10 tips for an SEO friendly blog

As an SEO professional, the most frequently asked questions I get from clients are:

• Do I need a blog?
• How can a blog help my business?
• How can I optimise my blog posts?
• Do I have to write my own blogs?

To best answer these questions, we need to look at the importance of blogs, the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO), and how these two link. Writing business blogs is not an easy task and it requires specialist writing skills to make sometimes mundane or very technical topics readable. The main purpose of a blog is to keep readers engaged, to add value by answering their prospective questions, and to help them learn about your products or services. From an SEO perspective, a blog increases your brand visibility and chances to rank in search engine results.

What is a business blog?

A business blog is a marketing medium which is an essential part of a brand’s website, where regular content is uploaded and published in order to educate the brand’s target audience.

What is search engine optimisation?

As discussed in our previous blog, SEO is a set of practices that help to improve your website’s visibility on the web and outrank other websites in organic search results.

This blog post provides tips on how to write SEO-friendly business blogs that are engaging and easy to read.

Keyword research

Before you start writing, the first thing you need to do is keyword research. If you want to increase your chances to rank on search results you will have to look at the words and terms your audience is searching for online, and create content based on these. By doing keyword research you can get an idea of search volumes, historical metrics, and future forecasts. This will give you enough insights into potential topics and keywords that should be used in blog content.

Write for your audience, not for SEO

Remember, users on Google are looking for an answer to their question. Blogs offer the ideal opportunity to answer those questions by writing high-quality content in a natural, jargon-free language. Focus on thorough answers, scannable sections, subheaders, bullet points, paragraphs, and visual aids.

Structure your blog post

Have a clear structure in your blog and make sure you use headings and paragraphs. This will help Google understand your blog. Google web crawlers operate with their own algorithms which are looking for relevant information to a user’s search query. This is your chance to make your headings relevant.

In SEO, headings (H) refer to the titles of the paragraphs that will describe the topic, H1 is an overview of what your blog will cover. H2s, H3s and H4s break down the topics and subtopics in the blog. Your headers and subheaders should include high intent keywords and reflect the content in the body.

Do NOT ‘keyword stuff’

The goal is to make your blog optimised and not overbearing, and the ultimate goal of your brand should be to offer solutions for your audience.

When trying to achieve this, it can be tempting to overuse keywords – particularly when you’re trying to improve your SEO ranking by ‘keyword stuffing’. Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of overloading your blog with keywords, sometimes intentionally, to manipulate a page’s ranking in search results. However, this is considered to be a ‘spammy’ practice and a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines, and in response to such actions search engines like Google lower the rankings of the sites that break the rules.

Include keywords in your meta description

Google crawlers determine search rankings by meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are the short sentence descriptions you will find underneath the title of a search result. Remember to keep them short (one or, – two sentences and no more than 160 characters), use one to two keywords, and use engaging text.

Add alt text to images

Alt text describes what’s happening in the image and it helps Google understand why the photo is in your blog. Remember to use descriptive text and include the main keyword.

Link to other posts on your site

Linking to pages or blogs on your website helps search engines create an accurate sitemap and helps your audience discover more of your content. You want your audience to spend more time on your website, thus reducing the bounce rates and increasing the conversion potential.

Use natural language for your anchor text

When linking to any pages on your website use natural language for your anchor text (the clickable word on a link). Do not use generic calls to action, and ‘spammy’ language such as “click here” or “top cheapest products”.

Compress images for fast page load

Google rewards pages with fast loading speed as it improves the user experience. Large sized images can negatively affect your site’s page speed.

Make your blogs likable and therefore linkable

Write blogs that other websites will want to hyperlink within their own posts. Include helpful content that gives value to your audience (such as specialist advice, interviews with experts, or research data). Google ranks websites that are trustworthy higher and every webpage that links back to you makes you more trustworthy.

When in doubt, ask an expert

If you’re not sure how to put these principles into practice, consider working with an agency which does! Our experienced content writers and SEO team work in tandem to deliver engaging, informative content for the construction sector that will work for your customers and for the search engine algorithms.

 

If you would like to optimise your blogs or learn more about how SEO can help your business, get in touch with our team.