Following SEO best practices when writing a blog helps search engines determine how your blog should appear in search results.
Using Targeted Keywords in Your Content
Using keywords in your content ensures that you are creating content that your target audience is actively searching on Google. Prioritizing keywords that you do not yet have on your site is a great way for your site to start showing up in more and more search results.
It is important that you use keywords in your content only where necessary. Overstuffing keywords can hurt your SEO and cause you to suffer in search rankings as a result. Some areas of a blog where you can include keywords without overstuffing them are:
Headers
Alt image text
Meta Description
Meta title
Anchor text
You can also include your keywords within paragraph content where it is most relevant to do so.
Meta Titles and Descriptions
Each blog post that you draft should have both a meta title and a meta description. A meta title is the title or first header of your blog that shows up in search results. A meta description is the description underneath the meta title that also shows up in the search results to provide more information on what your blog is about.
Both the meta title and meta description should serve as a summary of what your blog is about. The title of your blog should reflect the main points that you want to cover within the content of that blog. The meta description is a 2-3 sentence summary of the content within your blog post.
The maximum lengths for meta titles and descriptions are as follows:
- Meta title: 60 characters with spaces
- Meta description: 160-170 characters with spaces
If your meta title or meta description length is longer than the maximum, you will not be able to see it fully in Google’s search results.
Add Images and Videos
You have heard the saying that most people are “visual learners”. To make your blog posts more exciting, and appeal to all your site visitors, break up heavy text with images or videos.
Images can provide additional insight or summaries of the topics covered within your blog. They can be anything from charts and diagrams to visual examples. Just make sure that all of your images also include alt text. If an image doesn’t load, your alt text will explain to readers what the
image was.
Videos can present new information in addition to what is covered in a blog, or even summarize
the blog. Transcripts for videos lead users to read what is being discussed in the video. They can also serve as great additional content for Google to crawl in order to determine that blog post’s ranking in its search results.
Image Alt Text
Image alt text describes what the images are that are in your blog post. Every image in your blog post, including the featured image, should have image alt text. When an image doesn’t load for a user, that image alt text will serve as a placeholder for the image to show the user what they are unable to see.
For SEO, image alt text describes to search engines what images are for within a blog post. This can be a great place to include relevant keywords and enhance the content of your blog post further. Images should always have a purpose within blog posts, and Google will be able to see what that purpose is through the image alt text.
Anchor Text and Internal Links
Anchor text is clickable text that uses an HTML hyperlink. Keywords in anchor texts are a great opportunity to highlight to search engines what your content focuses on. By using keywords in your anchor text when relevant, you can make sure that those words are highlighted within the overall text in a paragraph.
In addition, internal links should be in every blog post. Internal links allow your target audience the opportunity to continue browsing additional content on other pages that show more content that they may be interested in.
Internal links are great for a variety of reasons. For one, internal links help keep your target audience on your site longer. Longer page duration could help boost your SEO. After all, if users are on your page for a long time, it must mean that you have credible and relevant information to offer. That will be favored within Google’s search results.
Content Length
Content length is another way to keep your target audience on your site longer. This does not
mean that you should always have a lot of content on every page. You never want to draw out the content that you are presenting by adding “fluff” content within a blog.
To determine the best content length, consider how much content you want to present based on your blog topic. You can also do a quick Google search to see what other similar blog posts are ranking the highest on Google, and see how long their content is. This can help provide you with an idea of whether your specific blog topic is a long form blog post (1,500+), short form blog post (500 words), or somewhere in between.
Grammar Matters
Always check your grammar within blog posts. Poor grammar is noticeable to your readers. Since search engines are focused on providing the most credible search results, poor grammar could harm your credibility when search engines determine where to put you in their rankings.
Make Sure Your Blogs Are Indexed
When your blogs are indexed, it means that Google is able to share that blog within its search
results. A non-indexed blog post will not appear in any search results.
Google Search Console makes it easy to review which pages are indexed. It also allows you to see which pages are not indexed by Google. If you just posted a new blog, copy the URL for that post, then paste it in the search bar at the top of your Google Search Console dashboard. This will bring you to a page where you will be able to see if that specific page is indexed.
For new blogs that were just posted, they will not be indexed yet. Give new blogs an organic boost by manually requesting indexing for those posts once they go live.
Blog SEO Optimization Checklist
- Targeted keywords in your content
- Add meta titles and descriptions
- Add images and videos
- Add image alt text
- Relevant anchor text and internal links
- Determine your content length
- Check your grammar
- Make sure your blogs are indexed
Need Blog Ideas, Copywriting, or Help with SEO?
Our team at Rise would be happy to provide you with blog ideas, write the blogs for you, or even optimize your existing blogs for SEO. If you have any questions or would like to get started, fill out our contact form.
