Updated August 2018

Like all other types of writing, creating a blog post that is engaging, detailed, and well-researched is a skill. To maintain the interest of your audience, you should pay close attention to the structure of your copy and write in a way that appeals to your target audience.

You can help readers grasp the gist of your posts by providing proper headings and clear paragraphs. People are more inclined to share an online piece if they understand the text; thus, increasing your rankings.

For some marketers, however, writing to grab the audience’s attention and creating posts for SEO purposes are two contradictory goals.

While it is true that for a useful, SEO-friendly blog post, the key phrases you want to be searched for should be placed prominently within the blog, using keywords too often, also known as keyword stuffing, can severely damage the quality of your blogpost.

Popping the web

There are literally thousands of articles with contradictory SEO tips for bloggers who want to gain authority. So, when it comes to showing up higher in search results, it becomes really difficult for bloggers to decide what to do.

It seems like the go-to tactics that become popular one day, become absolutely non-functional a few days later.

However, despite the numerous alterations to Google’s algorithms, some of the best practices for SEO have remained consistent over the years.

If you want to avoid ‘marketer’ anxiety and sleepless nights because of Google’s changing algorithms, here are 7 highly effective SEO tips that every blogger should follow. We’re sure these will make you much more confident about your posting efforts.

1. Think before you write

Think carefully about the message of your text. Which central question does your blogpost answer and what do you want to tell your readers? Before you begin writing a piece, you must pick a relevant topic.

The gist can be generic to start with. For instance, if you are a plumber, you might start out by thinking that you want to write about holed pipes and leaky faucets. Eventually, you might come up with alternative ways of approaching that topic to help you focus on your writing. A working title is specific, guiding your post so you can start typing.

Moreover, what is the main purpose of your text and what do you want your visitors to do at the end of the page? For example, if your followers are millennials looking to start their own business, you probably don’t need to provide them with information about getting started with social media.

And that’s because the majority of millennials already know how to use social. Your blog might, however, aim to give them pointers on how to adjust their approach on social media from casual to business-savvy, or networking-focused.

That kind of tweak saves you and your work website from highlighting generic stuff to the stuff your readers actually want. Make sure to write down the answers to these questions before you start writing.

It is important to remember that on top of being a social media whizz, posts should be well-thought out and proofread before posting. Think about posts, for example, of politicians that tweet a misspelling on a photo caption. Other major mistake you can make is not knowing how and when to use a hashtag. In order to avoid any kind of misunderstanding with your readers, make sure to check word choice and anything that could ruin the image of your brand or online business.

2. Title your posts aptly

When you first start blogging, you might think with nailed the blog post titles that you’ve come up with. Sure, they can be great, but the problem occurs when nobody understands what the posts are about from the title.

If by any chance one of your posts does appear in Google search results, would anyone want to click “The Eye of the Donkey” when searching for “natural remedies to burn body fat”? Yeah, probably not.

We are not saying that your blog post titles should be monotonous, but make sure that they convey the relevant message.

The blog post title should let a person know exactly what they’ll get from the blog, leaving behind no secrets or mysteries for the readers. Search engine robots know what a post is about because the title gives the mystery away. You will have enough time to get cute and witty in the blog post. However, the deciding title of the piece is not the time.

3. Make a structure

Start your write-up by creating a clear structure. Every post should contain some form of introduction to your topic. When your content is aptly organised, it will be vividly reflected in the layout of the entire article. The write-up will have the headings, subheadings, relevant paragraph breaks, and maybe a bullet point or two. All of these aspects will provide flow for the reader, making it easy for them to skim and digest content.

Here is the kind of standardised model you should follow:

• Setting the stage for discussion
• Making your point. Explain it.
• Making your next point.
• Do this for as many points as you have.
• Wrapping up the article with a call to action.

