While search engine optimisation (SEO) is often associated with web pages (homepages, landing pages, etc.), website optimisation techniques can easily be applied by marketers to blog content. In fact, we strongly recommend optimising your blog posts, since it’s a great way to enhance your customer base. This is because blogs can be an effective way of attracting users to your site, where they can become invested in what you write and try to apply your words to their own lives/businesses.
Blogging can help enhance your website’s SEO quality because it can help your page to compete in a wide range of keyword phrases. In many respects, your blog content can act as a driver of traffic, bringing users to your site who need quick information on a specific topic. Below are some SEO tips, however, you might consider to use our SEO agency Sydney to help you getting best benefits.
So, what’s the catch?
So, while blogging can assist with SEO capabilities, Google’s algorithm makes it difficult to benefit from blogging continually. The reason it can be quite tricky is that Google tends to update its algorithm often, so knowing what changes Google has made (or will make) can significantly alter the success of your SEO practices.
Best practice SEO is grounded in intent, honesty and relevance. But can you know what matters? What is relevant to consumers? How can you get the most out of your blogging content, while remaining committed and focused on other areas of your business? Read on to find out how!
Include keywords in specific parts of the post
While you mustn’t “keyword stuff” your article, since this will only hurt your SEO capabilities, placement of the targeted keyword phrase is also vital. There are a few places throughout the copy where you should place the keyword phrase since this will maximise the SEO effect.
Referred to as the “title tag”, Google is known for rewarding content that uses the keyword phrase in the title. If you do this within the first 50-60 characters, then the keyword will be visible in the SERP (search engine results page). If you want to use a lengthy headline, then try and place the keyword near the beginning.
Search engine crawl bots or “crawlers” as they are colloquially referred to will also peruse your URL to gauge keyword-to-content relevancy. As a result, it is crucial that each time you upload a new post that the generated URL has the keyword in it.
Throughout the body
Make sure you integrate the keyword phrase throughout your content in a way that appears natural and reader-friendly. In terms of keyword density, a rate of 1.5-2% is generally enough. In other words, a 600-word blog entry should feature the keyword phrase approximately 9 times, since (9/600) x 100 = 1.5. You also want the keyword to be distributed relatively evenly throughout your content since congested keyword placement can undermine your SEO efforts. We recommend writing the content as you normally would (without considering the phrase), and then going back over the piece to adjust and insert the term. Use synonyms to prevent keyword stuffing.
Use images in your blogs (and optimise them!)
In addition, blog posts should contain more than just a few paragraphs worth of text. It would help if you tried to embed a range of images that support your content. While they have aesthetic value, images can (and should) be used to augment your SEO capabilities. This revolves around how you use the image’s “alt text”, which consists of small text space where you can describe the image. The purpose of describing the picture is because search engines can’t “see” the image the same way we do, so the descriptions is the basis of their evaluation.
The alt text should be descriptive yet ultimately helpful. Leave out words like “image of” and be specific in your account. Most importantly, include the keyword in the alt text (if possible), however, do not keyword stuff (so once is enough). Keep the text under to under 125 characters.
Internal links are essential
Linking to other parts of your website can help encourage the perceived relevance of your content and its overall quality. For example, if you have written about a topic that you know is mentioned in one of your other blogs, then make sure you link to that blog. This keeps visitors on your webpage, reinforces the perception that your site is an authoritative source on the subject matter.
However, as is the case with most links, it is best to spread out your links. Excessive, congested linking can look “spammy”, which can deter a lot of users from engaging with your site and blog content. For example, 3 links per 1000 words of content is an excellent rule to live by when mapping out your link strategies.
Make sure your topics are evergreen content
Think of evergreen content as written or visual content that never goes out of date. In other words, evergreen content is always valuable and topical to most internet users. Sure, you might need to throw in a few updates here and there, but the bulk of the copy remains mostly the same. Blog posts that focus on this content can be incredibly valuable in generating stable, long-term ranks. They can also help your site to create a steady influx of traffic to your webpage, which can be crucial for generating more leads over time. We recommend posting content that is predominantly “evergreen” in nature. This doesn’t mean that every single post needs to be “evergreen”; however, a rate of 80% would work nicely.
Remove old content
Part of the reason why we encourage websites to produce more evergreen content is, so they don’t have to remove old content as often. Repurposing and updating existing blog content is crucial with regards to content management. More importantly, repurposing or updating existing content can be a quicker way to improving your search engine rankings for a specific keyword. New, fresh content (while preferable) can take a much longer, and it will also eat up more time. Updating old content can also extend the lifespan of that specific post.
