Best Practices for Optimizing Your Blog Posts for Search Engine Rankings
Blogging about your business, and related topics, is fun and prosperous!
Blog writing is both an art and a science, which equates to a beautiful dance. When you write a blog, you’re expressing the passion you have for whatever it is you are providing to the community. However, you need to know how to attract the readers who will become your loyal customers.
While you don’t have to be an amazing writer, you must be able to convey information in an organized manner or people will not read it. On the flip side, you can be a talented writer, but nobody will read your blog when it isn’t showing up in popular search results.
To attract the most followers, you must optimize your blog posts using proven SEO methods. Otherwise, your blog will fall into a dark hole and the energy your spent writing will be for naught.
High Ranking SEO is Achieved Through Proven Blog Creation Strategies
Adhere to the following trusted techniques to get your blogs prominently featured in search engine results.
Use trending keywords. The right keywords are essential to getting your blog to the top of search results. When popular keywords are used in blogs, businesses have the potential to generate 67% more leads than businesses that don’t publish keyword-optimized blogs.
The best way to accomplish this is to start researching with root keywords. These are common words or phrases that allude to what your business offers, in general. For example, if you provide residential cleaning services, you want to begin your research using the term ‘house cleaning’.
After plugging the root keywords into a keyword tool such as Google Keyword Planner, continue searching for long tail keywords that expand upon your root keywords until you find the popular words or phrases that best match what your business provides.
Choose an interesting topic. Now that you’ve identified the keywords and phrases that will help your blog achieve the best possible place in SEO, it’s time to choose a topic for your blog. Start by pondering your audience’s interests.
Some blog topics will be easy to identify, but once you’ve run out of ideas, don’t hesitate to see what your competition is bringing forth. However, this technique is only for generating ideas. You’re going to have to put your own spin on the topic by taking it in a different direction. You can even use your competition’s topic as a springboard for brainstorming sub-topics that they haven’t blogged about yet.
When marketers want to identify subject matter that will gain the most readers, they will often use a blog topic generator to hit the bull’s eye.
Perfect your title. A powerful title includes at least one popular keyword and a hook. The most successful blog headlines begin in one of the following ways.
1) Start with a number, such as “5 Ways to…”
2) Speak to the reader by beginning with ‘You’
3) Provide an education by beginning with ‘How to…’
All three of these techniques are proven to grab readers’ attention.
Understand the importance of keyword location within the headline. Just because you’ve used a keyword in your title doesn’t mean it’s going to be seen in search results. Google cuts off headlines after 50 to 60 characters. Avoid crushing the chances of your blog being clicked by positioning your keyword at or near the beginning of the title. By doing this, your blog is primed for high ROI. When a keyword is placed at the end of the title, people may skip over your blog in the search engine results because they can’t see that it’s directly related to their pursuit.
Also, make sure your subtitles are keyword optimized to greatly increase your blog’s chances of getting highly qualified with SEO.
Create an outline of the blog. While this may seem like a time-wasting activity, it’s an important step toward optimizing your blog. When a blog is well organized and includes subtitles and short paragraphs, search engines will push it to the top of results.
Once you have a clear and concise outline with subtitles that include popular keywords, it’s time to write!
Strategically position keywords throughout your blog. To achieve a high SEO ranking, make sure to have your keywords in the following places: once in the title tag, once in the opening paragraph, within most of the subtitles, scattered throughout the text, and once in the closing paragraph.
Pro Tip: If you write blogs weeks or months in advance, you may want to run your keywords through Google Keyword Planner immediately prior to publishing to make sure they are still trending in popularity. If you discover that their trending rate is lagging, you should probably research other keywords as substitutes to ensure your blog has what it takes to gain the most clicks.
Tweak it. Now that you’ve finished writing your blog, it’s time to proofread and edit for optimum SEO prior to publishing. The parts that require your utmost attention are the keywords, the headline, and the subtitles. Ask yourself if they’re powerful enough to gain the most clicks possible. Is your title enticing to readers? Can you substitute current keywords and phrases with more popular ones? Are your subtitles clear or ambiguous?
Break down the word wall. Be sure to spice up your blog with photos and videos. Doing this will increase a search engine’s trust of your business and cause it to boost your blog to the top of its results.
High Ranking Blog Posts are the Secret to Marketing Success
Optimizing your blog posts to achieve the highest search engine rankings is not as difficult as it may seem. Sure, it takes practice, but once you understand the process, completing the necessary steps will feel like second nature.
Once you’ve published a few blogs and tracked their success, you will be able to identify what works and what doesn’t. It won’t be long before you are a master at writing blogs that are hitting the SEO target every time! Over time, blogging about your passion will be a ray of sunshine in your life as your business reaps the rewards of a growing customer base thanks to a constant flow of new readers.
If you’re ready to achieve greater success by publishing blogs that rank highly in search engine results, Higgins Marketing Group can help. Contact us for a pressure-free chat about how strategically written blogs posts will lead to strong business growth.
Not sure yet? Check out our work and let us know when you’re ready.
