If you have reached a standstill regarding growing organic traffic to your website, this guide will provide some ideas to boost your blog SEO.
What do we mean by optimising a blog for search engines?
When you put a blog on your website to boost organic traffic, you must consider three aspects: writing, optimising and publishing.
Getting these three things right can ensure you boost your rankings in search engines, known as SEO.
Perfecting blog Seo involves:
- Keyword Research
- Writing quality blogs
- Optimising content for SEO
- Developing backlinks
Building Your Organic Traffic
Writing a great blog is pointless if it doesn’t attract an audience. You need to earn traffic if you want to grow your business.
Visitors attracted by a blog will boost your business by:
- Growing your audience and potential customer base
- Establishing your expertise in your sector
- Growing newsletter signups
Our Top Blog SEO Ideas
1. Use Keyword Research to Reach Your Desired Audience
Writing blogs about the topics your potential audience wants to know more about makes sense.
Keyword research enables you to discover the keywords people are searching for in the subjects relating to your sector, service or product.
There are various tools to make keyword search easier, such as Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.
Always start with a broad keyword relating to your niche. Then analyse the results by looking at appropriate metrics such as search volume and keyword difficulty.
Newer blogs should focus on keywords that are easier to rank for.
2. Understand your Search Intent
Understanding the intent of the searcher is vital for creating successful blogs.
Think about what your searchers are looking for in the way of answers to their questions.
There are various ways to impart information:
- Listicles
- How to guides
- Comparisons
- Definitions
The simplest way to determine the most appropriate format is to analyse your competition. Simply ask the question and look at the top-ranking posts.
3. Focus on Quality Content
Quality can be challenging to define. However, some simple strategies meet Google’s advice for quality content.
- Clear structure – short paragraphs, clear headings and subheadings
- Easy to read – insert illustrations and visuals to break up text
- Unique approach – use new ideas to stand out
- Using expert opinion – will help to establish your brand
4. Carry Out On-Page SEO
On-page Seo helps Google to categorise and rank your content.
Title tag – include your target keyword to make the post relevant to anyone who clicks on it.
Meta description – A persuasive description ensures searchers click on the post when it appears in their search results.
URLs – short and descriptive to let searchers know what to expect
H1 tag – include your target keyword
Target keywords – should be used throughout the blog but only in a natural way.
Internal links can lead your audience to other relevant content and keep them on your site for longer to increase the chance of a conversion.
Alt Text on images – helps images to rank in SERPS.
5. Ensure your Blog is Easy to Read
You want readers to read your blog, not bounce away, so checking that it is easy to follow is vital.
- Use Subheadings (H2-H6)
- Use Visuals, e.g. images, illustrations, graphs, GIFS, videos and infographics.
- Short sentences
- Short paragraphs
- Bullet points or numbered lists
- Writing that flows with simple vocabulary to meet the needs of your audience, e.g. write like a conversation rather than in an academic way unless your desired audience is also a technical expert (i.e. some B2B)
6. Optimise Technical SEO
Google must be able to crawl your content to index your blogs and rank them.
Visitors will bounce if your published content has technical issues, such as being slow to load.
You can use an audit tool to check the crawl rate of your content and rectify any problems you discover.
7. Build Backlinks
Backlinking is one of the more technical aspects of blog SEO but can prove the most helpful in improving rankings.
One way to build backlinks is to find broken links on your competitors’ websites. Contact the site owner that is linking to them and suggest your content as a replacement.
A backlink tool can make this a speedy job.
8. Keep Content Updated
Old blogs can easily drop in the rankings as the content becomes outdated or keywords change.
Building a schedule to ensure blogs are checked and updated if necessary when they reach a certain age is a good idea.
You can check performance using an organic research tool to look at analytics for organic traffic.
You may not need to rewrite an old post completely. Focus on:
- Updating facts
- Removing irrelevant parts
- Refreshing search intent
If your business needs support with improved content and blogs, contact us at SEO and Web. We have a proven track record of delivering outstanding SEO and digital marketing results.
