keep your content optimized with SEO, feel free to connect with us. Kode Digital Experts are ready to help businesses get an optimal position on search engine results with SEO.
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