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8 SEO Tips to improving your blogs

Business

Bring your A Game to Search Engines

You’ve got your blog, but you aren’t sure if the SEO Gods over at Google are happy with what you are throwing down? Then you are at the RIGHT place. Here are eight tips and tricks you can take to improve your SEO game with your blogging.

1. Blog consistently and often

One important factor, for both your subscribers and for SEO, is to keep putting out content consistently and often. It is helpful to set yourself up for success with a routine, such as the first Wednesday of the month or every other week.

Having your website (aka blog in this case) updating with new content often is a factor in Google’s algorithm. They are happy to see your site is not static and dead, but instead growing often with new information.

Bonus Tip - The homepage of your website should also show frequent changes. Having a blog page updating that is a subpage of your website alone doesn’t take full advantage of this. If you have a subpage of your website with your blog, I recommend having somewhere on the homepage feature the latest blog(s) so that the homepage itself can reflect that it is changing.

2. Think very carefully about the topics you write about

Of course you already have an idea of the overall intention of your blog, but it is important to curate and spend some time pondering what specific topics you might want to write about. My best advice is this - Put yourself into the mind of someone doing a search on Google.

Think about how YOU ask things in search engines. Now, take what your blog is about and think about the types of questions a user might search for and write a blog on those topics. Topics like, say “how to improve my blog SEO” can lead to this very blog.

Level Up - You can go one step further and spend time researching your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data to see what key phrases users are using to find you, decide which phrases you want to focus on getting ranked higher in, and focus content around those subjects.

3. Develop your title

Along the same thread as the last suggestion, you will want to formulate the wording of the title very carefully. I wanted this to be its own point because this is more about how Search Engines themselves see your blog, not the user. It is important to not have something too abstract, like “Monthly update!”, as by itself it gives no information on what you wrote about. Instead, try to go for something a bit more specific that can give a good overview if the title is all that is read.

4. Develop your keywords

One important aspect behind the scenes for any web page are the keywords you attach to that page. These are a list of words or phrases you are telling search engines are things the page is about. 

As an example, some of the keywords on THIS blog post include: seo, blog, blogging, tips, advice, search engine optimization, google, search engine, consistency, topics, subjects, message, title, keywords, how to improve seo, improve blog seo.

You can of course keep going and range from one-word keywords to phrases. You do want to make sure to be accurate and also not repetitive across blogs (such as using your city/state or the name of your entire blog series as a keyword in every post). 

Note that using Meta Keywords is not something most search engines, like Google, bother to look at (thanks to keyword stuffing strategies and new technologies that allow search engines to directly scrap the content of your page). BUT - Knowing what keywords / phrases you want to focus on is still important, and so long as it is relevant you want to include those keywords in your verbiage. However, do NOT include it too frequently or that will only hurt you (by keyword stuffing directly into your content).

5. Length of your post

Despite the modern area of Tiktok and 5 seconds or less to capture attention, the opposite is true for blogging. In fact, it is recommended to have at least 600 to 1000 words in a blog post to rank best in search engines (but you can go upwards of 2,500 for even better results).

So don’t hold back from typing away and going longer than you might expect! This blog post is 1298 words, to give you an idea of what that length looks like.

6. Heading Structure

This is something you probably don’t think about, but will make perfect sense once you do. Think about your high school papers and how you would sometimes start with an outline - with a Title and then Sections with subsections and subheadings.

That is exactly what you want to do with the Headings formatting of your blog. It is VERY important to know you should ONLY have ONE Heading 1 in your blog and it should be the title of your blog. Depending on your platform, you might not be able to control this but it very likely is already an H1 (heading 1). Simply put - don’t use H1 anywhere else.

From there, a blog with structures of H2 (heading 2) tags is a great starting point. You can see this blog post, with its eight tips, effectively then has eight H2 tags for each of those points. You can go further with H3 tags for sub points that might be necessary, all the way down to H6 as necessary.

Bonus Tip - Just like your TITLE being SEO friendly and thought out, you want to do the SAME for these headings. Each heading, in relation to reading the title with it, should also be cohesive and make sense. Don’t have headings that make no sense out of context.

7. Interlace images or videos throughout your blog

Having images sprinkled throughout is a nice visual touch, as well as a media component that search engines like to see. It can be good to strive for at least 3 images/videos (including your lead/intro image).

These can be images simply on topic to a particular point near it, such as the two images we have in this blog relating to the SEO tip they are next to.

Bonus Tip - Not a photographer but want photos? There are of course dozens of stock sites you can get images from, but for those on a budget there is a free stock site I recommend called Pexels.com. You can (and should) give credit to the artist, and now you have a whole selection of images to pull from.

8. Share and Repurpose

Last, and certainly not least, is what you do after you finally have your blog done. Sharing your post across social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google My Business, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, TikTok, etc…) is a great way to drive traffic to your new post. 

Traffic also makes the search engines very happy. Seeing there is interest to view your page makes your rankings improve, so you should try to do everything you can to boost traffic to your posts.

Having a subscribe feature to collect emails will also allow you to send out email blasts to those users and drive traffic through that outlet.

When I say “repurpose”, the above sort of covers what I mean. But it also can be a lot more than that. Think about the “script” of your blog. The blog is, in essence, the long form of your script. But you can TAKE that script and convert it into all sorts of outputs. The email blast is a great example. However, you might make a short 15 to 30 second video that covers your main points and post that to Tiktok.

Maybe you make a 2-3 minute version for your Youtube channel. You could draft an infographic of your main points and post that to Facebook. All of those can link to your blog to “learn more” and ultimately be different repurposed versions of your original content.

In Summary

Whether you are already doing all of these things or NONE of these things, I hoped there was at least one nugget of advice you can take to heart. You put a LOT of time, thought, and effort into writing your blog. It deserves the best shot possible at being seen, and some of these tips are habits to form that, once formed, do not take much time to implement.

So GO OUT there, keep writing, and bring your A game to search engines all over the world.

About the Author

Nicholas Klein

Founder and visual artist, specializing in all aspects of a businesses presence from imagery and video to graphics and web. A graduate of IPFW with a Bachelor in Fine Arts, Concentration Photography as well as an Associates Degree in Business. His personal photography works are focused on landscape, travel, and aerial photography.