SEO Blog Posts: The Ultimate Guide

Many people know that the largest contributing factor to your SEO is the written content on your website. However, there is only so much content you can write about your products and services before you start repeating yourself.

So how do you get more searchable content onto your website?

Blogs are a fantastic way to add more content to your site that can increase your target keyword density and improve your search page rankings whilst also providing interesting content to your potential customers.

Google search bots tend to favour well written and linked-to content that answers questions searchers are looking for. But how do you optimize your blog post so that you can maximize the ranking benefits?

We break it down in our definitive guide below.

1. Pick An SEO Smart Title

Try to put your priority keyword as close to the beginning of your Header Title as possible.

Typically Google puts more weight on words that are towards the beginning of any H1 title tag, which is obviously important for high quality SEO.

Also add “power words” into your title wherever possible. These are modifier words that impart a sense of urgency, usefulness or speed. For example “quick”, “easy”, “step-by-step”, “fast”.

This will encourage readers to click through to your content as it will appeal to their sense of convenience and desire for direct information.

Adding a number into the title can also improve CTR. Making a list or quoting a statistic in the title has been shown to increase chances of getting a click.

2. Keep Introductions Brief And Engaging

Readers generally want to dive right into the content they have just clicked on. They can get easily bored if introductions drag on for pages and pages.

Try to keep your introductions to less than 9 sentences and broken into shorter 1-3 sentence paragraphs.

This will keep readers interested and engaged without being turned off by a huge wall of text.

Using bucket brigades is another clever SEO tactic when writing any part of your content. These are short questions or statements that make readers want to read what comes next.

Examples would be:

• “But here’s the problem…”
• “So how do we do this?”
• “Here’s the deal…”

Any of these rhetorical or leading questions or statements will tempt readers to continue reading your content and decrease your bounce rate.

3. Keep Your Key Content Above The Fold

As mentioned above, readers want their key information straight away, not hidden behind lengthy introductions or large banner images.

Ensure your introduction and first paragraph are visible above the fold when a reader loads your page. The fold is the bottom edge of a website that is visible without the need to scroll.

This will keep users on your page long enough to begin reading your content and hopefully increase your time on page – an important SEO user engagement metric.

4. Use Multimedia

The majority of readers are visual learners, meaning they respond more strongly to facts and data presented attractively through visuals.

Images, graphs and videos all add value to your content and make it more shareable and engaging.

Including a well made infographic or image can increase the chances of your content being shared and circulated, which is a huge boost to your SEO efforts.

5. Use Your Keywords Within Reason

All SEO practices are typically geared towards ensuring a website ranks at number one for a given search keyword.

Whilst Google rankings used to be directly tied to keyword density in the past, the search bots have gotten more discerning in their reliance on keywords alone.

Use your keyword in your H1 tag and in at least one subheading with an H2 tag to get maximum weighting.

Pepper your keyword throughout your actual content, but don’t go overboard as you may get penalized for keyword stuffing.

6. Build Outgoing, Ingoing and Internal Links

Linking is another cornerstone of effective SEO and should be included in every piece of content that you write.

There are 3 types of crucial links:

Outbound Links

These are links you include in your content that direct readers to external websites that support what you are saying. Try to only link to credible websites with good authority in their particular field and ensure that the content is a niche match for yours.

Somewhat counterintuitively, try to avoid including your keyword in the anchor text of the hyperlink, as Google bots may consider it to be keyword stuffing.

Inbound Links 

These are the holy grail of SEO practices. An inbound link is when an outside website backlinks to your content, boosting your page’s authority.

Ideally, these backlinks will be coming from reputable websites with a high authority ranking in a similar niche to your own.

However, multiple backlinks from low quality sites can actually harm your SEO work, so make sure to check on who is linking back to you often.

Internal links

These are links within your content that link to other pages within your own website.

For example, you could link between service pages that are related or direct customers to a different product page.

This improves the overall usability of your website for users, as well as potentially imparting some authority between pages for improved rankings.

7. Write for your audience

The key to making your content useful and relatable is to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and write about things that would interest them.

Ensure you are striking the right tone of voice for your chosen audience. For example, the content you write for an audience of Millennials will read quite differently to content written for Baby Boomers.

If you are trying to target a particular geographic area, try to reference local events or institutions to make it more relatable and current for customers within those areas.

8. Use Graphs And Images To Convey Statistics

Statistics can add support to your content as well as make it more interesting and digestible to readers.

Just having the numbers written onto the page can be boring and cause readers to disengage. Try creating attractive and easy-to-read graphs to communicate the facts.

Pie charts and bar graphs can be used to effectively express complex statistics, whilst also enhancing visual learning potential for your readers.

Follow these tips and your blogging and content strategy will be fully SEO optimized and ready to bring in extra clicks and potential customers. Remember to keep posting blog content regularly and keep content evergreen. If you do, you can sit back and watch your position climb higher and higher.

Do you have any other tips for writing blog content for your website? Let us know in the comments below!