The first sentence of a write-up is the most essential. After all, viewers tend to read the ‘core sentence’ or every new paragraph as they’re scanning through the text. Chances are that search engines will play close attention to these sentences, in order to determine the topic of the blog post. If you’re writing a well-structured article and staying on topic, your keywords will come up naturally in many core sentences.

The organization of your website helps users find the information they’re looking for in the fastest way possible. This should be your primary goal as a site owner – helping users understand what the website is about and to convince the bots that it is a high quality site suitable to rank higher in their index.

Pen down whatever you want to write in all these three sections. Once you have a kind of summary of your post, the real writing can begin.

4. Choosing the right keywords

Choosing the right keywords for your piece is a topic that could span a book. The basis of it though is that you want to think of a phrase users would use to search for content. In the case of this post, it might be ‘SEO tips’. That would be the main keyword we are targeting with this write-up.

That means along with being present in the post title; it should also appear in the content a couple of times. The main reason for this is letting the search engine robots know that your post is relevant to a specific search query.

For example, if you’re writing about fat loss, you need to ensure that you’re mentioning that in your post. If the only mention of ‘fat loss’ is in the post title, then you probably won’t rank very well.

Here’s how you can use Long Tail Pro to find those keywords,

5. Text images

Indeed, we can do a lot of stuff with computers today. We have ways for rockets to land on ships and self-driving cars to take us places. Unfortunately, search engine robots don’t do well on reading images, and why should they?

Majority of the stuff they consume is text and people with disabilities cannot view images via their screen readers. While images are exciting to add to your posts, don’t use them to represent text content.

Well-chosen images can really strengthen the flow of your message. You shouldn’t forget to give those images good alt attributes: also known as alt tags and title tags. Alt-tags tend to strengthen the message across towards various search engine spiders, improving the accessibility of your website. The alt and title attributes of any image are usually referred to as alter text or title tag even though they are not technically tags.

The alt tags describe an image and its function on the domain. So for instance you have an image that is used as a button to purchase product Y, the alt text would say ‘button to buy product Y’.
Each image on a blogging site should have an alt text. Not just for SEO purposes but also for the visually impaired. The latter group would otherwise won’t know what the image is for. On the other hand, a title attribute is not needed. While it can be useful in most cases, leaving it out shouldn’t be a problem. Headings should remain headings, and not become fancy graphic banners.

6. Use Webmaster Tools

One of the easiest things you can do as an SEO blogger is to add your website to Google Search Console.

With this service, Google provides you with an opportunity to analyse your blog from an outsider-lens – how it appears in the search results, how many people click your links, what position it holds, etc.

This information can be extremely vital for your blogging efforts as it removes all guesswork, giving altering perspectives into how Google treats certain aspects of your blog management. The process does take a bit of time to understand, but it’s important to have it installed from the early days.

7. Link internally

Imagine someone building a house where none of the rooms are connected. To get to each room, you have to walk all the way out and walk into another door. Seems pretty daunting, doesn’t it?

Well, that is exactly how some of us treat our websites. The only internal links on your site are found in the sidebar or navigation. Search engines know about those links and don’t pay much attention to them. They want to see the links in the actual content, so if there is a nice time to link to an older write-up, do it.

Avoid falling into the trap of thinking that once you have written something and conducted the initial promotion, you are done.  You should still be aiming to send readers back to the old content most, if not all, of the time – especially if it’s evergreen content that never goes out of style. Internal links are a great way to do that.

Not only do internal links make outreaching for  link opportunities easier, but your readers take more from your content.  

Conclusion

As discussed earlier in the post, search engine algorithms are constantly changing.

The world of SEO, therefore, is not something you can learn about once and become a professional. Becoming proficient in the SEO blogging business takes time, and we hope that the tips mentioned in this article will help you jump-start the on-page optimisation of your own blog.  

About the Author

Alycia Gordan is a freelance writer who loves to read and write articles on healthcare technology, fitness, and lifestyle. She is a tech junkie and divides her time between travel and writing. You can find her on Twitter: @meetalycia

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