Quick Takeaways:
- Writing a blog that is focused on your target audience’s interests and includes keywords with high search volume will immensely increase your visibility.
- According to Demand Metric, businesses that run a blog as part of their content marketing strategy receive 67% more leads than those who don’t.
- Statistics indicate that bloggers who share content consistently get 126% more leads than those who don’t, according to Hubspot.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is significant for every website. When you optimise your website, including your blog, you make your website more visible to people who look for your services, products, or content in general. People enter specific queries into search engines, and if your website appears high on the search engine results, you gain the traffic!
Still not convinced SEO is for you and your site? Let’s break down the process, so that we can see just how important an SEO blog strategy really is!
Have you ever thought about the first thing you do when you are searching for something online? What are you doing when you are looking for marketing services, activities for the weekend, or pet blogs? Let’s guess…. Do you go straight to Google? Of course you do, because so many of us do the exact same.
Did you know that there are 3.5 billion searches made on Google each day, according to Internetlivestats. How would it sound to you to get some of this traffic on your website? This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in. SEO works as a whirlpool that brings traffic to your website.
Image Source: Oberlo
The good thing with SEO is that it is directly related to content marketing. According to Demand Metric, businesses that run a blog as part of their content marketing strategy receive 67% more leads than those who don’t. So if you have a blog on your website, you just can’t miss this chance of increased traffic, and if you don’t have one, you can still build it and consider it as part of your strategy.
Search Engine Optimisation benefits the visibility of a Blog
SEO and blogging go hand-by-hand. The writing of compelling and valuable blogs is not an easy task. Statistics indicate that bloggers who share content consistently get 126% more leads than those who don’t, according to Hubspot.
With the term SEO-optimised content, we mean content that includes keywords that align with your target audience. This content will not only bring you to the top, but you will be good on the top.
Writing a blog that is focused on your target audience’s interests and includes keywords with high search volume will immensely increase your visibility. For example, If your audience’s interests are mainly focused on travelling and food why not consider writing a blog post related to the “top 10 food destinations that you have to visit in 2021” sound to you? It’s niche, precise and intentional, ultimately grabbing the attention of the user.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that all of the users that will land on your website will be turned into customers. The strong website traffic will work as a sign to Google Search Engine that your content is valuable and relevant. We need to build this relationship of trust with Google.
Why? Because the high click rate will help your website appear higher in Search engine rankings.
This outcome is fundamental to high conversions and sales. But in order to improve our content and reach these high sale levels, you should follow an SEO strategy.
What is an SEO blog strategy in 7 steps, and how can you make it work for you?
1. Understand your audience and their interests
It’s vital to find ways to gain a clear overview of your audience. Knowing some basics about them, can be extremely helpful, like their gender, age, geographic locations, and most importantly, their interests. All these should be considered when you are writing your content. Thinking like a customer and understanding what he is searching for, makes it easier to guide him along a journey that is both fulfilling to him and you as a brand.
Persona Image Source: justinmind
2. Create a list of keywords and analyse them
Don’t be terrified of the term “keywords”. Keywords are the queries that your target audience is searching for in Google to find solutions to their problems or serve their needs. Imagine that you have a company that sells home products, with robot hoovers or robot vacuums included.
Writing a blog post that contains a list of the best hoovers you provide, targeting mainly the “robot vacuums” keyword because you know that your audience’s interests are primarily focused on technology could be an option. However, we always suggest that longer keywords, or long-tail keywords as we use to call them, are a better option to start since they are less competitive and bring a better conversion rate.
3. Write valuable content
The content becomes valuable when it answers your audience’s questions, provides solutions to their problems or offers a unique and rich perspective on a situation. Try to create content that adds value to your audience and that gives them insights that they can use and with content that will educate but at the same time entertain them. Write naturally, don’t skip using the keywords that your audience will search for, but don’t overdo it because that will end up harming your content instead of benefiting it.
4. Conduct on-page Search Engine Optimisation
The on-page SEO process improves your web page content for search engines and users. The most common on-page SEO practises that you should pay attention to are:
- Content
- Title tags optimisation
- Internal links
- URLs
As we explained before, content should include the right keywords, the use of your targeted keyword in the first 100 words is an old-school technique that still brings results and that Google still considers. The title tags’ optimisation is another critical practice you should not skip. They are used from Google to understand the content of your blog/website; that’s why the proper use of keywords on this step is imperative.
Internal links are also crucial to secure Search Engine Optimised content. Apart from helping your audience navigate your website, internal links also help Google understand your website’s structure, read it, value it, and give it ranking power. The URLs’ optimisation seems to be more critical than ever before since Google uses them as a criterion to value and understand your website.
5. Improve for Search Intent
Optimise considering the search intent means that your content should be created in the form that the audience prefers.
Here’s another example; you already know that your audience is looking for some ideas to decorate a new house, so you wisely decide to write a blog about giving some ideas and promoting your products at the same time. Now the following titles may sound the same, but which title do you think would work the best for your blog post?
“Want to decorate your new house? Find some ideas below”, or “The top 8 home decorating tips”?
Actually, the second title provides a better user experience because it sounds more helpful and direct. Don’t skip this step because even though the titles sound pretty similar, the second is closer to the customers’ intent, and that’s Google’s number 1 goal.
6. Impress with your blogs
Design is a step that you should consider if you want to get amazing visibility and recognition from your audience.
The simplest and most effective design tips to use on your content are:
- Tables
- Graphs or charts
- Screenshots or pictures
All the above make data and information look better, easier to be understood, and more visual.
7. Never stop to improve and update your content
No matter how well your content is performing and how satisfied you are with it, optimising and updating your content is a chance that you should not miss. It’s a fast and easy way to increase your traffic instead of creating more blogs on a specific topic. Search for additional information that you can include, have another look at your audience and try to identify trends or interests that you might have missed or came up recently.
Conducting another keyword research and competitor analysis will help you find other relevant long-tail keywords that boost your rankings or identify additional information that competitors have used and sound valuable to your audience.
Top Tips to Consider To Get Extra Eyes On Your Blog content
Here are some more advanced SEO tips in order to stand out further from the competition and get the traffic and the other benefits of SEO that you never expected!
- Focus on the meta description. The meta description is the first tip that will help your progress. The meta description is an HTML meta tag that you can add to any page, and it provides to the readers and search engines a brief description (about 160 words) of what your blog/content is about. Remember to include your target keyword here - Google wants to see it there!!
Screenshot of Meta Description
- Provide easy-to-read content. What do you actually prefer? Content with examples, descriptive, and pictures included or straightforward content with complicated terms that make the content difficult to understand. Obviously, the first one, so use examples to prove to your reader how what you describe will work for them and use screenshots to make your content more clear and illustrative. Apart from creating better user experiences, readability is recognised by search engines and is taken into consideration on higher rankings.
- Write naturally. The right keywords MUST be included in your content, but that should not change the way you write. Keywords optimise your content, so continue to write naturally, providing content that is valuable and unique to your readers, educating them, solving their problems, and answering their questions.
- Share comprehensive content. Creating huge-long posts won’t help you rank high. Although there is no standard length of a post, don’t overdo it. Write as much as it needs to cover the topic in detail. The ideal length of the post would be that one that answers the questions that you wanted to answer before starting writing the blog.
Final Thoughts..
Implementing all of these SEO tips and more into your content strategy on the first try is going to be tough, therefore the most important tip is to continue writing blogs or at least consider blogs as part of your social media strategy and try to implement the SEO blog strategy when writing! Blogging is one of the best things that you can do for your website, and if you consider the further SEO tips, your goals, and your audience’s intent, you’ll be on the right track to success.
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