Now that there’s so much content online (around 7 million blog posts are published every day!), writing a good blog post is key if you want it to have any traction.
Want more people to find your blog posts via Google and other search engines? Here’s what to do…
1. Write about topics people are searching for
The easiest way to optimise your blog for search engines is to research what questions people are already asking that relate to your business.
Once you’ve found a question to answer, Google it yourself and look at the current search results. Prioritise topics that aren’t currently answered in search engines, or ones you think could be improved.
This is also done through thorough keyword research related to your niche. Topic ideas along with their search volume and keyword difficulty (how hard out of 100 it would be to rank for the term) are documented and from this pool of information and topics we then go through and pick the ones that are of interest and relevant to cover as part of a wider content marketing strategy.
2. Getting the search intent right
Once you have decided what topics you want to write about you next need to understand search intent, and how to create your content.
Search intent is the why behind the search, blogs often have informational intent, so the searches are looking for a question to be answered. This information could be presented in a variety of ways, including;
- How to guides
- Lists
- Definition posts
- Comparisons
If you want your article to rank highly it is best to present your article in the content format that searchers are interested in. For example below are the top results for “how to boil an egg.”
Most of the top-ranking pages are how to guides. So, to rank for this keyword phrase, you will likely have to create something similar, i.e. a how to guide.
3. Create quality content
By creating quality content Google is likely to reward you with higher rankings and more traffic.
According to Google’s guidelines, quality content is useful and interesting. And that means it is;
- Clearly organised
- Easy to read
- Unique and fresh
- Satisfying the search intent
- Following Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. (Experience, expertise, authoritativeness & trustworthiness)
Having input from experts to support and create your content is a great start. Their level of knowledge in a particular field will be reflected and combining that with copy that is useful, informative and well-written, organised with clear headings, subheadings and is easy to read is a great combination.
4. Ensure on page SEO is seamless
When you’re implementing SEO for a blog, you also need to consider best practice on-page SEO so Google can better understand your content and rank it accordingly.
- Include your target keyword in the title tag. This helps demonstrate to searchers and Google that your blog post is the most relevant result for a particular query.
- Write a compelling meta description. You want people to click on your blog post once it ranks in search results, your meta description should grab their attention.
- Use short, descriptive URLs. This lets searchers know what to expect from a blog. (e.g., cognique.co.uk/blog/what-are-keywords-in-seo/ / is clearly a post about “keywords in SEO”).
- Include your target keyword in the H1 tag. This will help your page rank for the term
- Include your target keywords in the body. This shows Google that your content is relevant for specific queries. But don’t add them in unnaturally, write with humans in mind.
- Link to relevant internal resources. This helps users and Google find other relevant content on your website.
- Add alt text to images. Google uses alt text to rank images in Google images.
If you’re a WordPress user, installing an SEO plugin like Yoast will make the above tips much easier to implement.
5. Make your blogs easy to read
If you content is difficult to read and hard to follow readers may abandon the article, and your site. Which isn’t good for SEO.
You can resolve this problem by creating an effortless reading experience. You can keep your content more interactive by including the following in your blogs:
- Using subheadings from H2s to H6, they break down posts and give a breakdown of what the reader can expect from that section
- Images, videos, gifs and other graphics help keep your readers engaged by breaking up the content
- Using short sentences and paragraphs to help avoid walls of content
- Bullet points and numbered lists help keep things clear, consise and easy to follow
- Using simple vocabulary, avoid using complex words and jargon so that everyone can understand your writing.
6. Monitor technical SEO issues
If Google can’t crawl and index your blogs, it doesn’t matter what SEO tactics you’ve used. Your blogs just can’t rank.
Additionally, if your blogs take more than a few seconds to load, users might abandon your site. It should load as fast as possible (test yours on Google’s speed checker) and you might want to think about enabling https if you haven’t already.
Technical SEO issues like these are not good for SEO. Or your business. These issues can be flagged in a SEO audit and fixed to keep your website and blogs search friendly.
