For businesses big and small, a highly visible online presence is foundational to attracting new customers, and SEO is the core of building that presence. However, creating a blog capable of climbing the search engine rankings ladder can seem daunting.
Google’s algorithm may look like indecipherable technobabble with a little bit of magic sprinkled in (for flavor), but getting on the right side of that algorithm actually boils down to a few simple SEO best practices you can easily implement. Here are four principles to follow that will help you optimize a blog for SEO without opening the Pandora’s box that is the search engine algorithm.
1. Come up with a plan
To optimize a blog for SEO, you have to walk before you can run. Don’t start by jumping straight into the weeds of figuring out Google’s top-ranked keywords and then blogging away. That might get you on the first page of search results for massively searched terms like “weather” and “news,” but unless your goal is to make small talk about current events with your customers, those rankings won’t help you sell your product.
Instead, begin by outlining the topics you want to be known for. Ask yourself, “What kind of information are my customers looking for?” or, better still, “What questions do I want my content to be the answer to?” If you own a bakery, for example, it’s a reasonable assumption that the customers you want to reach will search for terms related to “bread.” Start with that broad category and brainstorm related subtopics that would be relevant to your customers, like “bread baking” or “types of flour.”
Now you can start to generate the keywords you want to target. An easy way to get some keyword ideas is to type your chosen topics into the Google search bar and look at Google’s autocomplete searches or related search suggestions. This will tell you what people interested in your product or topic are already searching for (tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can also help you do keyword research).
Once you have a keyword list, there’s still one important bit of research to do: read your competitor’s content. Competitors in this context are whoever is already ranking highly for your chosen keywords. Look through the first page of search results for the keywords you’re targeting and read through the top results to get ideas for your content. Are they mostly lists? Do they use a lot of pictures? Do all their baking recipes start with an unnecessary story about how they discovered a passion for bread during their semester studying abroad in France?
Well, then maybe yours should too.
2. Write with the reader in mind
Once you have a plan together, it’s time to focus on content. Your keywords should guide your writing and be used multiple times in a blog post, but to truly optimize a blog for SEO, you can’t just throw as many keywords as you can at a post.
The most crucial aspect of your blog is the quality of the content itself. Your content should be informative, engaging, and genuinely valuable to your readers. Whether you’re providing in-depth guides, solving problems, or sharing personal experiences, the goal is to give your customers something they find enjoyable and that satisfies their search intent. No matter how many keywords related to “bread baking recipes” you stuff into a blog post, if at the end of it, your reader still has no idea how to bake bread, then they won’t be happy with your site, and you won’t rank well on search engines.
The content should be informative, and the page should be easy to navigate and read. Remember, the top-ranking search results are the ones that searchers found the most helpful. If your writing is good, but you don’t use any subheadings, there are no paragraph breaks, and you wrote your whole blog in Comic Sans, readers are likely to bounce right off your site rather than read through it. That “bounce rate” is something that search engines measure, and it can severely hurt your ranking.
Keep customers on your site by giving them a reason to stay. Informative, helpful content on a page that’s easy to navigate and read motivates them to stick around.
3. Optimize Your Technical SEO
Once you’ve got a post written that targets a few keywords with organic, natural-sounding content that’s substantive to the reader, you can do some things to improve how search engines view that post. This is called “technical SEO,” and while some technical SEO takes computer wizardry to figure out, there are a few simple technical SEO tasks that don’t require a computer science degree.
One of these tasks is internal linking. Internal linking uses hyperlinks in your blog to link to other pages on your website. This not only helps users navigate your site more easily but also helps search engines better understand your site. When you link to other relevant articles on your blog, it tells search engines that your content is well-structured and comprehensive and helps establish you as an authority on your chosen topic. As with every other SEO practice, continue to think about the reader. Only link to other relevant pages they might be interested in based on the blog content. Like with keywords, don’t just stuff in as many links as you can.
Lastly, give each blog post a meta description. A meta description tells search engines and readers what your blog is about. On a search engine results page, the meta description is the two or three lines of content that appear below a link previewing the page content. Informative meta descriptions encourage searchers to click on your page and help search engines understand your content. Don’t forget to include your target keyword in the meta description!
4. Be Patient
The most important, and perhaps the most difficult, strategy to better optimize a blog for SEO is to be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a good SEO campaign (Et tu, Google?)
SEO is not a one-time endeavor but an ongoing process. To see consistent improvements in your blog’s search engine rankings, you must post content regularly. Consistency demonstrates to search engines that your website is active and continuously provides fresh, valuable information.
That consistency has to be maintained for quite a while to gradually improve your search engine results. Achieving high rankings and substantial organic traffic can take time, often several months. Search engines need time to find and study your content, and your blog may take a while to gain a good reputation with them. You won’t see results immediately, so once you’ve started implementing an SEO strategy, keep it going for a few months before trying to evaluate its success.
Collaborate for Success
When you optimize a blog for SEO, it’s important to remember that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Partner with us at GreenCup Digital to help get your blog into good enough shape to finish the race! With years of experience in digital marketing, we have all the resources you need to publish consistent, substantive content that pushes your website up the search results page. Reach out to us today to get started!
