Key Elements For A SEO-Friendly Blog Post
Content writing and blogging is one of the most important components of search engine optimisation, if not the most important. If you don’t get your content up to scratch then all your off-page SEO will be wasted. In this blog, I will be outlining the key elements to include to write a good SEO-friendly blog post that can help your search visibility and engage your readers.
Keywords
As with any SEO-friendly content, you need to do your keyword research to find the keywords that can carry the most traffic, but are also easy enough for your domain to compete for. Once you have found a suitable keyword, it is important to also understand the search intent behind the keyword and find suitable variations, phrases and synonyms you can use across your blog post. Remember: keyword density is dead – with rankbrain and other advancements to the Google algorithm, variations and synonyms are far more important and carry more weight than including the exact keyword over and over again.
It is also important to understand where to include your keyword and keyphrases. You should always make sure to include the following areas:
- Title
- Subtitles/headings
- URL
- Scatter across the content – don’t shove all your variations into one or two paragraphs.
Long-Form Content
Time and time again, case studies have shown that Google prefers long-form content over short-form content. However, this varies depending on the search term. If you can provide a useful answer to a query in 300 words, why bother to stretch it out to 1,000 words? Long-form content is preferred when it is necessary – you don’t need to write 10 paragraphs about “how to log into Instagram”. If you can create long-form content that is insightful, helpful and provides a solution to the query then go for it. Don’t try to fluff out your content with needless or irrelevant information and paragraphs that doesn’t add any value.
Optimise Images
Search engines are bots – they can’t visually process content like readers can. To understand what an image is about, a bot relies on information such as the alt text, the file name, title/caption and the metadata of the image. You should always try to explain what the image is about and how it relates to your content by optimising those areas of the image. The file size of an image should also be optimised to reduce download speed, so both users and bots can quickly access your page.
External Links
Link to other resources or sight your facts and figures with external links when writing a blog post. By linking to related and authoritative websites, your content can be seen as more insightful, related and trustworthy by users and search engine bots alike. An easy way to include relevant links to authority domains is to hyperlink anytime you quote a statistic, fact, figure or research paper.
