How to: Search Engine Optimisation for Blog Posts
If you're writing regular content for your blog, you will want to make it all worthwhile by optimising your blog posts, articles and content for SEO.
Now, you don't need to optimise ALL of your content, only content that matters. For example, if you produce a blog post about a team member's birthday or a run of the mill update, then these don't really need to be ranked on Google.
If you're looking to produce content that users will find useful, insightful and is something often googled (like this post), then you will be wanting to make sure your blog post is optimised for SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO is a deep subject, that can get quite complex - so we will take a look at the basics in order to get your blog posts ranked.
Standing for Search Engine Optimisation, SEO is the process you do to your website and content in order to rank on search engines such as Bing and Google. The end result of your content will be analysed and ranked by SEO algorithms, such as Google's algorithm.
The more SEO-friendly your content is, the increased likelihood you will be ranked high. There are other factors outside of the scope we will look at in this post, such as website speed, but for now we will just focus on how to optimise your blog posts and content for the best chance of ranking high on search engines.
How can I make my Blog Posts and Content SEO-friendly?
There are many ways to make your content SEO-friendly, all of which should be taken into account, and we will look into these points. It is to note that algorithms secrets are never revealed, but through extensive and collaborative research, along with a few hints from Google here and there, we have some pretty good pointers!
Without further ado let's break it down, in no particular order.
Keywords & Key Phrases for your Blog Posts
Keywords and phrases are essential to your strategy, they tell algorithms what your content and blog post is about!
Now you can't just go and slap your keyword or phrase here, there and everywhere. It has to be structured - used enough for it to be recognised as your keyword, but sparingly enough so it's not seen as forced, and that there's enough quality content to back it up.
Tip: It's a good idea to have two keywords or phrases to focus on in your content.