Are you too enthusiastic about something that you want to share it with the rest of the world? Are you confident you’ll be able to write it down? Kudos!! You can become a smart blogger. Wait, wait, there will be thousands of blogs on the internet with the same plot as yours. How will you compete with them and successfully reach your readers?
How can you make your blog stand out, engage your readers and drive traffic?
All you got to do is blog SEO, which is the nucleus of this blog too.
How do Search Engines Work?
To have a better grasp, let me give you a quick rundown on the working of search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Search engines crawl web pages, traveling through different websites using Bots and collecting information about them. The collected data is then indexed as per the nature of the content they share. Search engine algorithms consider different ranking factors and then analyze each page. Finally, the pages are displayed accordingly, as per the ranking. It is basically an unbiased process same for all the web content, including websites, research articles, blog posts, etc.
Search Engine Optimization of a Blog
How to beautify or strengthen your blog post, making the search engines give it a higher ranking in organic search results? The strategy used for this is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
So, what is SEO of a blog?
Search Engine Optimization of a blog is the process of using specific strategies to improve the likelihood of your blog’s ranking on search engines. This helps increase the number of visits to your blog and improve ranking in search results.
Let’s now seek the answer on how to do the SEO of blogs and the tactics to follow.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is a vital page-level factor in blog SEO. The backbone of a blog is formed by the focus keywords that are words or short phrases informing the search engines about the content. You can use long-tail or short-tail keywords that are relevant to your content. Long-tail keywords, according to experts, should be employed when doing the SEO of blogs since they score better.
How to do keyword research?
- Pretend you’re a layperson trying to make a query using a search engine.
- Keeping track of your competition and their top-ranking keywords will aid you in your analysis.
- Find a distinct keyword relevant to your content using a competent keyword research tool.
- The focus keyword you choose should have a lot of searches in the communities you’re targeting.
- Keywords that are trending among the target audience should be given priority.
Collect related keywords for your content once you’ve picked the best focus keyword. Variants, alternate words, or related terms that swirl around the primary keyword form the related keywords or LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords. Though there are controversies on Google considering these keywords as a ranking factor, they are utilized by many bloggers while constructing a blog’s content.
The keywords should be interspersed throughout the content, with the focus keywords getting more attention. This is also a topic of controversy in the SEO world. However, to do SEO for blogs, adequate keyword density should be maintained without unnecessarily stuffing the keywords.
Blog Title
The blog title is not just about naming your blog. It should be catchy, garnering attention and generating curiosity in the readers’ minds. The blog title should market your blog in search engine results, social media sites, etc. by increasing the click-through rates. SEO rankings of your blog will drop down if your blog title does not stand out in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and get clicks.
How to frame a search engine optimized blog title?
- The blog title should preferably have your focus keyword.
- High-priority related keywords can also be added if it reads natural.
- The blog title should be short, not exceedingly more than 60 characters, with a power word or an emotional trigger.
- Appropriate negative phrases and usages can be included.
- The keywords should appear preferably in the first part of the title for better visibility.
Meta Description
A meta description is an HTML attribute that summarizes the content of a webpage. It is an essential factor in a blog with SEO. Though meta description is not a ranking factor, it helps increase the traffic and CTR of your blog. Experts suggest that meta description should
- Mirror your blog content.
- Not exceed 160 characters.
- Include the focus keyword that you want your blog to rank for.
- Contain a call-to-action (if applicable).
Google may also generate a description for your web page completely different from the meta description you submit, depending on the search query.
Uniqueness of the Content
The uniqueness of the content without plagiarism is vital for the SEO of the blog. The University of Oxford describes plagiarism as “Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgment”. Duplicating content or making a clone of already existing content puts you at danger of being ranked lower by the search engines.
Another strategy that can be used in blog SEO is a syndication of the content. You give a third party the permission to post the complete blog or a part of your blog on their site content. Content syndication helps to gain referral traffic and reach more audiences. Paid syndication, free syndication, and self-syndication are some of the methods used for increasing the SEO performance of your blog with syndication technique.
However, make sure that the syndicated content does not outrank your original blog content, and the original blog source is mentioned on the third-party website. Another sore point in content syndication could be when the search engines consider it as duplicate content, which could affect the SEO performance of the original blog.
Webpage Design
The design of your webpage is a crucial factor to boost the performance of your content and ranking. The webpage should be professionally designed for better ranking by the search engines. Suitable HTML tags needed throughout the blog content as page title, description, meta tags, subtitles and alt texts.
- The web page can be divided into H1, H2, H3 and H4 tags, depending upon the flow of your blog content.
- Make sure that the page loading speed is desktop and mobile-friendly.
- Use short and meaningful URLS that depict the subject of the content. It helps in the SEO of blogs to a greater extent.
Visuals
Research reports that when a piece of content is linked with an image, humans are 65 percent more likely to recall it even after three days. Visual content always enhances the blog SEO and helps the reader generate curiosity about the content.
Images, infographics, memes, GIFs, and videos can enhance engagement in the readers and also the SEO performance. Apart from the SEO aspect, visuals help the reader quickly understand complicated concepts and statistics.
Readability
“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing”-Jardiel Poncela.
While scripting the blog, you should consider the reading level of the community you are targeting for. Your target audience’s reading age should be taken care of when you pick each word for your content. You may be an expert in your industry, but not everyone will comprehend all terminologies.
The content should be simple and without limiting your audience. Using complicated, and wordy sentences would make the readers feel that the blog is hefty. This will reduce the dwell time of the reader in your content and will affect the traffic and CTR.
Inbound Linking
A link, often known as a hyperlink, is a clickable object that leads you from one webpage towards the next. For Blog SEO, you can use inbound or internal links, with an anchor text that navigates the reader to another webpage on your website. This helps gain traffic to another blog and engages the reader to stay longer on your website.
Outbound Linking
Another strategy is the use of outbound or external links, where your blogs navigate to a related, reputable webpage of a third-party website. Natural Links from high-quality and reputable web pages would definitely be an SEO asset to your blog unless it diverts the reader from your webpage. Link quality and link theme are the vital factors to be considered while providing outbound links for SEO of blogs.
Mobile Usability
Search engine optimization of blogs for mobile devices is another tactic to boost SEO performance. Smartphones are used by a majority of the readers to follow their favorite bloggers and websites. Make sure that your website and the webpages are smartphone-friendly, engaging the mobile readers and subscribers.
The content of the blog should be designed in such a way that the mobile users do not find any readability issues. For instance, the Meta description should not exceed 120 characters for mobile search. The entire content should be visible on the mobile screen for better reach and engagement in mobile readers.
Spending hours and putting effort into trending content should result in enough visitors. Blog SEO is the buzzword for giving your blog a makeover and ensuring that it reaches the largest possible audience of internet users. The optimal ways to accomplish SEO for blog posts range from choosing the right keyword to constructing an appealing blog title to efficient backlinking.
SEO blogs with high-quality content will rank higher in the search engines, attracting the audience you’re looking for. Provide the audience with the answer to the question they are interested in. Assist them in forming an opinion on the subject. Present your suggestions and respond to the issue in an SEO-friendly manner.
Bear in mind that SEO is a double-edged sword, and using any black hat techniques to enhance SEO performance can negatively impact your blog. Constantly adapt ethical practices like content recency and including recent and updated data to keep your content fresh and live.
I hope that this blog has given you some insight into the search engine optimization of blogs and supplied you with some blog SEO tips. It is the right time to talk blog SEO. Reach out to us with your comments, feedback, and questions.
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