How to Write Blog Posts for SEO That Actually Help Your Website Perform?

How wonderful is it when your hard work on a blog post bears results in the form of high traffic and SEO rankings on the website? While this scenario seems ideal, it won’t be possible if you do not know what steps to take to optimise your posts. Writing and optimising skills are necessary to attract the audience’s attention, induce them to share your content, and increase rankings.

Simply publishing your blogs isn’t enough to grab the top rankings on the search results page. Similarly, doing the following things won’t let your website reach its true potential:

• Overusing the keywords
• Not focusing on readability
• Using incompatible media, etc.

The list of SEO blog writing best practices to keep in mind while writing blog posts to rank is exhaustive. I remember the time when readability used to be my enemy, and I wouldn’t pay attention to it. It declined my reach, and only a limited audience could see and engage with my blogs. However, I achieved the desired results when I started paying attention to this aspect and combined a few other changes in my style.

This post aims to leave you with the essential gems that helped me to master the writing and optimising skills for SEO blog posts. Know what you can do to attract, retain, and repeat the target audience’s visit to your website:

1. Begin with planned keyword research

If you know your target audience well, you might think of guessing what they would be searching for and plan a topic accordingly. Get the guesswork game out of the box if you truly wish to captivate their search intent.

Example-

Look into the actual keywords they are searching for that align with your needs. For instance, you are a tourism website, and your blogs aim to enlighten your audience about new vacation places. In the end, you prompt them to book their travels with you. While this seems rosy and ideal, what would you do if you knew your target audiences weren’t even interested in such topics?

Keyword research tips

Consider the following research tips for keywords selection and stuffing:

• Find the gap

A wise move is to bridge the gap between your audience’s demands and the available resources and fill it accordingly.

• Expert assistance

Content creators and SEO experts rely heavily on keyword research based on search engine data. It helps them outline the topics that their audiences search for the most on the internet and the keywords used frequently. Based on this data, they can form content strategies and build an engaging audience.

• Utilise keyword research tools

Several keyword research tools, like Semrush, provide information about keyword search volume, competitor analysis, position tracking, etc.

• Writing assistant tools

Moreover, writing assistant tools let you know the language tone, readability, etc., so you can optimise it to your audience’s taste.

• Choosing focused keyword

Also, your focused keyword should be the one with less competition and high search volume.

• Related keywords search

Further, find the Latest Semantic Indexing keywords related to the focused keyword at the bottom of the Google search for the focused keyword.

• Natural wordflow with keywords

While writing use keywords in the content, do not overuse or add them unnaturally. It will look odd, and search engines can detect them.

2. A blog title and section headings that instantly hit

Next, when you begin writing, create an effective title for the blog post that immediately captures your audience’s attention. You should also include the focused keyword in the title naturally for SEO purposes.

A title that is relevant to the user’s search query will appear at the top of the search rankings. It prompts users to tap on the result and visit the page, improving the click-through rate, website traffic, and related SEO metrics. You can use the heading analyser tools available online to see where your blog title lies.

Further, divide your topic into segments and give each one a catchy heading. Headers allow Google’s web crawlers to understand your post better. These crawlers skim the blog through the H1, H2, H3, and H4 tags, and so on. Each heading and sub-heading should help the crawlers and the readers to know what the underneath content will discuss.

Breaking down the blog structure into paragraphs, bullets, and pointers with attractive and concise headings enhances the content’s understanding and readability. Using high-intent keywords in the sub-headings is better for SEO.

3. Content Optimisation for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets provide clear and relevant answers to the user’s search query. For instance, when I search “how to optimise website speed,” the featured snippet provides a point-wise guidelines from a website that are directly related to my query.

You can earn a featured snippet on Google by answering user queries briefly but clearly. A very well-example is when the search term is “How to sleep peacefully at night,” you can put this question in your H1 or H2 tag and provide as many answers as possible in a numbered or bulleted list.

Also, you must put a part of that question in your blog content in the beginning before beginning to explain the points. Use actionable words to begin your sentences to give an impact and prompt users to act. Moreover, if the search query is to define something, write a description of no more than 58 words to earn the featured snippet.

4. Remember: There’s a human at the end

With so many technical guidelines to optimise search engine rankings and do well, it can be easy to forget that the end user is a human and not a robot. The technical elements are there to assist the end user in satisfying their queries completely. Therefore, your content needs to keep their requirements, personas, likes, dislikes, etc., in mind.

If you’re wondering what it is like- put yourself in your target audience’s shoes.

