Writing blog posts for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be a bit intimidating at times. There are a lot of good blog posts out there and the competition is stiff. Worry not! By the end of this article, you will be aware of how to write SEO friendly blog posts using these blog writing tips.
Ranking on Google searches is not instant. It requires hard work, research, and time. There’s more to know as you read along, let’s go!
Keywords is an important element in ranking high and generating traffic to your blog. This is what most people think. And it is partially right but keywords are not the only thing you need to boost SEO quality.
This is consistency. Anyone can start a blog and put up content but are they consistent in what they do? Most of the successful blogs are consistent in creating new blog posts. They do this while still maintaining quality.
Good thing I am here to help you start with a blog writing checklist. This is available to help you boost your rankings by optimizing your content for SEO. I’ll let you know more on how to write a good blog post.
There are also some tools you can use to maintain the quality of the blog content, and definitely SEO tips!
The Ultimate Blog Writing Checklist
As mentioned, creating awesome and SEO-friendly blog posts isn’t a walk in the park. However, there are many ways to make this task easier. As long as you’re willing to exert time and effort to learn and improve, it won’t be long before you can publish articles that can raise your SEO rankings.
Here are tips for writing SEO friendly blog posts that will help you get solid SEO search engine ranking. I hope that this will help you in writing SEO-optimized articles.
#1 Know Your Goals.
What is your goal in writing a blog post? Is it to attract readers or is it for SEO or both? Do you want your articles to drive more sales or are you planning on using these articles to expand your customer reach? Before you start thinking about what content to write and what copywriting exercises to follow, it’s vital to understand your goals first. Having clear goals will make it easy for you to streamline your efforts and save you resources from going around in circles.
Good blog posts are always readable, engaging, and SEO-friendly. Focus on what your website is about and how you want to appear on Google searches or social media shares. This is necessary because it will help you plan out the next steps ahead. Know who you are and know where you want to be. You’ve got this, don’t worry!
#2 Get Creative
Creative writing is a great skill to get. Aside from keyword research that helps you rank your business. The blog posts you write with an engaging content will be a good start. If you notice there are some blog posts that has great content but less views.
It is not automatic that you will immediately rank up in search engines. It is not easy to appear on Google search when you put a blog post on your website.
Writing is a form of self-expression. Write as if you are speaking to your readers. Let them know your goals in that specific post. Let those who does not know yet find out about it by placing some relevant keywords within your article.
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If you haven’t experienced writing blog posts in the past, do some research and check what kind of blogs rank high in the Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs). It also helps to check how your competitors are creating their blogs so you’ll know what to do and not to do with yours. The more you know about high-ranking blogs, the easier it’ll be for you to write one on your own.
#3 Do Some Basic Keyword Research
As I have mentioned earlier keyword research is essential in helping you rank up. To write an engaging article, you have to make a way to insert those keywords and make the blog post seamless to read.
What are keywords?
Keywords define the content that you are writing about. It helps you get an idea on what to write or where it will take your page content to. This also links to the goals that you set at the beginning.
People will find your blog based on the keywords that they use in Google search or other search engines. Keyword research is important in creating SEO-friendly blog posts as this will allow you to determine what keywords are used by Internet users to search for you online. When you have this information, you’ll know what keywords to include in your blog posts.
Again, it is great to use keywords but never overdo it. It compromises the readability of the content and avoid using the same keywords. Long tail keywords are highly suggested but again don’t spam! Putting too many keywords in your blog posts might make the content very challenging to read and, in some cases, make your content look spammy.
Keyword stuffing is not a good way to rank your site. Make sure to avoid it. You can use SEMrush as a tool to check related keywords to your target.
Learn how to do keyword research from scratch.
#4 Create the Format of Your Blog Post
Writing a blog post is pretty much like writing an essay, it would have an opening, the main part and the conclusion. But it’s not required to be completed in one sitting, creating a blog post takes time, research and lots of patience. You have to produce content that would pique your reader’s interest. At the same time would contain keywords that would be able to make your blog easier to find.
