Search engine optimization isn’t just for helping websites rank high on Google and Bing. Bloggers must practice good SEO if they want their blog to rank well in any search engine, as well as have their content discovered by their target audience. Otherwise, they will be writing content that hardly anyone will ever see. Here are some important SEO tips for bloggers to keep in mind when creating posts.
1. Know Your Stuff
Most successful bloggers focus on a niche. Furthermore, they work hard to become an authority in their respective niche. Therefore, you must demonstrate – through your blog’s content – that you are an authority on the subject matter that you write about. In other words, your target audience should view your blog as a credible source of information in your niche. That means you should have a significant amount of knowledge and experience on the topics that you write about. Otherwise, your target audience will ignore your blog.
2. Write With Your Audience in Mind
Speaking of your audience, you need to write your blog posts with them in mind. Unfortunately, many bloggers mistakenly write content geared more toward search engines to achieve better SEO. However, since they fail to create content that their audience finds useful and interesting to read, they end up hurting their blog’s SEO. Therefore, your content creation, as well as the keyword research, should focus on what your audience wants to read. Read a few other popular blogs in your niche for examples. Think about the information that your readers might hope to gain by reading your blog. What problems are they looking to solve? How can you provide solutions to those problems? Then, create blog posts that your readers find relevant and useful.
3. Aim for 2,000 to 2,500 Words Per Post
You are likely familiar with the expression “content is king.” Well, that’s especially true when it comes to blogging. If you want your content to get discovered by your target audience, then you must publish a substantial amount of content to get indexed and rank well in search engines. For example, if you are a blogger in a fairly popular niche, then your posts need to be around 2500 words to get the most SEO value. However, if your niche is less competitive, then your posts could be closer to 2,000 words to be SEO-friendly. Above all, make sure your content is highly useful and not full of fluff that your audience and search engines will ignore.
4. Focus More on Long-Tail Keywords
In the early days of blogging, most bloggers focused on using their target keywords several times throughout a post to get their content to rank well in search results. However, as search engine algorithms have become more advanced, good SEO depends more on using long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are search phrases that comprise several words – often a sentence – that users type into search engine boxes. For example, a user in Kansas City looking for coffee shops might use a search phrase like, “What are the best coffee shops in Kansas City?” Therefore, your keyword research should focus on the search phrases that your target audience uses online. Then, include those long-tail keywords throughout your content.
5. Promote on Social Media
Lastly, social media doesn’t directly impact your SEO on Google. However, search engines – especially Bing – do pay attention to social signals. Social signals are basically measurements of your audience-brand engagement on social media platforms:
• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Click-Through Rates
Therefore, if your brand’s social signals are high, search engines pay more attention to your website – which can offer SEO benefits. Therefore, you should join all of the social media platforms that your audience uses. Then, promote your blog posts on those platforms. Doing so will help drive targeted traffic to your blog, as well as indirectly improve your blog’s SEO.
In short, bloggers have a better chance of reaching their entire target audience by creating SEO-friendly blog posts. Make sure that you create content that’s relevant and useful to your readers. Furthermore, you need to publish a lot of quality content (2,000 to 2,500 words per post) to get discovered by your audience. Use relevant long-tail keywords throughout your posts as well. Promote your posts on social media to generate social signals that can indirectly improve your blog’s SEO.