However, if the content cannot be saved or is no longer relevant (which can frequently happen with niche topics), then we recommend removing it from the site. Old, outdated content is very unappealing, especially in the eyes of users who are well-versed in the industry. It can create the allusion that you don’t update or modify your blog posts that often, which can come across as tacky and unprofessional.
Diversify your content (too many similar pages won’t help)
Topics tags are a great way of organising your content and blog posts. Using these tags makes it easier for your readership to follow your posts, explore what you have written and the relationships between different topics. If you re-use the same topic tag for similar content, Google might interpret this as you trying to show the same content multiple times across your website. Because of this, they’ll punish your page (lower your rankings). If you are genuinely concerned about your current blogs, then take some time to go back through your uploads and clean up any areas of concern. We strongly recommend choosing approximately 10-20 topic tags that you think are critical to your blog. Make sure they aren’t too similar to each other, as this will reduce the chances of Google seeing your blog as duplicated content.
Expand your range of keywords
Furthermore, another useful technique to optimising your blogs is to expand the range of your keywords. Note, this doesn’t mean you should try and stuff as many keywords into one article as possible. In fact, this can hurt your SEO efforts, since Google might interpret posts that use this technique as being keyword stuffed.
Instead, try and focus on 1-2 “long-tail” keywords in each post. Long-tail keyword phrases are longer terms that are generally more descriptive and useful when it comes to generating SEO value. They are usually framed as questions, like “How to benefit from SEO?”, which is more specific than the short-tail phrase “SEO benefits”. This isn’t to say that short-tail keywords aren’t useful or invalid. On the contrary, there is still a place for short-tail keywords, in the sense that most internet users still search using shorter keyword terms.
Holistically, we recommend using a combination of both short-term and long-term keyword phrases when developing your blog content. Limit the number of keywords you are targeting per article to a select few, and make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing each post.
Don’t forget about meta descriptions
Each post must have a unique and tailored meta description. While it won’t directly affect how your website ranks in SERPs, they directly influence what visitors see when they search your keyword. Think of it this way, if a visitor is tossing up which site to choose first (from a few different options), a strong meta description that features the keyword could make the difference. More importantly, most users find what they need on the first link they click on – so being the first click is critical.
Videos are great for optimisation (but be cautious)
Videos can be far more engaging than images. In fact, you can convert your blog posts into videos (like vlogs or slideshows), if you want to innovate your blog strategy. Having said this, do not directly upload videos into your blog posts. A lot of shared hosting services can’t handle them, and if you’re using WordPress, be advised that this software doesn’t support video optimisation.
On the other hand, you can embed videos to be used on WordPress. All you need to do is paste the video’s URL into the WordPress editor. Once you have done that, copy the URL link where you want it to appear in your blog. WordPress will then fetch embed code and automatically display the video inside the content editor. Suppose you don’t necessarily need the video in your blog (and be advised, embedding videos can slow your site’s page rather quickly). In that case, we recommend uploading the video to YouTube and having a link to the YouTube video in your content. This way, your blog post can load quicker AND visitors can switch over to the video if they want to with ease.
Edit your content and make it readable
It sounds so obvious and almost silly to have this as a tip; however, you’d be surprised at how many businesses are uploading content that is riddled with errors. Make sure your team of ghostwriters are editing and proofreading all content consistently. It’s understandable for a few little errors to slip few the cracks, but half a dozen spelling mistakes in the introduction isn’t acceptable. If you’re misspelling the keyword, then you may as well toss the content.
However, if you are churning out lots of content every day, having ghostwrites manually check it can become a bore. If this is the case for your SEO team, then consider purchasing tools like Grammarly, which can be installed as a plug-in on Microsoft Word. Grammarly checks your grammar, spelling and punctuation in real-time, meaning you can edit your content as you go. Likewise, it also provides suggestions on how to improve the clarity and readability of the content, which is a big selling point in SEO.
Another reliable plug-in you can use is Yoast SEO. Under the “readability” tab, you’ll find the “Flesch” reading score of your specific article. Its algorithm assesses stylistic features like sentence length, paragraph structure and consecutive sentence use to generate a “readability” score. The easier it is to read your articles, the more effective they will be when it comes to SEO utility!
So, there is a lot of value in using blogging to boost your SEO. While blogging is only a small component of website optimisation and digital marketing practices, it can be incredibly valuable when targeting long-tail keywords. Robust, reliable blogging standards will ensure that you only produce evergreen content, making it easier to stay at the top of rankings and improve your website’s visibility in SERPs. If you’re starting a new blog page, or are now realising that your existing blog needs a lot of work and revision, let these tips guide you through the process!
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