When creating SEO-friendly blog posts, remember that quality always outweighs quantity. Don’t push yourself to write several blogs in one sitting because this won’t allow you to produce high-quality content. If your blog posts are too shallow and only contains basic information about a specific topic, it’ll be challenging for you to improve your SEO rankings or gain the loyalty of readers.
Here is a brief outline that you can follow in starting a blog.
Catchy Titles and URL Structure
Titles are very crucial because this serves as the face of your blog post. It needs to be very interesting to your target audience. The title should have that kind of impact that will trigger people’s curiosity. You’ll know that you have SEO friendly blog titles when it reflects on the CTR (Click-through-rate). Don’t use generic titles, think outside the box!
URL structure is also important. When you start a blog, choose a domain name that will represent the content. Make it something easy to read and remember. The limit for the URLs character count is within 2,083 characters for it to show correctly in browsers. It is best use hyphens to separate words in the URL.
It is nice to see an optimized and formatted URL. The reader sees the path and the destination of the link, especially if it they use a shared link. It helps in ranking (when keywords are in the URL), link sharing, and better user experience. Clean and readable.
Striking Photos
Photos in your post like featured images are important. It refreshes your readers eyes from the long text that you have written for your blog. It also needs to have relevance and value to the post that you have.
Don’t forget to put alternative “alt” text on it when you post a photo. It shows up just in case your photo does not load properly. This is mainly for accessibility reasons. Place short and descriptive words about the photo which is helpful for those who can’t see it.
Moreover, alt text attribute is also a good place to put some of your target keywords. It makes search engines notice that your post is fitting to a certain search query. Cool huh?
Introduction
Aside from the title, the introduction is a great way to get people to read your blog. Get them intrigued on this part. Keep it short and captivating. Leaving your readers immersed in the thought wanting them to read more.
After which, it is time for you to direct your readers to what they are about to read. Give them some overview or some key points before going straight to the topic. This allows to have a smooth transition.
Headings
As you can see, I am getting more on the technical side now as we dive deeper into the article. Notice that every topic or main idea that I have there are certain words that’s emphasized. Words that stand out among the others. These are the headings.
The first one that you see is a Title. As the word implies it is the name or the title of the blog post. It describes the topic and gives out the main idea of what the page content is all about.
Next are the headings. There are different heading tags that you can use. I recommend that you use them in order for a well optimized blog post structure. The tags are H1, H2, and H3. Always remember. There should only be one H1 in your blog post which should contain your target keywords.
Headings helps you in a way as part of on-page SEO tactics. It helps Google in getting the main topic of a long blog post which in turn helps you rank up. It is also a major point for the readers as it allows them to get a clear overview of the page content.
Compare it to the table of contents, if you still remember it when reading a book. It is like that but it already has the content under it.
Content and Main Points
Majority of the readers now are using a smartphone. It is very important for them to be able to read the content. Going through short paragraphs is better than going through a very long one. Try to limit your thoughts into at least 2 to 3 sentences per paragraph.
Make use of formatting styles like bold, italic, and underline. This makes your content more attractive while giving emphasis to your main points. This is the part where everything you want to tell the readers falls into.
9 Blog Writing Tips
Do the following steps and you’ll definitely get the hang of it:
- Do research on your topic and your target keywords. This part will make your writing easier and will make it more seamless.
- Keep the paragraphs short and concise. It will let your readers easily understand your point and get information better.
- Use grammar checking tools like Grammarly. This is a helpful tool to check spelling and it also provides suggestions to correct your grammar.
- Check your sentences complexity with Hemingway App. It is a great tool to check on the readability of the content.
- Use SEMrush SWA (SEO Writing Assistant). Best used for recommendations in optimizing content.
- Use links. Internal and external linking are effective SEO techniques. It helps search engines know and discover new pages on your blog site.
- Optimize the length of your article. A blog post is recommended to have a minimum of 300 words up. The longer the article you have, the more Google likes it. However, there’s a catch. Make sure that when you go for more words it is still readable and you always have a relevant keyword ready to use. Remember, quality over quantity.
