Optimization of your blog is vital to your inbound marketing strategy. It helps to rank your website in search results, increase organic traffic, and improve the readability of your site, ensuring the optimal experience for your customers and ensuring they stay on your website for longer.
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1. Choose your keyword of choice
Before you start, you must determine the exact keyword you’d like your blog to rank for.
Utilizing tools like SEMRush using Google’s Keyword Planner and Ahrefs will give you an understanding of what your people are looking for.
The keyword you choose to target must be relevant to the subject of your blog post and, ideally, a long-tail keyword. Although they might have smaller search volume, they’re also less crowded, meaning they are less complicated to rank high for.
After that, search for the keyword you want to target in Google to determine the kind of content you’ll have to compete against. For instance, you could discover that this is an instructional guide that contains many details that are difficult to comprehend. Consider the possibility of improving the content and creating guides that are more user-friendly and easy to understand.
You may also compete with many sources with good authority. If this case, you should consider using a different long-tail keyword instead.
If you realize that you have the top spot in the search results for your phrase, you might not have to optimize your blog. If the blog isn’t damaged, do not make it worse.
Follow our step-by-step guide to B2B SEO here. You can master search engine optimization for your company today.
2. Make sure you review the metadata
Title
The title tag is the primary item that shows up on Google result pages. It’s likely to be similar to the H1 tag. Title tags must inform readers what the blog is about. They should be informative and precise.
Moz suggests keeping 50-60 characters titles to avoid truncation SERPs. Also, you should include your desired keyword within your titles as soon as you are able. This will help Google index your blog more easily.
Description
Meta descriptions give a high-level description of your blog and the value that visitors will gain from studying it. It’s among the most crucial elements in determining if someone will visit your site or go to another place.
It should be appealing, informative, and easy to read to maximize impact. It is good to include the keywords you’d like to be ranked for in your description. Remember, you have only 160 characters. Each one of them should be counted.
Note: Google doesn’t always use the meta description assigned to it in its SERPs. It could draw information from the article when it believes it is more relevant to the searcher’s question.
URL
A quality URL is concise, precisely defines the site’s content, and contains the desired keyword.
3. Revise Your H1 along with sub-headings and your sub-headings
A well-crafted H1 draws readers to read on. When optimizing your blog, look over the title to make sure it accurately describes the contents and is compelling enough to entice readers to continue reading.
Here are some basic guidelines for creating engaging titles:
Keep it simple The phrase “10 Stats that prove Social Media Isn’t Just for Kids More impactful than “Think Social Media Is Just for Kids? Here are 10 statistics that will be sure to show you wrong.’
Ask a question. They can spark curiosity in a reader, particularly in an open-ended question that isn’t answered with an easy “yes” or “no”.
Make use of adjectives to give your H1s some flavour.
Add “power words” – Emotional or “power” words give your H1s a boost of oomph. For instance, ‘How to Conquer Writer’s Block in 6 Easy Steps’.
Alliterate can make your blog titles more interesting, e.g. ’10 top tips for improving your blog content’.
When you add numbers, they entice the reader by appealing to our subconscious need for the order of things and logic. Odd numbers do better than even numbers, and numbers tend to be more interesting than written numbers.
Make your content clearer H1s that include clarifying information is 38% more effective than those that do not. Try adding [guide] or an infographic on your H1 to let your readers understand what to be expecting.
Sub-headings
The average person will spend 37 seconds per day reading blogs. Thus, the easier you can make it for yourself to find the most essential details, the more beneficial it is.
Sub-headings are a great way to divide long portions of text. They should always be arranged in a clear structure that helps search engines comprehend the content.
H1 The name of the blog’s title. The title should be unique per post and must include a concise description of your blog’s content and the exact search term that matches it.
H2 – If H1 is the same as the book’s title, H2s refer to the chapters that comprise it. Use H2s to introduce the different areas of your website.
H3 Based on the topic, you may need to provide more detail in the H2 sections. Utilize H3s to break things into smaller chunks or to increase accessibility.
4. Make changes to the body copy
It’s also crucial to think about your body text when optimizing your blog article.
Technical/SEO
Target the keyword. Place it strategically in your blog posts, i.e. where it is sensible or natural to make it so. Try to incorporate it into the sub-headings of your article and your intro, and the conclusion.
New content. Include new sections if you discover any significant absences. For example, if optimizing an article on social media marketing in 2014, it’s an excellent idea to add an article on TikTok.
Outdated information. Replace outdated data with current and more pertinent ones.
Internal links. Seek out the opportunity to hyperlink to high-value internal pages that support SEO. If the page is within the topic cluster, link to the pillar’s content. If it’s part of the service page, then link to that.
Broken links. Take out or replace broken links.
Alt text. Make sure every image contains alt text and that it is, in fact incorporating your desired keyword. This can help Google to understand the intent of the image. Screen reader users can also utilize alt text to convey the meaning of an image to visually impaired viewers.
Readability
- Syntax. Reduce long or complicated sentences. Make sure you include missing punctuation points or change the structure of sentences to get the idea across faster.
- Grammar. Make sure you correct any spelling errors or typos. Also, fix any issues in punctuation. Check the blog using Grammarly to identify any remaining mistakes.
- Bullet lists. You might consider making lengthy pages into bullet lists. This can improve the readability of your content and aid in getting the featured excerpt on Google.
- Passive voice. Change passive voices to active. An active agent is more comfortable reading and is more authoritative. E.g. Replace “cloud costs can be cut by …” cloud costs can be reduced by “you can lower clouds costs …”
Consistency: Check US vs UK spelling, title vs sentence case, etc.
Visual elements. Include videos, images, diagrams, and others to divide long and dense pieces or help present a complicated subject much more quickly.
5. Insert relevant CTAs
Every blog should have an active call informing readers what they should do when they’ve completed reading. We recommend adding a pertinent link text to call for action about 1/3 of the way to get to those who don’t make it to your blog and a call-to-action banner at the end of the page.
Get started enjoying the benefits of blog optimization.
Writing blogs is a significant time commitment; therefore, don’t let them sit idle. Making sure you update and optimize your blog means that you’ll be able to increase the value of your blog and experience even better results.
