Did you know that 91% of web content does not receive traffic from Google? While creative marketing tactics, such as blogging, increase brand awareness and show that you have experience in the industry, incorrectly writing a post for SEO leads to traffic loss.
Numbers don't lie. If you want to go to the top of the search results page (SERPs), well-written and interesting content may not help. You should also focus on writing SEO-based, keyword-oriented content that drives traffic.
We share six important tips for creating SEO-friendly blog posts without sacrificing user experience and engagement, tips you can start using today:
How to write blog posts for SEO
1. Identify high-performance keywords when searching for ideas for a post.
Google processes more than 40,000 searches per second. Stuns, right? If you want to reduce clutter in search results and get ahead of competitors, you need to focus on specific keywords and phrases that your potential customers are looking for. How else will they find your content and website?
To identify these hot keywords, go to social platforms that target users frequently visit and see what's popular in them. Pay particular attention to the exact phrases that they use, and follow popular terms and topics in the industry.
Google Trends can also give you an idea of which keywords are popular at any given time. If you see that the number of search queries for a specific keyword decreases steadily over time, you know that this is probably not the keyword that you should be targeting for your marketing, and vice versa, to increase trends.
If you lack the ideas of keywords, take inspiration from competitors. Use the tools to see which keywords they currently rank for - if these keywords are relevant to your business, consider using them!
Keep in mind that the most obvious keywords are not always the best.
Long keywords make up 70% of all search traffic and can open the way to successful SEO.
Since you are facing stiff competition for shorter and more general keywords, you are often more likely to rank for long keywords. And the long-tail keywords let you focus on better website traffic — on people who know what they are looking for.
Remember that your keywords will evolve over time as trends change, terminology changes, or your product / service line changes. Periodically conduct keyword research to make sure that you are still focused on the right keywords for your target audience and do not miss the vital ranking opportunities.
2. Naturally integrate these keywords into your posts.
Once you have decided on a list of targeted keywords, it's time to write a blog post about one of these keywords. Discuss blog topics with your team and determine a topic that will attract your target audience.
Remember about your customers, their motives, problems, interests, etc. Throughout the process of brainstorming. Choose a topic that will emotionally resonate with your potential customers and their needs, desires or difficulties.
When you write your blog, your keywords and natural variations should be interspersed regularly throughout your post. Your primary keyword should appear in the following key locations:
• Headings and subheadings
• URL if possible
• Image alternate text (search engines cannot read images)
• Meta description
• For all content
Remember that you write for people, not for search engines. Focus on attracting readers with a natural writing style that takes into account their needs and interests.
Be sure to avoid overuse of any keyword at all costs. Filling with keywords may result in the site being penalized or blocked on search engine results pages temporarily or permanently. But more importantly, if your keyword appears too often, you compromise the quality of the article. Give readers no reason to press the "Back" button and go to a competitor's blog for answers.
3. Link to influential sites.
When you create your blog, do not be afraid to link to other articles or blogs.
References to applicable and reputable websites not only offer blog readers additional reading material to expand their knowledge, but also show that Google and other search engines have conducted research.
Nothing reinforces a blog post more than hard to compete statistics based on research from influential websites. Convincing statistics will help you build a more convincing and specific argument that will make your readers think.
4. Aim for scanned, longer messages.
In an era of short attention periods (an average of 8 seconds for people), you might think that short blog posts are the very path to success. But search engines actually prefer longer and deeper blog posts.
The longer your blog, the more chances it has to get to the top search engine results. SerpIQ found that on 10 positional pages there are 400 words less than on 1 positional pages. Longer posts will be more easily ranked by target keyword.
Think about it: the more content per page, the more tips for search engines, what your blog is about. We recommend writing at least 300 words per blog post. This length gives search engines plenty of keywords and text to scan and helps them understand what your blog is about.
The disadvantage of longer blogs is that they can scare your readers. So the million dollar question is how longer blog posts can attract modern readers on the Internet?
You can write readable blog posts that attract readers online by shortening sentences and paragraphs. Turn a long sentence into two. Paragraphs should consist of no more than 2-3 sentences.
In addition, use all the benefits of bulleted lists and subtitles that attract the attention of the reader. Following this tactic, you will create blogs that are easier to read (especially on a mobile device!).
5. Internally associate words or phrases with other posts on your site.
Links to other pages or blog posts on your site help search engines crawl your site and create a more accurate sitemap. It also helps your audience learn more about your content and understand that you are trustworthy.
Internal links to other valuable content allow users to stay longer on your site, reducing bounce rates and increasing your potential for conversion.
Caution: do not overdo it with your internal link. We know how tempting it is to link to all our blogs and web pages, but we choose only those that best reflect what we are writing about in any particular blog. Always think about whether these links are related to the topic or not, and whether they will be of significant value to your readers.
6. Optimize images for maximum page speed.
Google encourages higher speed pages. Therefore, it is important that the page load time is as fast as possible.
One of the leading culprits of slow page loading is large photos.
After you select a photo, use free compression software, such as Squoosh.app, to make it as small as possible while maintaining the quality of the image.
For more tips on optimizing images, read the article:
9 steps to optimize images for SEO
7. Transform link building strategies.
Traffic from places other than Google is critical to your search rankings. What for? Think of the search results as a contest where the winners get the most votes. Each webpage that links to you is considered a “vote” on your site, which makes your content more reliable in the eyes of Google. In turn, this will force you to rise further in the search results.
Therefore it is good to write posts that other websites or publications will want to make a hyperlink within their posts. You can also write messages on websites of other companies that link to your website in any way.
To make your site's blog post more attractive, include valuable assets or information such as your own data, original thoughts, infographics, definitions, and what people could not find anywhere else.
How to headline blog posts for SEO
Even with a good, SEO-optimized post body, a bad headline can hurt your search engines. To headline your post with SEO in mind, make a clear, understandable title that shows the reader what he is going to read and includes the keywords that you identified in the first step. As mentioned above, write something that Google ranking algorithms like, but also understandable and tempting for people.
Briefly above
If you want your blogs to take first place (and why not?), You should focus on creating blogs that both users and search engines will like. By optimizing your blogs, you can get a higher ranking in search results, get better web traffic and increase conversion rates.
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