If you want to achieve high performance on search engines, generate more organic traffic to your website, create high-quality content, and improve the way people reach your blog it’s simple; you NEED to have an effective SEO strategy.
One of the primary ways to generate pertinent content for your audience and keep users engaged for a consistent basis is, of course, blogging. As once Bill Gates coined a phrase, “content is king,” our marketing team will also argue that at the same time “SEO is its queen.”
As your performance on search engines directly relates to blogging and how well it integrates with SEO features, our marketing team crafted a guide to share with you our very own SEO tips and tricks that will help to improve your blogging experience, along with your search ranking.
To have a better understanding, let’s first take a look at some of the primary benefits of optimising your blog for SEO. Those include but are not limited to aspects such as:
- A blog keeps people on your website for longer
- It keeps your website fresh and current
- It helps you target long-tail keywords
- It makes it easier to rank for specific keywords
- It gives you opportunities to improve internal linking
- It opens opportunities to link back to your site
- It creates better opportunities to connect with your audience
- It helps to increase your visibility
- It improves the user experience.
Tip #1: Conduct Intensive Keyword Research
Coming from our own experience, we can assure that it all starts with the right keyword research. Instead of wasting your time in making guesses on what would your audience prefer to read, simply invest it in analysing actual data from search engines.
Proper keyword research helps you discover the main areas of interest for your primary target audience, therefore leading you to generate relevant content. Make it a habit to come up with one or two main keywords for your blog, and follow this up with finding secondary keywords that you can use throughout your blog.
Our SEO experts recommend using tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs keyword research, these provide in-depth analysis into keyword data, keyword position tracking, competition analysis, and various other useful recommendations for finding the right keywords.
Remember not to make it artificial, and only use the keywords whenever applicable. The rule of the thumb is to not force a keyword in your content as the search engines identify keyword stuffing and can as well penalise you for that. Moreover, with Google’s latest use of latent semantic indexing (LSI) it is preferable to use different variations or phrasings of your keyword throughout your blog.
Our SEO specialists recommend to:
- Consider long-tail keywords: Most often, competing for one or two-word phrases can be really challenging to rank for. You might also wish to invest your time into relevant longer phrases and questions. As an example; it makes more sense to target a broad keyword like “small business local marketing” rather than simply “marketing” or even “business marketing.”
- Reflect on voice search: The use of Siri and Alexa seem to change the game for digital marketing, making it more important to optimise your content for voice search. Moreover, as voice search is a relevant newer development in SEO, it’s also a great opportunity to differentiate your brand from competitors.
Tip #2: Work On Creating A Killer Title
When trying to understand what your page is about, one of the primary focuses for search engines is the title. An effective title makes your blog more applicable to the search query. More importantly, it’s an amazing opportunity for your audience to distinguish your content in the search results and actually click on it.
Keeping this in mind, our team recommends to include your focus keyword in the title. However, make sure to do it in a way that will make sense to your readers. Aside from this, do not forget to make your headline catchy and click-worthy, as the click-through rate (CTR) also impacts your ranking in the search engines.
There are dozens of formulas and tools to write a catchy headline. One of the compelling ones in the list is EMP; the emotional marketing value.
The focus of the formula is the following. It recommends using power words, that evoke particular emotional responses in your target audience. There are also several online tools that help to calculate your title’s EMV score, such as EMV headline Analyzer.
Tip #3: Integrate Internal Links Into Your Blog
Internal linking is a reasonable way that helps to create a contextual relationship between your old and new content. Besides that, links are simply one of the substantial ranking signals for search engine algorithms.
Most of the time, backlinks require a lot of time and effort to integrate into your SEO implementation. This said you have the power to reach some outstanding results with relevant internal linking.
With internal links, you can guide your new readers to check out your older content, and introduce them with other content of their interest. It also helps to keep your audience to spend more time on your page.
Additional tip from Digilite team: try to use anchor texts phrased in a relevant way to your keyword for the content you are referring to.
Tip #4: Check For SERP Results
Once you already have a list of your preferred targeted keywords, simply head to Google and spend some time searching for those and analysing the results. Many of the results in a search engine results page (SERP) now include rich results.
If the organic results from your search include video thumbnails, images or other rich information it will be beneficial for you to review and optimise your blog content to be in a healthy competition with those listed.
Sometimes you might have to add more pictures and videos to your content accordingly. On occasion you may also wish to change the whole structure of your content to be able to compete for the featured snippet.
Either way, if you want to create high-value content you have to clearly know what you are competing with and against.
Tip #5: Have An Effective Use of Categories And Tags For Your Content
Blogs allow you to create a navigational aid for people browsing your blog, through categories and tags, this can both be strategically used for SEO purposes.
Categories are designed to divide your content into the main topics that appear in your blogs. On the other hand, tags are used to indicate the topics in an individual blog post.
Both of them not only help you to separate and sort your content effectively but they also make it more convenient and accessible for the readers and search engines.
A tip from our team: Try to create a list of keywords that you want to rank for and think of different topics and groups that they can fall into.
Tip #6: Use The Image ALT Text Effectively
Another significant element that search engines pay thorough attention to is the text of your image. Again, the list of your targeted keywords comes into hand. You can include your preferred keywords into the title (e.g. keyword.png) or in the alt text.
Consider optimising your images based on diverse descriptive variations of your longtail keyword, as well. It will ultimately help with the ranking in search engines.
Tip #7: Write An Impressive Meta Description
Last but not least, your meta description. Your meta description serves the purpose to give the search engines and your reader’s short information about your blog’s content.
Generally, the maximum suggested length for meta description is from 150-160 characters. Anything more than this has a possibility of being cut off and not be shown in the search results.
When writing your meta description, keep in mind that your copywriting techniques greatly affect your results, as it meets and satisfies certain audiences’ intent. The more engaging your meta description the better results you will have in terms of CTA.
Besides, being reader-friendly, and informative your meta description should also include the longtail keyword you are targeting.
However, remember that search engines might as well choose not to show your meta description in the results.
Concluding thoughts:
Digilite’s marketing team is happy to assist your business with relevant digital tips and tricks. Try the above-mentioned tips approved by our experts and see the results for yourself.
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