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How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts (Even Without a Plugin), Support Your…
How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts (Even Without a Plugin)
blogging is hard work, and if you really want the effort to pay off, it’s essential that you learn how to do it right. So before you invest a ton of time into your next masterpiece, let’s talk about how to write SEO friendly blog posts.
The ultimate goal is to earn a high position (rank) in the organic search results so you can boost the visibility of your brand and traffic to your website.
Effective SEO benefits from a deep understanding of the problems your target audience is grappling with, a strategy for providing them with answers and the determination to keep on trying.
Support Your Efforts with Internal and External Links
Build trust with your readers by demonstrating that you have done your research
Are gesture of goodwill toward others in your space (links are essentially a “vote” in the eyes of Google that improves one’s ability to rank)
Demonstrate to your reader that you're dedicated to meeting their needs – even if it means sending them to another website
Provide the reader with an easy way to further explore your website
Increase the amount of time the reader remains on your site
Help Google crawl your site and improve its understanding of your topical focus
Build the Focus Keyword into Important Elements of the Page
With the bulk of your writing behind you, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief and load your post into your content management system.
URL
Most systems automatically populate the URL with the entire title of the post, which isn’t necessarily to your benefit. Shorten the URL if necessary and include your focus keyword.
Blog Post Title
Choose a short, compelling and descriptive title that communicates what the post is about and what the reader will gain from reading it. And include your focus keyword in that title – preferably, at the beginning.
Sub-Section Headers
Use your focus keyword (or a logical variation of that keyword) in at least one of your sub-section headers. But, again, keep it natural - if it simply doesn’t make sense, don’t force it.
Meta Description
The meta description is the short, explanation of your article that appears beneath the title in search results - the words used in the searcher’s query are shown in bold to demonstrate why the search engine selected each result.
meta descriptions were limited in length to approximately 155 characters, but Google recently changed this restriction. Now SEOs are reporting meta descriptions more in the range of 300 characters.
Image Alt-Text and its importance
Including images in articles is a great way to improve their visual appeal and support your points, but many of us overlook an important detail that can affect SEO - the image alt-text.
Screen readers for the blind and visually impaired use this information to describe the image and its utility (if any) to the reader
If there's a problem loading the image on a given device, the alt-text will be displayed instead
Search engines use this information to understand what the image is and to gather knowledge about the surrounding text
Choose a Focus Keyword that Your Target Audience Would Actually Use
Before you start writing, carefully consider the words your target audience would use if they were researching the topic you plan to discuss.
Select a focus keyword that your target audience would actually use when exploring a question or problem you can help with
The volume of searches for the term is substantial enough to warrant an investment
You understand the searcher's intent (what they want when they use that term)
You have the resources to build something that can compete with the content that already appears in the search results.
Use Your Focus Keyword and Logical Variations of the Keyword in the Body of Your Post
Although you've chosen a focus keyword and are attempting to rank, it’s important to use clean, concise and natural language.
Awkwardly repeating the same keyword throughout your post is an outdated, ineffective black hat SEO tactic.
Instead, write for your customers first - using engaging, conversational prose - and then optimize for the search engines.
Concentrate on making your point in a way that's relevant and meaningful to your target audience.
Your focus keyword should appear early in the post (preferably in the first paragraph) and a few other times throughout the copy. Then mix it up (and keep things natural) by weaving in synonyms or related phrases.
How you research for your blogs can make or break your writing efforts
Before you start researching outside, look inside your company
Really scan the articles present on the first page of Google for your primary keyword and assess common headings, what they're missing that you can address and how your company expertise/product can add to the topic to give it a unique angle.
Look for whitepapers and research reports by searching for "topic + research" or "topic + report."
Search for topic-related keywords on LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube—you'll be surprised at the kind of information you can find.
Message experts on LinkedIn, and Twitter about scheduling an asynchronous interview or getting a quote for a specific part of your article.
Build an Outline to Ensure Full Coverage of the Topic
When designing content with the intent to rank, it helps to consider the situation from the search engine’s perspective, so let’s focus on Google - Google’s goal is to satisfy the searcher’s query completely.
Google knows when searchers are satisfied because it monitors how they react to content. If they linger on the page or (better yet) share or link to your content, Google takes note.
So design your blog post to completely fulfill the searcher’s need. Provide information that's helpful and informative, but not overly promotional.
Research your topic and build an outline which incorporates sub-sections on related issues to ensure that you address the subject in depth.
Check Your Post for Readability
Mistakes are embarrassing, and worse, they can damage your reputation and hinder your ability to appear in search results. As such, you need to ensure you allow enough time for an editorial process.
we would all have an editor who could review our work before we hit publish, but if this isn’t possible, take a long break (at least 24 hours) then return with a fresh mind so you can be critical of your own work.
review your formatting. When writing for an online audience, it’s best to use short paragraphs and plenty of white space, sections, images, bullets and bolding.
Promote Your Post Like Crazy
Create visibility and drive traffic to your post by sending it to your email list, sharing it on social media and by alerting anyone you mentioned in the article about their inclusion.
Promoting your post will help you expand its reach beyond your contacts so it can earn the links and mentions it so desperately needs to rank.
It takes time to learn how to write SEO friendly blog posts, and it can take even longer for your hard work to pay off. But knowing how to optimize blog posts for SEO is a valuable skill that can make a huge difference in your ability to drive value from your blogging efforts.