What do you expect when you write a blog?
You want more people to read it and follow your thoughts. But can you achieve this goal when your blog isn’t optimized and structured for readability?
No, it’s impossible unless you have a big audience who follow your words. It’s also said that when you write for search engines, you start compromising the quality of your content. But we as an SEO company totally disregard this fact. We believe, when you write for search engines, you increase its readability by adding life to the content. A blog that isn’t well-organized and optimized will attract less audience which can hinder your writing goals.
So, that’s why you should balance the quality of your content and SEO practices. It will boost your organic traffic and give you a competitive advantage over others. If you don’t know how to write an SEO-friendly blog post, these tips will help you out.
1. Structure Your Blog
Every successful blog starts with an outline. If you don’t know what you will cover in your blog, you’ll be stuck in the midst of it and fail to complete it. That’s why it’s important to start with a structure. So, divide your blog into three parts; introduction, body, and conclusion. Think about what you’ll write in the introduction and also mention the points you’ll write in the body.
Before you write a blog, create a table of content, and write it accordingly. Also, divide your content into paragraphs to increase its readability because of content without paragraphs bizarre your audience. They can leave your blog thinking it’s a long read. On the contrary, if you structure it with proper headings and paragraphs, you can grow engagement through your blog even if it’s a detailed post.
2. Research Keywords
When you write a blog knowing what your audience is searching for, you can come up with more specific solutions. Before you start writing, search the keywords for your blog. You can do it using Google Keyword Planner or take help from the suggestions Google shows when you search for the topic. You can also use SEO tools to find keywords with high competition.
After having the keywords, write your content but make sure you don’t overuse the keywords in your blog as keyword stuffing impacts the quality of your content.
3. Internal and External Linking
Linking your content to the internal and external sources helps Google in ranking your content. When you add internal links, you tell search engines that you have more authority on the content. Whereas external links add credibility to your content, let Google know that you have proof about the research you mentioned in the blog.
The SEO count increases when you link your content to internal and external sources. It gives weight to your words and also people can go for these links if they look for more information. This will help them to grasp more knowledge on the subject. It’s one of the best SEO practices.
4. SEO Title and Meta Description
SEO title and meta descriptions are the two most important elements of your blog. It tells the readers whether they should open the blog or not. These two appear in the search results page when the user searches for the topic. That’s why you should have a short and crisp SEO title that tells the reader what your blog is about.
A meta description is a short description that defines your blog. You should write it in such a way that the user understands the message he will get with your blog. It should summarize your blog in a few words. However, adding the focus keyword in both the title and description will increase the organic ranking of your blog.
5. Optimize Images
If there are images in your blog, you should also optimize it for search engines. One way to do it is to compress the images to avoid page loading. Second is to add alt text to the images so if the user came across the image only, he will know what the image is about through alternative text.
It’s better to use custom images instead of stock because custom pictures drive more traffic and make your content realistic and relevant. But if it’s hard for you to get the custom ones, you can go for stock images but do mention the source with the image so you don’t have the copyright issue later.
These are short and simple practices to create an SEO-friendly blog post. Other than these, if you want search engines to rank your blog, you should be regular in writing for your website, have a responsive and clean website and you should optimize every post for search engines. That’s how you will win great traffic with your blogs.
If you have more questions in your mind, feel free to drop it below and we shall chat with you.