In the game of SEO, content is king. This has been said for years and in 2020, it’s still true. Gone are the days of buying hundreds of low quality backlinks, stuffing your page with keywords and getting ranked quick. Google and other search engines have now started to focus on promoting quality content that accurately addresses the intent behind the search.
As someone who does SEO or runs a business with a web site, it’s important that you understand how Google and other search engines think so that your website can have solid SEO resulting in a high ranking on the SERPs.
So how do you write SEO friendly blog posts? Here’s our quick guide to doing so.
How To Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
Start with structure.
Before you write a single word of your post, you need to figure out two things. First, what do you want to say, and second, how do you want to say it?
By starting first with what big idea you want to convey, you can build structure accordingly.
Start with a main idea, then take your supporting arguments or information for that idea and split it up logically.
For example, let’s say you have a dog website and you want to write about dog food. You might say that your main idea is about choosing the right kind of dog food. Then you go through how one would choose the right kind of dog food for their dog. Then, you will want to split that bit up into sections categorized by topic. Maybe you have one section where you talk about ingredients, another section where you talk about wet vs. dry, and another section where you talk about special diets.
Splitting your ideas up in a logical manner will help with readability and it will help you optimize headings later on.
Know your keywords.
Your blogs keywords aren’t necessarily going to be the same as the keywords your home page is optimizing for.
People are searching for information, specifically the kind of information you provide.
Open up Google Keyword Planner or your favorite keyword planning tool. When doing keyword research for a blog post, start with the main idea and see how many search terms are related to it. Then take a look at the traffic and competition.
Choosing which keywords you want to optimize for can be an inexact science, but for a blog post, choose keywords that are relevant to the information you’re providing, are relevant to your business, and are relevant to the people looking for the info you provide.
If you can, use keywords that are relevant to sections of your blog post. This way, you can have multiple secondary keywords for your blog post. However, these keywords should still be related to the main keyword.
Optimize your title, URL, and headings.
Your title will also be the main headline that people see in the SERPs when your link pops up. As a result, your title needs to not only be highly relevant to the search term, it also needs to grab attention and pique interest enough for the person searching to click.
Including your main keyword in your title is a must, ideally toward the beginning. The important thing is that people see that keyword in the SERPs. For WordPress sites, a plugin like Yoast SEO will help you see what your SERP entry will look like.
Your main H1 will often be the same as your title but they don’t need to be. Optimize your main H1 similarly to your title: include your main keyword in it.
Optimize your meta description and your media.
Your meta description is the description text that people see in the SERPs page.
Keywords in your meta description do not affect rankings, however it may affect your clickthrough rate on the SERPs. If your page hits the 1st page and more people click on your entry, it’s more likely to rise in the rankings.
Your media is important to optimize as well. Images, video, and links to other downloads should also have tags in them. Yoast SEO and other similar SEO plugins for WordPress make this easy: however if you don’t have these, you can do this using HTML
In Summary
- Content is king, and writing SEO friendly blog posts is mostly about making good content.
- A good, well-structured article is a more SEO friendly one.
- Keywords and keyword research are extremely important for making sure that you’re getting the right traffic.
- Optimizing your tags, meta description, and media are a key part of on page SEO.
