In this day and age, good writing isn’t good enough. You still have to be engaging, but now you also have to be optimised.
That may be a scary word for a writer. After all, nothing kills the creative process more than imagining your audience as being a creepy Google crawler.
But the good news is, with a little preparation and an awareness of the top 5 SEO blog tips, writing optimised blogs is much easier than you might think.
Why is it Important to Rank?’
As well as offering value to your audience and customers, the purpose of a blog is to drive traffic to your website – so in order to do that effectively it needs to show up in the search results, and in order to do that it needs to be optimised for SEO.
But optimising for SEO is more than just dropping the name of your business into every second sentence. The real key to good SEO blog writing is factoring in different strategies that work without straining your ability to write persuasively.
1. Keywords
Keywords are the most obvious method of ranking that comes to mind. But they can also be one of the most restrictive to write with if you don’t use them correctly.
Why Keywords are Important
Identifying the right keywords is essential because they comprise the words and phrases that help your website be found in search engines. Keywords are the foundation for all your SEO efforts, so it’s worth putting in some time to research and understand which SEO keywords are most relevant for your audience. Doing so could be the difference between your potential customers landing on your page, or your competitors.
SEMRush and Google Keyword Planner are great tools for discovering which keywords your audience are using when looking for you. Specifically, they help you to:
- Determine popular phrases and topics
- Identify search volumes for your topics
- Get an idea of how difficult it may be to rank for a topic
Optimise Further with LSI Keywords
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These keywords are terms that are semantically or conceptually related to your keywords. Note: these are not simply synonyms, they are associated words or phrases.
So for example, if you’re an accountancy firm, your LSI keywords might be tax preparation services, payroll administration, business plan or Xero.
Extending your research to LSI keywords and including them in your blogs will increase how likely Google is to display you to searchers. This is because Google looks at topics and the real meaning of keywords, rather than simply the combination of words or letters in your phrase.
Google wants to ensure that your content is valuable to its audiences, so the use of LSI keywords shows Google that what you’ve written is relevant and not just a page of keywords strung together to get a ranking.
Where to Include Your Keywords
There are a few key areas throughout your blog where Google will be specifically looking for keywords:
Page Title: You must include your top keywords in your title – no exceptions. This is the first place search engines will look to determine the relevance of your content. Specifically, you need to include it within the first 60 characters, because after that Google cuts the title off in the search engine results.
Headings: Where possible, include keywords in your headings. Make sure when you create headings and subheadings that the H1, H2 and H3 tags are in the code. This is usually done automatically by your website/blog building tool, but it’s worth checking your template to ensure your tags are set up correctly.
Header tags make it much easier and quicker for Google (and other search engines) to crawl and index your content, meaning your ranking and traffic will increase quicker.
Meta Descriptions: This is the text displayed by search engines underneath each link to show a preview of what the page contains. The search engine helps the user find the most relevant link by making the words that match the search query bold. So if you’ve included these keywords in your meta description your opportunity to be seen goes up.
URL: Make sure you edit your URL to be short and include your main keywords, while still being descriptive and comprehensible. This is a quick and easy way to make your blog SEO-friendly.
Image Alt Text: This is the text attached to your image. It turns your images into hyperlinked search results, so it’s another great way to be found in the search results.
Just remember, if the webpage fails to load, this is the text that will display in place of the image. So while using it for keywords is great, it still needs to actually describe the image.
2. Understand the Search Intent of Your Audience
Now you know your keywords, identify the primary ones and research what the searcher is looking for when typing in that word or phrase.
For example, if they’re looking for an accountant, they will likely type more than “Accountant” into the search bar. Perhaps they’ll type, “Best Australian accountant firm” or “Accountant fees”. Understanding this allows you to highly tailor your blogs to ensure you’re producing content they really want. Remember, if your content is what people are looking for, it will rank.
So perhaps your blog title might be, “The top 5 accounting firms in Australia” or “Is your accountant charging you too much?”
In order to do this effectively it’s important to understand your target audience. Specifically:
- What challenges are they currently facing?
- Where are they in their buyer journey?
- What questions do they have?
If we stick with the above example – a customer who doesn’t currently have an accountant and is not actively looking may not be interested in the above blogs, because the content assumes they’re already further along in the buyer’s journey.
