Introduction
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about optimizing your digital presence to align with a search engine’s algorithms for SERP rankings. The most effective way to do this is by publishing relevant content on your blog that has the right keywords your consumers are using to search for your products and services. While this isn’t the end of what needs to be done, it definitely is important, because a Think With Google data recently found that 39% of online purchasers are influenced in their buying decisions by content that is relevant.
Starting here, giving your consumers relevant content, and employing certain SEO techniques, is bound to help you optimize your websites better in accordance with search engine requirements. Let’s see what the best SEO services companies recommend as best techniques to SEO-optimize your blog.
Tips to Optimize Blog
Let’s now explore some highly recommended techniques to SEO-optimize blogs on your website.
Keyword Research Based on User Interests
It is a dangerous SEO practice to go with gut feeling in deciding topics for content that goes on your website. It is a hit or miss thing; in the long term, it doesn’t pay off. It is best to first do thorough keyword research and analyze the results to know what your consumers are searching for, what they are interested in reading about, and the terms they are using to search for it. Creating content strategy around these lines proves to be much more profitable.
Use Latent Semantics Indexing Keywords
Keyword research reveals hundreds of keywords and phrases that users type in the search bar to get access to content. It isn’t possible (or lucrative) to utilize all of these in your content. The next step thus constitutes looking for the right keywords, that is, the ones with high search volume but low competition.
Leverage these keywords to then search for semantic variations (“Related Searches”) in any search engine and begin crafting content around them.
Use SEO Friendly Blog Titles
The first thing your users see on search results is the title of your blog. It is of dire importance to choose a relevant, communicative title that clearly conveys what the blog is about; it serves two purposes:
- The users know off the bat what information they would be getting through your blog
- The search engines measure the relevance of your content with respect to search queries entered by users
Try using your focus key phrase in the blog title, and its semantics match what the users usually punch in.
Link Internally
Blogging as a habit gets your website to a point where it is rich in shareable content. Utilizing internal linking to bring the older articles back into relevance works wonders to retain the traffic on your website.
While publishing a blog, see if any older articles are related to the topic and provide internal links to them. For example, for a blog titled “SEO for Blogs”, you can link internally to “On-Page / Off-Page SEO” as well if you already have that resource on your website.
Include Media
Media, like images, videos, infographics, communicate more in a highly effective manner. In fact, these days, media has become the preferred method of consuming information (a lot of people are resorting to podcasts and short videos for gleaning information of interest). While creating content, ensure that there is relevant media attached along with that summarizes the post. This also gets the search engine to rank your content higher on the search results, while also working to retain an audience on your website.
Include Meta Description
Meta Descriptions, while a thing of dispute between professionals, are still an important thing that need to be published for search engines and website crawlers. It is a short description (about 30 words) of what your entire blog is about. Not only does it tell the users what they would be getting from your post, but also helps search engines measure the relevance of your content pertaining to the query searched for. It can help you improve rankings when focus keywords are used in meta descriptions.
Keep Blogs Simple to Read
If you wish for your webpage to rank higher, publish content that has a good reading score. Blogs that are easily understood are prioritized by search engines and given higher ranking. It is known that with digitalization, users have become impatient, and it takes them a few seconds to decide whether or not a blog is worth their time. Make this time count and communicate in the simplest words what your blog is about.
Organize Your Content Using Categories and Tags
It is absolutely essential to understand the difference between categories and tags. While categories act as an umbrella of topics under a subject, tags are individual subjects that you talk about in your blogs. Organizing your content using suitable categories and tags enables search engines to better crawl your website and index the content. It also helps users to efficiently navigate to relevant content on your website.
A third benefit of using categories and tags appropriately comes directly to you – by enabling you to keep your web content sorted for updates, revisions, additions, etc.
Write Comprehensive Content
Creating a post that acts as an exhaustive resource of information regarding a single topic helps boost your SERP significantly. Search engines hold such content in great regard, as it acts as a single source of detailed information on a topic. Including all the semantic variations of a keyword in this article helps make it richer for SEO. For example, instead of generically talking about the benefits of aloe vera, create separate, detailed blog posts of its benefits for the face, hair and the digestive tract. That way, you would be creating a great repository of information on the subject, “Benefits of Aloe Vera”.
Refresh and Optimize Older Posts
Blog posts aren’t meant to be forgotten after publishing. To ensure that you are getting the highest possible footfall on your websites, all your posts need to stay updated – and that includes the older posts as well. If there has been information recently that has changed facts or new developments have occurred, it is important to leverage the newer keywords and update your older posts.
Another way to keep your older posts alive is to share them on relevant social media threads from time to time.
Conclusion
SEO optimization isn’t something you do in one go – it is a practice that is built and honed. Ultimately, the true benefit of SEO optimized blogs is realized when all the practices come together to form a habit that pays off in the long term.