Blog Writing With SEO Best Practices
One of the most fun styles of content writing is blogging. Not only does blogging allow you to show off your voice and style, but it also lends itself to creative and intriguing topics. Of course, you still need your blog to communicate information that is relevant to your target audience. You also need your blog to reach that audience, and while your blogs are sure to be amazing, that alone does not have the ability to drive readers to your content. However, search engine optimization, or SEO, does. Below are four tips and tricks on blog writing with SEO best practices.
Choose Your Topics Wisely
Blogs should be targeted toward your audience. When thinking about what kinds of topics to write about, you should always default to what information your audience needs. Now, this does not mean that you can’t have fun with your topics. No one wants to read the same types of blog posts over and over again. Therefore, you should aim to put your own spin on your topics and focus on what you can add to the conversation.
Gil Reich expresses a similar idea in his article, “The Zeroth Law of Writing for SEO,” at Moz. Reich explains that your content should align with the zeroth law of SEO which means that your titles should be the answer to a potential search question. In doing so, your articles will be more likely to rank higher and thus be seen by more of your audience. While this can be challenging, focusing your content on what is likely to be asked helps focus your content to meet your readers’ needs.
Select Relevant Keywords Before You Start Writing
Selecting a relevant keyword for your articles is critical to the effectiveness of your optimization. When writing a blog, it can be helpful to have an idea of what keyword you want to optimize your blog for before you start writing. An easy place to start is to look at your title. Choosing a keyword phrase directly from the title or one that is close to the title, also aligns with Reich’s approach of the zeroth law. In doing so, you will save yourself some work down the line, however, make sure it is the best keyword phrase for your blog.
By knowing your keyword phrase before you start writing, you set yourself up for a more seamless integration of your keyword into your blog post. The best way to incorporate your keyword phrase is to have it spread out evenly throughout your blog post. Typically, you want to have your keyword phrase in your blog at least three times. For a shorter blog, around 600 words or less, you could get away with only two times. However, for the best optimization, you should have your posts be over 300 words, even better if they are at least 600 words.
Now, you can always alter or change your keyword phrase when you are optimizing or if you want to change it further down the road if you find a better keyword. By having a clear idea of what you want your audience to take away from the article, you can set yourself up for choosing the best keywords for your blog post.
Write Compelling Content
Compelling content goes hand-in-hand with SEO. Once you get your audience to your blog post, you need to keep them there with your quality content. If your content does not match up to your readers’ expectations of content and quality, you could lose credibility in their eyes. Therefore, make sure your content is creative and targeted towards your audience.
All too often, content becomes repetitive. It is too easy to repeat the same ideas in different ways. However, you can break this cycle! Consider how you can add to the conversation instead of how you can rephrase what has already been said. Of course, there will be information that objectively cannot change, but you can take a different approach to the content itself and how your present it. Having compelling content will be one of the best ways to boost your SEO and relationships with your target publics.
Optimize Your Blog
Once you have your blog written and are set to publish it, you can begin to optimize your blog. If you already have a keyword phrase in mind, this process will be easier for you. Your keyword phrase should be the beginning of your SEO title, which is what appears when your article comes up on Google. You should include your keyword phrase in your meta description, headings and throughout your blog post as well. Now, you also want to make sure you do not over-optimize your content. Having a balance between your keyword phrase and content is critical to having effective SEO.
Internal and external links also help boost your SEO. Consider including points from a renowned expert in the field to boost your blog posts credibility. You should also link to your pages or other blog posts for relevant topics mentioned. In doing so, you are pushing your reader to further interact with your content.
Blog writing is both fun and challenging, especially when you tie in SEO. By following these four tips, you will be able to optimize your blog posts and boost your content’s effectiveness overall.
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