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How do you SEO optimize your blog post?
You’ve done your market research and identified what makes your customers click. You know you have awesome content, and you’re confident that website visitors will love what you have to say. The missing piece of the puzzle, is SEO-optimizing your blog post so that Google gives your website the impressions (and visitors!) it deserves.
How do we do that? Let’s find out!
SEO Optimize Your Existing Content
If you’ve done SEO research in the past, or if your marketing agency has provided you with primary and secondary keywords, you already know which keywords are important to you and your customers. Make sure to use these keywords properly to ensure maximum impact.
Every Blog Post Needs an H1 Header Tag
The first header you use in a blog post should be your ‘H1’ header tag. This is the first thing that your visitor sees when they land on your website. Ensure that your primary keyword(s) is present in the header, the first sentence of your opening paragraph, and at the end of your blog post.
Optimize Your Title Tag
The Title Tag is what shows up on Google search. This is not your header tag! The title tag is what appears in the title bar at the top of your web browser. Google, and other search engines, weigh title tags more heavily than H1 tags. Your task is to use the same keywords as your title tag in a catchy title that is 15-65 characters long. Why 65 characters? Because Google will cut your title tag short, and that sucks.
Treat Your Meta Description As Valuable SEO Real Estate
The Meta Description is what shows as the blog preview on Google search. You have roughly 155 characters to highlight the main point of your article. Make this statement keyword-rich, without stuffing the content, and treat it like an elevator pitch for your blog post.
Make Your H2’s Relevant
Just like how you would optimize your H1 for a primary keyword, your H2’s are valuable tools to highlight your secondary keywords. For example, if your H1 focuses on the primary keyword “refrigerator repair,” you’d want your H2 to highlight a relevant phrase like “how do refrigerators work?”
Ensure You Have Enough Content
Your blog post needs to have 300-400 words at minimum to carry any SEO weight. In most cases, you want to aim for at least 800-1,000 words. This is more of a best practice than a restriction, since you want to reward your readers with a good amount of awesome content to read if they decide to visit your blog!
Use Internal Links
This is a best practice not only for SEO, but for the user experience as well. Make sure to link to other pages on your site throughout your blog post, to keep your visitor engaged. The more pages they visit, the more likely they are to be interested in your business!
Don’t Confuse Google With Your Meta Tags
These are some rules of thumb to ensure that you don’t confuse Google with the way you classify the content on your blog post.
Don’t present your H1, H2 and H3’s out of order
Google appreciates it when your page is structured logically. Don’t let your web designer place an H3 header at the top of your page, just because it looks pretty. Your H1 should be the focus of your content, neatly followed by 1-2 H2’s and some more H3’s to structure your post.
Never use more than one Title Tag or H1
When you want to SEO optimize your blog post, it’s good practice to stick to one focus. It goes without saying that writing multiple H1 or title tags make no logical sense, and Google will punish you for it.
Tag Your Images Properly
As a rule of thumb, you want to write “alt text” for any image you place in your blog post. The alt tag is shown in case your image does not load properly. More importantly – search engines rely on the alt tag to understand what your image is describing, because they are unable to read images and videos.
Use Headers, Not Fonts
Don’t use bold or italics to section your paragraphs – use H2’s and H3’s instead. Just like how you would write in Spanish to deliver a message to someone who primarily speaks in Spanish, you want to use the proper formatting to format your blog post for Google.
Employ Your Marketing Strategy In Blog Posts
Optimizing your blog post is only half the battle.
The other half of SEO is off-page SEO, getting people to link to your site, creating backlinks and giving your website a good reputation on Google’s digital eyes. Make sure to publish your blog post on social media to get more eyes on your content. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, even LinkedIn is fair game.
Now for the hard stuff.
When do you publish your blog post? What should you write in your social media description? These are all questions which relate to your business’ marketing plan. Before even writing your blog post, you should be asking questions like “who is my target audience for this post?” and “what do I want them to do after reading this?”
Your SEO game is only as strong as your marketing strategy. Your SEO efforts are wasted if your visitors aren’t driven to act, or aren’t even part of your target market. What kind of marketing strategy are you looking for? This is the real question you should be asking, before optimizing your blog posts.
A good marketing strategy shows in all of your content. This is why we always emphasize placing the marketing strategy first.
Do you agree with us? Are you ready to take the plunge and revamp your marketing strategy? Contact our marketing agency and let’s grow together!