Writing SEO optimised content is not as simple as writing normal content. However, it is not particularly difficult either. By following a few simple rules, you can ensure that all your blog posts are fully SEO optimised.
The art of writing SEO optimised blog content is a subject that I have discussed in previous articles. However, I feel it would be beneficial to have a post discussing the subject in greater detail. So let’s get to it!
Know Your Keywords
The first step to optimising a blog post for search engines is selecting your keywords. Just like a ship needs a destination, you also need to know where you’re going. There’s a high chance that you already include many relevant keywords in your content naturally. However, it’s still important to perform keyword research and identify high-value low effort keywords. You can outsource keyword research for a nominal fee on websites such as Fiverr and Upwork. Outsourcing your keyword research will also save you the expense of having to buy a premium software or the time-consuming task of doing it yourself via free software.
Keyword Placement
After you’ve decided which keywords you’re going to optimise the post for, you need to place them in the content strategically. Remember not to overdo this step! It’s better to focus on optimising your post for a couple of well-chosen keywords than it is to try and fit in too many. Longtail keywords are best as they will generally have less competition.
Be sure to mention the keywords in the following places:
- Primary post title,
- URL,
- Hyperlinks,
- First and final paragraphs,
- Content header tags e.g. H1, H2 and H3 headers
Avoiding ‘Keyword Stuffing’
Avoid repeating the same keyword too many times in your content. Keyword stuffing is an old tactic from the early days of the internet where mentioning a keyword as frequently as possible would improve your ranking. These days it does the opposite as it can result in a ranking penalty from over optimising your content. Search engines choose to punish rather than reward this behaviour because keyword-stuffed content does not make for an enjoyable reading experience. The trick is to read your content and ask yourself whether it feels natural. If the keywords feel forced, you will need to adjust them.
Create Meta Descriptions
You should also create meta descriptions for your content being sure to include your targeted keywords in the descriptions. The meta description is that little preview that a search engine shows before each search result is displayed. It’s designed to tell the reader what the page is about thus helping them decide whether or not to click on a link. If you include the keyword on the meta description, you’re effectively saying to Google, “Hey, this page is about this keyword”.
Optimise Images
Firstly, you need to ensure that you include images with your content. Images improve the reading experience of your content. An excellent reading experience means the content is SEO friendly. You can then optimise the images by including your keywords in the file names and the alternate text (Alt text) fields. The Alt text field should contain a short, keyword-rich description of the image.
Add Links
By including links to other relevant websites, you help search engines understand the subject of your content. For example, if you’re writing an article about puppy dogs, you should link to other websites about puppy dogs. By doing this you make it easier for the search engines to group the pages together as being about the same topic.
You should also add links to other articles on your website. Whenever you write a new post, think about any previous posts that you could link to in the main content text. By including the keywords in the link text, you’re able to include more keywords in your content naturally. You’re also able to, breath new life into old articles by sending new traffic to them. This is even easier to do if you’re using WordPress because there is built-in functionality to the text editor to link to your previous posts!
Make Your Content Easy & Enjoyable to Read
Readability is an important factor. Search engines reward websites that provide visitors with an enjoyable reading experience. Focus on short and simple sentences. Use images to break up walls of text and make sure your spelling and grammar are accurate. Your aim should be to write high-quality, interesting content anyway! So this point is mostly to say, keep up the good work!
Write Detailed Articles
While there is no accepted minimum article length, it’s known that search engines prefer longer articles. My general opinion is that anything under 500 words is completely out of the question from an SEO point of view. In reality, 750 words should be the minimum with 1000+ word articles being ideal. However, you need to balance your reader’s attention span and ensure every word is valuable because long rambling articles stuffed full of filler words are not enjoyable to read.
Choose Blog Post Topic and Category Tags Carefully
Carefully select relevant blog post topics and category tags. These provide a helpful way of organising your content, thus improving the reader’s experience. These tags also help tell the search engines the subject of the post. As always, don’t overdo it by including too many similar tags on a single post or you could be seen to be over optimising your content.
Promote Your Content on Social Media
Search engines reward content that is shared online. The more people who click onto your blog post, like and share it, the more important some search engines are going to think your blog post is. Ideally, install a plugin that allows visitors to like or share the blog post directly from your website.
You should be making full use of all of your social media accounts to promote every article that you write. There is plenty of software available such as Hootsuite and Blog2Social that streamline the process of sharing a recent blog post on social media.
Conclusion
This article focuses on what you need to do to optimise an individual blog post. Of course, there are plenty of other strategies that apply to the overall website, such as improving load speed and mobile-friendliness.
However, by following these simple rules, you will always create SEO optimised blog posts for your business website.