When it comes to blogs, you can usually assure a higher ranking in search engines by solely utilizing some SEO fundamentals, without having to employ separate tools or very in-depth understanding of this niche. However, that doesn’t go to say that you can just forego SEO altogether, as such negligence will most likely condemn your blog to obscurity.
Here are some of the principles of blog SEO that will help your written work go a long way in the rankings, which you can constantly keep track of with the Rank Tracker app.
No Keyword Stuffing
Even though basing topics on keywords that you have identified as potential goldmines is a smart practice to garner a lot of attention, you should always remember that at the end of the day, you are writing a blog with keywords in it, not keywords dressed up as a blog.
The reader experience is an essential ranking factor, and blogs that read like a bunch of keywords, awkwardly put together by a robot, certainly doesn’t make for the best reader experience. Search engines recognize this as keyword stuffing and penalize blogs for it.
This is why your writing should always stem from the intent of your visitors, its purpose should be to answer their questions in an informative and enticing fashion. Keywords are just the icing on the cake. Think of them like alcohol – it should never be the focus of a night out, just a facilitator for good times.
A Couple of Long-Tail Keywords Tops
Long-tail keywords are usually question-based, meaning they stir your blog toward answering your visitors’ questions by default and make it purpose and value-driven.
Furthermore, long-tail keywords are much more specific than a regular, single-word keyword, which means they make for more unique topics that haven’t been covered as much.
Having no more than two long-tail keywords is a proven practice as it keeps the angle of your blog tight and the narrative coherent.
Headline
Of course, the headline is the first impression of your blog, so it needs to on point.
First and foremost, you absolutely need to have a keyword in your headline, which is coined “title tag.” In fact, the keyword should be placed within the first 60 characters of your title, since this is more or less the part that’s displayed in search engine results pages. Otherwise, your keyword will remain invisible, significantly reducing your blog’s chances of getting clicked.
URL
URLS to search engines are kind of what titles are to readers, so optimizing them with one or two of your main keywords is crucial to how search engines will react to your blog.
Meta Description
After the title, the meta description is your second chance to draw readers in, and since it offers a little more room in terms of length for your ideas and information to unfold, it’s what often seals the deal. You need to put some thought into synthesizing your blog in the most alluring and informative way possible.
Of course, including your long-tail keyword is a must, for both your readers’ and Google’s sake.
Mobile-Friendliness
Nowadays, mobile phones are actually the primary access point to search engines, and naturally, Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites.
You need to incorporate a “responsive design,” which means a single, unified URL for blogs instead of one for mobile and another for desktop.
Eliminate Redundancy of Topic Tags
There was a widespread practice of stuffing blogs with all kinds of topic tags that are just very similar variations of each other, but search engines now treat this in a similar way as keyword stuffing.
So, combination of topic tags like “healthy living,” “healthy lifestyle,” “healthy life” will only backfire rather than cover all bases.
Link Internally
Linking internally serves two very important purposes: keeping readers on your website, and showing search engines that the blog post in question isn’t just a one-off on the particular subject matter, but one of many interconnected pieces of writing that explore different aspects of this niche.
Topic Clusters
This is somewhat of a continuation of the previous point.
Taking it one keyword at a time is a near-sighted approach that makes your blog architecture unwieldly, chaotic, and hard to scour for specific information.
Instead, you should employ the topic clusters model, using a broader topic as a foundation of your blog architecture. From there, each blog post will be a separate pillar, targeting a specific keyword, and all those pillars will be interconnected with each other.
This avoids competition between your own URLs and also expands your reach in search engines.
There are a lot more ways to improve your blog’s ranking, a lot of which involve outreach and promotional work, so to speak, but first, you need to optimize your posts from within through those techniques.