Do you wish to have a successful blog? If so, then your top priority must be to strive for excellent SEO. When you are performing blog SEO correctly, and couple that with creating blog posts people love to read, Google prefers to rank your content higher.
When your content ranks higher, your brand achieved more authority with its audience. The higher in a query of search results a company lands, the stronger it is communicated that they have an established position in their industry. Blogging strategies and SEO play a crucial part in this process. Here are some critical steps to help propel you into blogging success:
Consider SEO BEFORE You Start To Write
Considering SEO after you have completed the writing is like calibrating your cockpit gauges after you have entered flight. It is essential for successful SEO blog content of that piece for the optimization to be set in place before the piece is ever created! This is because the guideposts like keywords and structure that search engines use to rank your content are infused into the content itself.
Define the goal of the blog post
Each piece of your published SEO blog content needs a well-defined goal. The blog’s goal defines what the post should be all about. Here are some points to consider:
- Get some relevant content indexed by search engines.
- Promote existing posts with the help of internal links.
- Review a product or service to acquire affiliate sales.
As you set a goal, you have a direction to work towards in your writing. Otherwise, you might find yourself rambling on and on and lose your reader’s interest in the process. Before moving on to the next step, it is important to understand how to evaluate your blog post’s success in respect to meeting the determined goal. Some popular tools, among others, that you can use for this purpose are Google Analytics and SemRush.
Keyword Research
This is a fundamental part of the blog post’s anatomy. As discussed briefly above, keywords function as the backbone of your posts. The topic, supporting content, and structure are all formed around the top keywords you choose the blog post to represent. There are many popular tools including Google Trends and (again!) SemRush, that will provide you with some active keywords that are a good bet to use for helping bring some buzz to your blog.
Determine the User Intent Of Your Post
This is the stage of the process where you start thinking about your actual content. This piece of anatomy addresses the supportive content of the piece. To do this effectively, you must understand the “user intent” of your post while executing it in conjunction with the type of content search engines promote.
Previously, SEO was all about keyword stuffing and filling the pages with link building. However, this is no longer an effective strategy. In fact, Google will apply penalties for using strategies like these! For the highest chances of having your posts achieve the first pages of Google, you need to craft an exciting post that is also useful and has something to draw customers’ attention, thus, addressing the user intent.
Length and type of blog post
The most effective way of finding the right length your blog post should have to best satisfy this user intent is to reverse engineer other successful posts!
First, search for the selected keywords in Google, for instance. Once you are done searching for the keywords, shift your focus to the type of content that is ranking on the first page. Find answers to key questions about the content, like:
- Does it include images, video, slideshow, or only text?
- How long on average are the posts?
You will surely spot a few similarities between pieces of content. Taking some time to understand what other successful bloggers do, as well as what users are responding to, will surely help you develop some successful SEO blog content strategies.
If you would like help from a group of professionals for bumping your blog ranking to that of your industry competitors, give your Online Capital Group a call at 904-600-3600.