Instead, they’re either ready to engage an accountant, or they have one but are seeking validation that they’re getting the right service.
In this instance your content will be more relevant if it educates them about the benefits of working with an accountant. So perhaps they’re searching for, “How to fill out a tax return”, in which case your blog title might be, “Take the stress out of your tax return”. This not only meets them where they’re at, it also answers their question and addresses their challenge – they’re stressed because they don’t know how to do their tax return.
This example demonstrates the power of taking the time to research exactly who the target of your blog is and what motivates them.
3. Include Quality Links
A great way for your blogs to rank higher on Google is to include a mixture of internal and external links.
Internal links connect the reader with other pages within your website. These could be blogs that offer more detail on a particular point or topic, or relevant pages that relate to what you’re talking about.
External links direct your readers to content that exists on another website. Ensure the websites you send them to are trustworthy; as well as reinforcing a point or providing additional information.
The point of sending your audience to an external website is to increase the credibility of your post and therefore get it higher up the rankings. Just make sure you aren’t linking them to your competitors!
Important Note: Make sure all your external links open in a new tab – you don’t want them to lose their place on your site or completely exit, because they might not return if it’s too difficult.
4. Optimise for mobile
Google has adopted mobile-first indexing for all websites. So the Googlebot is looking at mobile sites first and prioritising them before desktops. This means mobile sites will rank more highly.
Mobile optimisation is important for user experience (UX). Since a large proportion of browsing is now done on mobile phones, users must be able to read your content easily and have a pleasurable experience.
If they don’t you’ll lose them – which would be a real shame after you’ve done all this great work to make your blog SEO-friendly. In fact, 74% of users have said they’re more likely to return to a mobile-friendly site.
5. Give your visitors an outstanding experience
Website visitors are just like house guests – when they arrive, you want to make a good first impression, be a good host, and make sure they have a good time. Unlike guests in real life though, these are ones that you want to overstay their welcome.
If you write with this in mind you already stand a better chance of keeping them on your site for as long as possible. By keeping visitors engaged for longer, you not only deliver them maximum value, but you also look more credible in the eyes of Google.
Google looks at a couple of things in this regard:
Engagement rate: This is a rate drawn from time and event-based qualifiers that tells you how often a visitor stays engaged on your page. For a session to be an ‘engaged’ session, it needs to last at least 10 seconds and the visitor must interact with the page in some way. This can be done by scrolling, clicking, or navigating to another page.
Average engagement time: This is an average number based on the combined engaged session time of all your visitors. So each time your webpage was the focus of a user’s screen, this timer would start from the moment the user ‘engaged’ to the time that they navigated away from your site.
Content Structure
Here’s a few quick and easy tips regarding content structure to help create a great user experience for your blog audiences.
Most readers will skim your blog initially, to see if the content is relevant and relates to what they need. So it’s important you structure the body of your blog to capture their attention and motivate them to take the time to read it properly. You can do this in three easy ways:
An attention grabbing title: It’s important to craft your title in a way that stops your reader in their tracks and makes them want to click to find out more. Tailoring your title according to search intent will be a great place to start with this, as it will speak to them directly and be highly relevant to what they need at that time.
Compelling headings: Breaking your content up into small chunks makes it much easier on the eye for a reader, rather than a big mass of words with no space to breathe.
By giving each main chunk a descriptive and interesting heading, it lets the reader know as they skim what they can expect from each section and indeed the blog as a whole. If your headings capture their attention, they’ll read on and stay on your page longer.
Use bullet points: This is another excellent way to break up chunks of text and create an easy experience for your readers. They’re more likely to retain the shorter snippets of information and therefore continue to take value from your blog. As above, this will also contribute to a longer dwell time, and therefore greater potential for Google to bump you up the rankings.
Ready to get started with your SEO blogs?
As you can see, writing SEO-friendly blogs doesn’t need to be challenging once you understand these simple tips. The most important place to start is with your research. Give yourself plenty of time to truly understand the audience you’re targeting and what they’re searching for, then the rest will fall into place.
Of course, if SEO is a priority for you there are many other strategies you can employ to help climb your way up the rankings.
At RankUp, we are passionate about making sure you are visible to your consumers. If you’d like to find out more, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts.
