Last Updated on August 9, 2024

How to create a Search Engine Optimized Blog

  1. Target Keyword

    1. Write about what you know
    2. What will help your company? Will adding your favorite recipe help sell your hand-crafted jewelry?
    3. Some keywords are harder to rank for than others. AHREFS you can check keyword difficulty.

  2. Title (for CTR)

    1. Include your main target keyword or keyword phrase in the title.
    2. Dress it up with attractive adjectives and adverbs to instill a sense of curiosity.
    3. Remember that readers like “how-tos,” lists, and easily scannable benefit statements.
    4. Keep it under 55 characters (or have a more succinct “SEO” title on hand if you use a WordPress plugin like Yoast, which enables you to specify an SEO title separate from your main page title).
    5. According to Orbit Media, one way to write your title tag is to write “Primary keyword – secondary keyword | Brand Name.”

  3. SEO-Friendly URL

  4. Body Copy

    1. Search-engine friendly
    2. Not fluff – no one wants to read it
    3. Naturally written, you don’t need to keyword stuff, it should naturally come out
    4. High-quality – well-researched 
    5. Shorter paragraphs- people lose interest in long blocks of words
    6. Breakups and emphases. Use bullets, numbered lists, block quotes, italics and bold fonts to break up chunky text or to emphasize a particularly important point.
    7. Call-to-action in the closing, it doesn’t have to be the same thing every time.
      1. If you are getting a ton of traffic, it doesn’t matter if people don’t convert.
    8. Use H2 and H3 – great for a table of contents
      1. Answer questions type language
      2. Cost section/what is it?/reviews section
    9. Use signal words: Signal words help people to scan through your text and grasp the main ideas. Let’s say, for example, that there are three reasons for people to buy your product. You should use signal words like: ‘first of all’; ‘secondly’ and ‘finally’. Also, words like ‘nevertheless’, ‘surely’ and ‘indeed’ give a clear signal to your readers. Readers will instantly get that a conclusion will follow after words like ‘consequently’, ’so’ or ‘for this reason’. Signal words are therefore very important to add structure to your text.
    10. Internal and external links with good anchor text
      1.  be sure your external links open in a new window
      2. You can do a no follow links at the bottom of the article
    11. Make sure your articles have a minimum of 300 words.
      1.  Preferably 2000-6000 words although this can be debated and there are pros to shorter and longer content. Just be smart about it.
    12. Include statistics and facts
    13. Include a disclaimer… this may not reflect the views of the whole company
      1. Especially for health and fitness companies

  5. Meta Description

    1. Give people an accurate view of what the article is about. Make people interested in reading more.

  6. Image

    1. Resize your media to fit the width of your post space.
    2. Make graphics cool and interesting!
    3. Rename the filename and set the title, ALT text, and caption to include your main keyword phrase to ensure search engines can instantly recognize the value.
    4. Make sure you add a description of the image in the description field to optimize your image for visually impaired visitors.

  7. Categories and Tags

    1. Helps with organization if there’s a subfolder /blog. This helps with Google Analytics and reporting.
      1. Go into permalinks so you append /blog/. Complications can arise if you use your blog for things other than just blog posts
      2. OR set blog as the main category then change permalinks so they are /category/. You can enable it so it shows a subcategory as well.

  8. Add Authorship 

  9. Preview Post

  10. Share your content – PR 

    1. Include social media icons on your blog. This is an easy way for readers to share your content with a few simple clicks. Show how many shares you have.
    2. Make it shareable- your articles need to add value, that people want to share.
    3. The Hoth Social Shares