Despite its blog SEO is underrated. Blogs are a gateway to attract visitors to your website as Internet users spend 3 times more time on blogs and social networks than they do on email. Did you know that page 1 of search engine results gets 92% of all traffic, dropping off by 95% for page 2? You may have invested a lot of time and money into creating content. However, in order to be found by your target audience, your content should appear on the first page of google. That’s when blog SEO comes in.

There are few proven methods that really work to show up on the first page of Google. Here, we’ll be discussing one of the best methods, i.e. blog SEO. Read more to find out about the essentials you can start using today for blog SEO.

Generate Blog SEO topics from keyword research

When doing keyword research, you need to focus on a few key phrases or topics that are related to your brand. These should help you rank on the top of a search engine for that topic. 

Over the past few years, Google search has been mobile-focused. Voice search is rising, making it easier for users to have a conversation with a search engine. For example, people tend to be conversational with their queries, “Where do I begin with Blog SEO?’’, “How does blog SEO work?’’.  So you need to figure out long tail keywords and have a good descriptive content that answers the question customers are asking Google.

You need to think like your prospective customer. What will they search for that would bring them to your website? What are the key challenges that you can help with? You can turn your keyword research into blog topics that educate, answer a question, and provide information to your target audience.

Include keywords in the specific part of your post

You need to include keywords in the specific part of your posts like the headline, header, body, URL and meta description.

Optimize Blog SEO Post headline and URLs

Your audience sees the headline first before they read your blogs or watch videos. So, you need to use a catchy and relevant headline that grabs customer attention, and tells what you’re going to address in your content for blog SEO. You need to keep your headline short – usually under 65 characters – for better blog SEO.

You need to make sure you optimize your blog SEO post headline featuring keywords at the front. For example, the headline Digital marketing in Nepal, What is Inbound marketing? works better than Why your business needs Inbound marketing? in search engine ranking. So you need to try and test different headlines that are likely to be clicked on and shared frequently. One of the reasons why list headlines like “8 Reasons why you should try blog SEO in 2020” are so common online is because they tend to attract more clicks.

Your website URL is the global address of documents and other resources on the internet and is unique to your content. You need to include keywords in front of URLs and separate by dashes. In the given example, we created URL using the longtail keyword for which we were trying to rank: “digital marketing plan”.

Meta description

People are likely to read your blog post content only if your meta description is good enough.

Meta description consists of a short summary of your entire blog post and gives information about your content to readers in the search engine before they click on it. A well-written meta description including keywords is an important aspect of blog SEO.

Create SEO friendly link and anchor text

Linking to other pages or blog posts is an important part of blog SEO. You need to link valuable and relevant content that offer significant value to your readers on the subject matter you’re writing on. The number of backlinks a website has indicates popularity in the search engine. Anchor text is the word or phrase you highlight when you insert a hyperlink. You can use an internal link and anchor text to a high ranking pillar page of your content to improve blog SEO for higher rankings.

Remember: The search engine always looks for certain parts of your blogs like headline, subheaders, alt-text of images and anchor text.

Apply Tags

The right use of tags helps to relate one piece of content to another. You need to use the right tags relevant to your topic. Avoid overusing tags, or adding too many similar tags. You need to choose a set of keywords (15-25) for which your blog should rank for and apply relevant tags for effective blog SEO.

Optimize your image alt text

In case of blog SEO, you need to add alt text to images for two reasons. First, the search engine cannot recognize images as a human being, so adding alt text allows the search engine to recognize the image as text. Second, alt text lets us know about the subject matter. This is when we are unable to see web pages due to low band connection or visual impairment.

Learn about social search

In social search, content is prioritized on the basis of social connection. A social connection means someone you are linked to via Facebook, Twitter or any other social network. The piece of content with more engagement makes a great impact on search engine result pages because it increases the number of inbound links and traffic to your post. Social connection relies on better content and improving it increases blog SEO.

Focus on mobile optimization

Did you know that more people use a search engine from their mobile phones than from a computer?

According to statista, 51.12% of all internet search traffic is driven by mobile devices in 2020.

There has been an intense growth in the number of smartphone users over the past year. Google has recently updated its search algorithm highlighting the site that follows the best practices for mobile-first indexing. So, the content you create should be mobile friendly for effective blog SEO and search rankings.

Over to you

You can optimize your content for blog SEO to rank high in search engines by using the strategies and techniques we have recommended in this article.

Does your business have a blog SEO strategy?

What are the hurdles you experience most often in SEO and Online marketing?

We love to help you grow online. Lone Tree Nepal offers Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing solution for all types of businesses – big or small – for maximizing the social networking and site visibility among clients. By incorporating our online marketing services, companies have benefited in creating digital experiences, ranked high in search engines, reached and connected with more customers, and grown revenue. Contact us today for digital marketing consultation and how to get started.

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