The blog is one of the best kinds of content you can write to. They’re fun to read, they can be quite informational or educational. When done right, they can drive a lot of traffic to your website.
But bogs can only get traffic if it is optimized for SEO.
No matter how well you have written the content, if it is not optimized, it’s not going to be found. It will just exist on the internet, invisible. So, for your blogs to be visible, be found, read, and engaged with, you need to optimize them for SEO.
So if you’re a blogger blogging for SEO, you need to have basic knowledge of SEO to write killer-content. We are going to cover them in this blog about SEO tips for bloggers.
Keyword research is the first step in writing SEO content. Simple keyword research will help optimize your content for search and also help add more relevant content to the blog. Adding relevant keywords will also help Google understand your content better and rank it higher on the SERPs. Use free keyword research tools like Ubersuggest, Keyword tool, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, etc.
Just enter a few target keywords and hit the search button. The tools will show a list of relevant keywords with search volume, competition, difficulty, etc.
Select relevant keywords from the list and add them to your blog naturally. Do not force them to fit. The keywords should match the search intent and should be placed in the content meaningfully. Your blog has to have at least 2-3% of relevant keywords.
Include keywords in the first 100 words and in the last 100 hundred words. Include them in H1 and H2 tags if it makes sense. Include them in the title. You can check the SEO score of the title using this SEO tool.
Avoid stuffing the keywords in your content as it will account for unnatural optimization. It can harm your SEO.
Latent Semantic Keyword is a type of keyword that has the same meaning as the target keyword but is different in spellings. For example – companies, firms, agencies all mean the same but are different words. So including these kinds of keyword variations can improve the SEO of your blog as it helps search engines understand better what your content is about.
It’s important to include LSI keywords in your blogs where necessary because not everybody searches for something the same way. They all use different keywords or search terms that mean the same thing. To perform LSI Keyword research, use this keyword research tool.
Include appropriate ones in your blogs.
The average word count of top-performing blogs is a minimum of 1890 words. Not that the word count below this will not be optimized for SEO, but will likely not rank well. The more useful, unique, original, and lengthier content you provide, the better it will rank.
This is because Google likes to provide users with all the information in one place. Users don’t want to search hundreds of blogs to find what they’re looking for. They are more likely to engage in content that answers all their queries in detail.
So if you’re writing a blog like how to lose weight, you can provide all sorts of information in detail, related to it.
For example, you could write about what foods can help you lose weight faster, what to avoid eating, what exercises to follow, how long it’ll take to see results, how to motivate yourself to lose weight, etc., all in your blog. So that when visitors land on it, they find everything they’re looking for and engage with it well.
The blogs that appear on top of the search results page, especially in the first 5 positions have a word count of 2500 or more.
Take Backlinko’s blogs for example. They provide amazing content in great detail. And they are no less than 3000 words. They get thousands of backlinks because of the quality content and always appear on the first page of Google SERPs. Most of their blogs do.
Readability is an important factor in SEO because it affects user experience. If the user experience is good, then users will engage with your content more. So how do you ensure that your content provides a good user experience? By structuring it well.
You can structure the blog by writing it in different lengths of paragraphs. One part can be 2 sentences long, another in 3-4 lines, and another in max 5 lines. But not more. If you read backlinko’s blogs, you will see that they write them in less than 3 paras each. So, even if the blog is 3000 words long, it appears shorter. And it gets more engagement.
Use the Hemingway App to write concisely and clearly. Aim for a grade 8 or lower.
There’s a term in SEO that all bloggers, content writers need to be familiar with. It’s Semantic SEO or semantic density. It’s all about keywords and phrases related to your target keyword.
Suppose if you’re writing about places to visit in Mumbai, related keywords and phrases would be – tourist places in Mumbai, hotels in Mumbai, hill stations near Mumbai, one-day trips from Mumbai, Best Mumbai beaches, etc.
One way to do a semantic search is to look for related phrases on Google’s SERPs. If you search for something, you will see a section in the middle of the first page called “People Also Ask”. It contains questions and answers related to your search query. This trick is one of the best SEO tips for websites.
Pick relevant questions from this section and add them to your blogs. Provide content for the questions in detail. You can also use the questions to create an FAQs section at the bottom of your blog.
You also include phrases from the “searches related to” that appear at the bottom of the search results. That way, your blog is optimized max for SEO, and users who land on your blogs find everything they’re looking for or maybe more.
Another way to do semantic search is by searching for related questions and phrases using Ask the public tool. If you just enter the target keywords, you will get a list of questions that people ask on the search engines.
One of the problems that bloggers face is wondering about what topic to write on. Unless you’re an influencer or a famous blogger with thousands of followers. You can’t just write on random topics. That would be bad for SEO.
So write about things that have moderate to high search volume. The question is, where to find such topics?
Here are sites to find blog-worthy topics –
Permalink has a major effect on the search ranking of your posts. You can edit the blog post while writing. Enter the keywords in the permalink without making it look spammy. You can choose to edit by selecting the manual option.
Two things to keep in mind while editing the permalink –
Widen the labels rather than putting them into a single narrow category. Labels add density to keywords. If you’re posting about something and use only one specific label, you will miss out on many variations of keywords related to it. Using multiple keywords can add density to the whole post.
Labels also affect related post widgets in Blogger. If there are too many posts tagged with similar labels, it would affect the arrangement of articles in related posts.
Nofollow is an HTML attribute specified on hyperlinks to block search engines from crawling that link. In Blogger, you can select the HTML section of the post window and add rel=” no follow” attribute just after the URL.
Using plugins for blogging can greatly optimize your blogs and help you write better. You can install these plugins for blogging –
The first step and the most important strategy for any writer are to write for their audience. Or for the company’s audience, they are working for. This is the key to writing great content. Most writers when they’re starting out make the mistake of writing what they want. While the enthusiasm and the interest are good, you have to focus more on writing about what the audience wants.
People look to content when they want to find solutions to problems or find answers to their questions. If you are able to provide content for them, then you are likely to do well.
While writing any content, understand who your audience is and what kind of problems they are looking to solve.
Make keyword research your top priority for blogging. Research about all kinds of keywords and use them wisely in your content. Look into trending topics to write on which should give you an edge. See what kind of content works best for the topic. Blogs may not always be the best option. There are other ways to write – infographics, articles, eBooks, podcast scripts, etc.
Set a goal for each month. Work out a content calendar. Just blogging may not be enough. You will need to spare some time for content marketing. Share on social media, reach out to other bloggers, etc. Set a goal to earn a specific number of backlinks too.
So these are some of the best SEO tips for blogs that every blogger needs to know and follow religiously. Most bloggers forget to optimize their content for SEO and end up getting no traffic. Then they give up. But the truth is, if you’re going to be a successful blogger, knowledge of SEO is a must. You don’t need to have the technical knowledge, but just enough to get your blogs running well.
