Search engines are a powerful source of blog traffic.
In fact, it ranks highest among the top three sources of traffic important to a blog (1), closely followed by social media and email marketing.
So, optimizing your blog for search engines is crucial if you want your blog to drive sales. Blogging search engine optimization not only helps you get more organic traffic, but it also helps you attract a targeted audience who are more likely to be interested in your product and make a purchase.
Here, let’s take a look at the basics of blogging SEO and what you can do to ensure the success of your SEO strategies.
What is blogging SEO?
Simply put, blogging SEO refers to optimizing your blog’s content, website architecture, and technical backend for search engines.
Usually, this involves improving the user experience of your website visitors by providing them with accurate information about their queries as quickly as possible. Most common practices include improving the page load speed, adding appropriate hyperlinks, optimizing website tags for proper keywords, etc.
Optimizing your blog for search engines has several benefits for your website as a whole.
- A higher ranking on the SERPs brings more organic visitors to your website. More than 90% of people do not make it to page 2 of Google search results.
- Producing well-researched, high-quality content is rewarded by Google’s sophisticated algorithms. That, in turn, boosts your brand credibility and establishes you as an authority in your field.
- SEO is a long game. Unlike news, social media, and other forms of marketing that require active investment, SEO offers long-term visibility. Essentially, you can continue benefitting from a good result long after you’ve published the blog.
With the benefits of blogging SEO out of the way, let’s take a look at the best practices that have been tested over the years.
A. Keyword research
Keywords play a crucial role in SEO. Your target audience will use these terms to search for your product or service, so you need to know the exact words that will generate more clicks.
Several keyword research tools can help you get started. The most popular ones include:
- Google’s KW Planner
- Google Trends
- SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool
- Ahrefs’ Free Keyword Difficulty Checker
Never assume what the best keywords might be for a post. Also, make sure that each blog post on your website targets only one keyword. This way, search engines will know for sure that your blog is about that one topic.
B. On-page optimization
With keyword research out of the way, you will now need to focus on on-page optimizations.
You will need to familiarize yourself with the most ranking factors and make the necessary changes. Some of the most important steps include the following.
- Keywords in the trifecta of the post title, meta description, and the URL
- Write compelling meta descriptions containing the primary keyword
- Use headers and sub-headers effectively, making it easier for readers to skim
- Incorporate keywords naturally in the content, avoiding keyword stuffing
- Add and optimize images and multimedia elements wherever possible
- Use custom, evergreen URLs for each post
C. Content quality and relevance
Arguably, the most important ranking factor is high-quality content relevant to the search intent.
Your primary focus with your blog has to be creating original content that informs your audience how your product or service can be the solution to their pain points.
Conducting keyword research should give you an idea of what your target audience searches for in search engines. Take inspiration from what is already out there and provide a unique spin, incorporating your product or service and the relevant keywords.
To create a hierarchy of information, consider creating a network of internal linking between your posts. Internal linking helps you provide context to the information you are presenting and helps search engines better understand your website’s structure.
D. Technical SEO optimization
After on-page optimization, you need to optimize your website for the internet. Page loading speed and visual stability are essential ranking factors for Google. So, you need to ensure website accessibility and crawlability to ensure your page ranks on the SERPs.
After optimizing site speed and performance, work towards implementing a responsive design for mobile users. Nowadays, most people access the internet on their smartphones, so offering a better mobile experience is crucial for your website.
Also, ensure you are setting up proper URL structure and permalinks. The URL should not contain any junk, should include the primary keyword, and should be evergreen.
Since your blog will always be putting out new content, you can make it easier for Google to crawl and index your posts by utilizing XML sitemaps.
E. Off-page optimization
Backlinks send search results a signal that your post’s content is relevant and worth referring to.
Once upon a time, the number of backlinks a post had decided its ranking on the SERPs.
Today, search engine algorithms are much more refined. The quality of backlinks matters much more today than quantity, so you can no longer chase low-quality backlinks.
Apart from creating high-quality content, some other ways you can get relevant backlinks include:
- Guest posting on reputable websites
- Engaging with the blogging community
- Utilizing social media for promotion
F. Monitoring and analytics
Implementing an SEO strategy without tracking SEO performance is like shooting a dart in the dark.
Setting up Google Analytics and Search Console provides valuable insights into what is working and what isn’t, allowing you to make necessary changes whenever required.
Monitor keyword rankings and organic traffic to your blog. Follow keyword trends and update old articles to incorporate new keywords.
Analyzing user behavior and engagement metrics helps you make data-driven optimizations to your website and improve the overall user experience.
Final thoughts
With blogging search engine optimization, you can turn your website blog into a powerful lead-generation machine.
That said, search engine algorithms keep continuously changing to bring better content to the viewers. As the algorithms change over time, you will need to test and experiment with multiple SEO strategies to adapt to algorithm updates and changes.
Maintaining an SEO checklist and planning how you will implement various SEO blog strategies will help you improve your blog’s visibility, relevance, and overall success.