One of the primary objectives of your blog content is to reach the audience without any form of limitations. The only way to get this done is by mastering the art of SEO and putting it into place to optimize each blog post.
Being a successful blogger goes beyond just setting up a blog and coming up with excellent content. You need SEO to help complement the work that you have done. With just a few extra steps, you should be able to achieve that.
In this article, we’ll be sharing the extra steps you need to take to help optimize your blog posts for SEO and give you the best chance or earning a top 3 ranking in Google for your targeted keyword terms.
Keyword Research
The very first thing that should come to mind when the word “SEO” is being mentioned is keyword research. Keywords are the basics of SEO, all that would be done revolves around it. Doing detailed research on keywords helps to determine the topics that viewers are most interested in. To get the best result in all your blog posts, prepare a list of both primary and secondary keywords. These keywords will help point the direction you are to go to.
Despite being a major part of SEO, you shouldn’t misuse the keywords that you have generated. Each keyword should have a flow naturally in a sentence without causing stuffing. Stuffing your blog posts with keywords could even bring down the fury of google, resulting in a penalty. With the just introduced latent semantic indexing (LSI), the use of exact keywords in place of synonyms is not that appreciated. All you have to do is prevent stuffing by any means possible.
Tip to help do keyword research:
Target keywords that are long – There are numerous blogs out there with the same exact keywords, making it difficult to rank the way you should even after successfully optimizing your blog post. Based on this fact, it is best to make use of long-tail keywords like “social media marketing in business” rather than “marketing”
Make use of voice search – The use of Alexa and Siri is growing tremendously, voice search is taking over and more people are making use of it. Despite this big shift, not every business have been able to grab this opportunity and turn it to their favor by optimizing your content for voice search.
Check SERP’s To Find Out If the Keywords are Rich Enough
The moment you have a list of keywords that you would like to use in mind, go to Google to do some research. Search Engine Results Page is a nice place to get that done. You will be able to find rich results on this page. There are certain things you would notice after doing your search and this would help determine to what extent you will be optimizing your blog post. For example, if you notice that one search phrase has less results and competition than a similar phrase, you might choose to target the first phrase as it will be easier to rank higher and more quickly than the second phrase.
Properly Structured Post Titles
The title of your blog post is your first point of contact. This would be analyzed before anything else by the search engines. This was programmed to help the search engine understand what the blog post is all about. If this is interpreted the wrong way, it might affect the ranking of your blog post. The only way you can communicate with the search engine is with primary keywords.
Aside from fixing your keywords into the blog post, you need to maintain a natural flow of keywords in the title. Doing this also works together with another point to help boost the SEO of your blog post. Check out this article on how to write SEO friendly post titles.
Using Your Targeted Keyword Phrase In Your Post URL
The URL of your blog post is another important page that you must take note of. The search engine takes time out to check the URL of your blog post trying to find out if it has a specific keyword that can be used to rank your blog post. If none is found, the search engine simple concludes that the page has nothing specific to offer.
Based on this fact, it’s very important for you to customize your URL prior to publishing. A good example of what an optimized URL should look like if the keyword is favorite chocolate is www.chocolatehouse.com/blog/favourite-chocolates.
Optimize Your Headings
This might seem similar to the points already mentioned above, but it is entirely different and far from it. The headings of your blog post are different from the title. If you are able to optimize your title and you put aside your headings, you won’t achieve your desired results. Search engines also check your headings trying to point out some keywords that can be ranked.
What this means in general, is that you need to also find a way to include your keyword in all the headings. Which are your <h1>, <h2>, <h3> on your page. To avoid keyword stuffing, you can naturally include your secondary keywords in each heading.
Make Use Of Image Alternative (ALT) Tags
Your text Image is another key factor that search engine do consider when ranking your blog post. The only way you can achieve your desired results is by including some relevant texts in your image title. It is also important you try to either include your primary or secondary keyword. Check out this tutorial on how to add ALT tags to your images.
Add Relevant Internal Links
The algorithms of search engines also consider internal links as an important ranking factor. Including this naturally Into the sentences of your blog post might be a major challenge, but you have to include it at a regular point. Links help redirects your viewers from the present page that they are on to another, with the primary purpose of trying to share more detailed information about something. Input a link which is targeted at a particular keyword or a set of keywords in your blog post. Take for example, if you are writing a blog post on towing services, and your keywords are “towing services”, it is essential for you to input a link that redirects your viewer to your own towing service company webpage. This simple trick helps prove to Google that your blog post is written by a professional. And that you have additional information to feed your viewers on the same topic. All of these combined together help rank your blog post on Google.
Write A Meta Description
Although meta description doesn’t really have an effect on the ranking of your blog post, it determines the viewer’s first impression just by browsing through the search engine. The Meta description of your first point of contact. This is what your viewers will read about your blog post before going to click.
An ideal meta description should be able to make viewers curious. This curiosity is what will make them visit your website and check what your blog post all about. All thanks to SERP, you can now showcase about 300 characters. With this in place, it is best to optimize the use of both your primary and secondary keywords.
Link Your Old And New Posts Together
Linking your old post to the new ones gives your blog a direction in general. This will also help build a trend where your viewers can access all your old post and relate them to that new. With this in place, you will be able to optimize both your old and new posts all at the same time. It’s more or less like promoting your new posts with the old and promoting the old with the new.
Make Your Posts At Least 1,200 Words Or More
Finally, write a lengthy blog post with an adequate number of keywords. To achieve maximum result, write about 1,200 words. These number of words allows you to evenly distribute your keywords while avoiding stuffing. A lengthy blog post also helps to increase Google’s general confidence in the expertise of your blog post.
Being lengthy doesn’t mean you have to add junks of words into the blog post to make it lengthy. Your blog post needs to be well organized, planned and well-written. Moreover, it’s not compulsory it has to be exactly 1,200 words. It could be less than that or even more if you have quite a lot to share. Nevertheless, you need to scrutinize and proofread your blog post before going ahead to post your blog.
The credibility of your blog post is also another factor that determines how well your blog post would rank on Google. You need to put this in check to achieve that which your heart desires.