• Detailed answers to their inquiries
• Visual aids for better engagement and interest in reading throughout
• Ability to skim the post and understand its contents
• Organised subheadings that go with the flow and do not create a mess

These are just general highlights of what your content should be like for the user. Further, you should keep the following things about the user and blog writing in mind:

• Defining target audience

Define their personas, motivations, challenges, and interests

• Address their points

Form content around the potential topics they find interesting and helpful.

• Use automated tools to your benefit

Utilise the tools as means to your ultimate needs. Technical SEO tools can help you assess where you stand SEO-wise, whereas content writing tools can help create engaging, concise, and human-friendly content with correct grammar. Some tools also offer metrics that measure how users engage with your content, the time they have spent on the page, where they scroll on the site, etc.

Therefore, keep your path clear with content for human users as the end goal.

5. Apply keywords in the meta description

Are you publishing your blog posts without meta descriptions? Then, let me tell you that you are losing the most exposure possible on the search engine. Among the various things like headings, sub-headings, snippets, keywords, etc., add meta description to the list.

Meta descriptions are brief descriptions (two to three sentences) right below the title. Google crawls your content and considers meta descriptions for search rankings. While writing meta descriptions, keep the following things in mind:

• Keep it as short and concise as possible.
• Do not compromise its relevance with the blog post.
• Add one or two keywords.
• Keep it catchy, exciting, and standing out from the other similar posts to grab the user’s attention.

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), you might find the meta description boxes in-built, so you won’t have to go far to use the additional function.

6. Internal and external linking is a must

• Internal linking

Internal linking means linking to other posts, pages, or blog posts on your website. It enables the search engine to form an accurate sitemap through which the ultimate user discovers about you and your creditworthiness.
A user stays for a long time on your website through internal linking to valuable content. The bounce rate reduces and potentially enhances the conversion rate. However, keep the following things in mind while considering internal linking:

• Natural anchor text

Anchor text is where you will put your link to a relevant old post or web page. What you do is highlight the text where you wish to place the link, right-click, and insert the link. The link should not be placed desperately over an irrelevant anchor text or a spammy call-to-action like ‘Click Here.’

• Descriptive keywords

Your anchor text keyword should be descriptive to let users understand what they will find when they will tap the hyperlink. For instance, Download the SEO guide clearly indicates what you’ll get on opening it.

• No force-fed links

Ensure not to force-feed links, meaning linking to your top products, bestsellers, favourite pages, or discontinued products that are not relevant to the subject matter of the blog post. Instead, choose those links that will further enhance the user’s knowledge of the current subject matter and enrich the points you made in this post.

• External linking

Like internal linking, consider adding a contextual relationship with blog posts of other high-authority websites. External linking benefits in a way that the user gets to expand their knowledge base and know that you have researched well before writing and publishing your blog.

Compelling research-based statistics from influential websites work well in your favour. It supports and builds your argument and makes it convincing and concrete. Consequently, you win the user’s trust.

7. Image compression to speed up the process

You must be putting images and related media with your blog posts to enhance the visual appeal. Further, humans stay interested in content that contains pictures with a brief summary of the post, a connected image, etc. However, putting images can affect the loading speed by slowing it.

Fast loading speed boosts user experience, which large and heavy images restrict. Several tools and applications are available that can help you compress images over 100 kb in your blog post. You can narrow the causes of slow loading speed by relying on metrics like Google’s PageSpeed Insights with free analysis and recommendations.

8. Add alt text to your images

Alt text explains what the images are to help Google and the visually impaired audience understand why it is in the post. For instance, you are writing about coffee blends and adding a picture about types of coffee drinks. The Alt text will state “the different kinds of coffee blends and drinks.” In this way, you have also added the keyword coffee blends into the mix.

9. Create longer posts that are scannable

Although the attention span of humans is decreasing, shorter blog posts do not serve well in SEO. Longer and more detailed blog posts are preferred by Google and related search engines.

Keep your blog at a minimum of 300 words but balanced. Long articles are easier for Google to crawl and find what it is all about through clues.

However, there is a downside to long-form blogs too. For instance, readers may get overwhelmed by the content size and length. There’s an easy solution to fix this issue and ensure the reader stays tuned till the end.

Break the blog into smaller chunks, bite-sized and scannable pieces. Make the long sentence short by breaking it into two. Similarly, keep one paragraph of three to four sentences only. Further, grab the user’s attention by using numbers and bullets wherever possible. It should be easy to skim through, especially on mobile.

Bottom Line

Writing SEO blog posts is an art, science, and profession. You need to focus on developing engaging, entertaining, and informative content and apply appropriate SEO techniques like those mentioned above to achieve the desired results. Even if you can’t achieve the number one rank for each blog post, aiming for it will benefit you in this competitive world.