- Use power and signal words. What are those? These words help you get your readers more interested and it leads them on to reading up to the end of your post.
- Power words: Fantastic, Amazing, Extremely, etc.
- Signal words: First of all, Next, Finally, etc.
- Have someone read it. Make sure that you have someone to read your article before posting it. This will help you to find some errors that you might have missed out or if there are somethings that you may need to add.
Ending Your Blog Post
Ending your blog post is important as it helps your readers to get a grasp of what the whole content is about. It shows all the important key points that has been discussed throughout the article which also refreshes their memory as they review.
#5 Finally, Promote Your Content.
Yes! After all the writing and making sure that your blog post is now SEO-friendly and fully optimized. Don’t forget to market it. You don’t spend most of your time writing and writing. You spend that precious time in finding ways to promote it.
This post shows strategies on how to get 1000 visitors per day for your blog without spending a penny.
Aside from on-page SEO where you focus on your keywords, page speed, URL optimization, and other elements that you optimized. This is the most crucial part. It is NOT EASY to have someone else link back to your own blog. You need to prove that it is worth to link back to you.
Why is This Important?
It is important because pages rank with connections. Link building is a part of it. If you really want to show up among the top 10 from the search queries this is one of the things you need to focus on. If you are confident enough that you already created a blog post that is relevant and worthy to receive a link back or you have a product or service that is valuable, this will be easy for you to do.
5 EASY Link Building Strategies (That ANYONE Can Use)
Here are some link building techniques that are useful:
Guest Posting:
One of the pioneers in link building strategies. It still works. However, make sure that you do guest posts on useful websites related to your topic. There are some sites that accepts free guest posts. It may not show that they do but it is worth a shot to reach out and try. There is a greater chance of acceptance if you have a well-written article to share with them.
Outreaching:
Outreach to websites that can add value to your own. Connect to people within the same niche as you are and let them know what your content is about. Make sure that you do outreach with people who have the same or related keywords found in your post and linking to the same articles about the topic. It is quite tedious but it will benefit you in the long run.
Broken Linking:
This requires your research abilities, writing, and communication skills too. You’ll be needing to find dead links and ask the site owner to replace that broken link with your own. You may need to write a similar content to what was previously posted there before it died, so you need to be ready for that. It may be a lot of work but if you find a relevant link with a lot of referring sites. It’s a pot of gold waiting for you to grab.
Reclaim Lost Links:
Sometimes you are already linked to someone but then due to some enhancements or the page or maybe the page is removed the links are lost. Reach out to those sites that are valuable.
Mentioned but not Linked:
If you already have some online presence, some other blogs or websites may have mentioned your website or product without linking back to you. You can find them and get them link back to you. Again, remember the word ‘relevance’.
Social Media and Content Marketing
I know that this is quite vague. In a blog post, I suggest that you enable commenting for the readers or give them a way to reach you. The opinion of your reader is important as it helps you get feedback on your writing as well as an insight on what they would like to read next.
A share button also helps a lot when it comes to marketing your content. In social media, when people like what you write it will spread like wildfire. It somehow markets on its own without you even doing the work. It really pays to have knowledge in quality blogging. It literally does.
If you have a business alongside with your blog. This is a great chance to market your products with the internal links that can be directed to your store. A great opportunity indeed!
Keep Your Blog Updated
You heard it right! Updating your blog is one of the key factors that you need. First, it helps to increase the number of website pages indexed by Google. It allows you to get in touch to your followers and subscribers with new content available, and it will also help you to improve your writing ability.
Check out this step by step SEO guide for beginners.
Conclusion: The Ultimate Blog Writing Checklist
Overall, these are just some ways to help you in writing that SEO-friendly blog post. Remember that the marketing aspect is just as important as the writing process. Both goes hand-in-hand when creating that awesome blog post. Again, focus on your goals, follow the steps in creating a quality blog post, get creative in writing, and remember to promote your content.
You may also like:
- SEMrush Review: Why is SEMrush So Effective?
- Key Power Tips on How to Generate Blogs That People Are Interested In
- Key Tips on Generating Better Blogs with These Writing Tips
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