Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is critical for online marketers. In order to increase the visibility of your website to people searching for your product or service, you need to optimize your web pages, including your blog posts. But are you optimizing your blog content in the correct way so that it helps your business to organically rank on search engines?
Read on to be well informed about all the necessary information. You’re about to embark on an in-depth exploration of blog SEO, including the factors that influence it and strategies for improving your blog’s visibility in search results.
Getting your site near the top of Google’s search rankings is difficult, whether you’re new to blogging or have been writing entries for some time. You can, however, gain an advantage over your competitors by following a few helpful blog SEO tips and remaining persistent.
There is no way to know exactly what algorithm Google uses to determine search rankings, but we do know that there are numerous blog SEO tips you can use to improve your site’s visibility and attract more visitors.
By positioning your website as an answer to your customers’ questions, blogging helps you improve your SEO quality. When you use a variety of on-page SEO tactics in your blog posts, you’ll have a better chance of ranking in search results and attracting more visitors.
It’s undeniable that blog content helps your SEO, but Google’s constant stream of algorithm updates can make it difficult to publish the right kind of blog content.
Some blog ranking factors have remained popular for a considerable time period, while others are considered “ancient.” Here are some of the top-ranking factors that can influence blog SEO intrinsically as well as extrinsically.
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Factors that influence blog SEO
- Dwell time of the readers
Indirect ranking factors, like dwell time, are important for the user’s experience, and as known to all, the user’s experience is king when it comes to SEO. Dwell time refers to the amount of time a blog visitor stays on a particular page.
Dwell time begins when a visitor clicks on your site from a search engine results page (SERP) and continues until they leave the page. This metric tells search engines like Google how valuable your content is to readers in a roundabout way.
It’s logical to assume that as they spend more time on the page, the more valuable the information becomes to them.
However, there’s a reason why this metric is an indirect indicator of SEO — it’s completely instinctive. Your content strategy is a mystery to the search engine algorithms. Short-form content could be the focus of your blog, with each post taking no more than a minute to read.
If you want your readers to spend less time on your blog, include relevant information at the beginning of your posts.
Changing your content’s dwell time can have an impact on SEO. But don’t do it if it doesn’t make sense for your overall content strategy.
- Improving the page speed
While it’s true that visual elements on your blog can slow down page load times, they’re not the only factor to consider.
Unnecessary code and the overuse of plugins can also slow down a blog. Removing unnecessary code from your pages can make them load faster.
HTML-Cleaner can help you find and remove unwanted code if you’re unsure how to do it. It’s a user-friendly tool that doesn’t necessitate any prior coding expertise. It does nothing more than highlighting the unwanted code and gives you the option to delete it with a single click.
It’s also a good idea to make a list of your blog’s plugins.
Make a list of the plugins you use on a daily basis and the ones you installed to address a specific problem. You can uninstall more plugins that affect your site’s front end than you think to improve your overall site speed.
- Mobile responsiveness
Over half of Google’s search traffic in the United States comes from mobile phones and other small handheld devices.
Depending on your niche, you may see a similar pattern with your blog site. If you want to improve your SEO, you must optimize your blog site for mobile devices. The question is, however, what does it mean when a website is optimized for mobile?
The general rule of thumb in the industry is to keep things as simple as possible. To make a website responsive, you simply need to change a CTA button or font size here and there in pre-made themes. Then, run a mobile site speed test on a regular basis and monitor how well your site performs on mobile by checking your Google Analytics dashboard.
- The index date factor
The goal of search engines is to deliver the most useful and accurate results possible. The date on which a search engine indexes content is one of the factors it considers when determining what is relevant and accurate. Indexing is the process by which a search engine collects and catalogues new content. When a user searches for keywords related to the indexed page, the page will appear in the SERP.
Some people may be curious as to whether or not the date on which content was indexed coincides with the date on which it was published. In a nutshell, yes. A blog crawler, such as Google’s, will almost certainly index a newly published post on the same day you publish it. Back-dating content can be justified in some cases, like archiving information or simply updating the occasional sentence.
Implementing a historical optimization strategy can have a significant impact on this SEO factor. This approach works best for blogs that have been around for a while and have a good amount of content already.
You can have a significant impact on your blog’s SEO without creating a lot of net new content by updating these older posts with new perspectives and data. Crawlers will reindex the page to reflect the new content, giving it a second chance in the SERP. It’s a win-win situation all around.
- Depending on the recent data
In blog posts, include recent data as another SEO indirect ranking factor. Recent data provides readers with current and accurate information, resulting in a pleasurable reading experience.
This tells the search engine that your site is useful and relevant for your readers when you include a link to a reputable site with up-to-date information which is a plus point for that other site.
You’re also letting the search engine know that this type of information is somehow associated with the content you create and publish. You’ll see an increase in the time your readers spend on your page, as well as a decrease in your bounce rate, as time passes.
How to make blog posts search engine friendly?
- Know your target audience
Decide who you want to reach with your blog by identifying your target audience. No matter what industry your blog is aimed at, you’ll want to identify and speak to the primary audience who will read your content.
Knowing your target audience and what you want them to do after reading your article will help you plan your blog approach.
Buyer personas are a beneficial way to hit readers based on their purchasing habits, demographics, and psychographics.
Your content may be grammatically correct and accurate, but few people will click on it if it doesn’t speak to them personally.
- Perform a search for keywords
The next step is to find out what kind of content your readers want to read. This is where your buyer persona comes in.
If you don’t have a plan in place, keyword research can be a daunting task. Starting with your blog’s topics, then expanding or contracting your scope is what is suggested.
- Include images
Visuals are highly valued by search engines like Google for certain keywords. Images and videos are two of the most frequently appearing visual elements on the search engine results page. Use original photos and videos and add descriptive alt text to all of your blog’s visual elements for the best chance of being featured in an image pack or a video snippet.
Alt text plays a significant role in whether or not your image or video appears in the SERP, as well as how prominently. In order for people with visual impairments to enjoy your blog’s content, alt text is essential for screen readers.
- Make a title that people will be interested in reading
It’s the first thing a reader sees when they find your article and it has a significant impact on whether or not they click through to read more. A compelling title piques the reader’s interest by using facts, posing a question, or evoking curiosity.
Coscheduler’s Headline Analyzer identifies power, emotion, uncommon, and common words as components of a memorable title. These types of words in the right proportions in a blog title will capture the attention of your readers and retain them on the site.
- Include a compelling call to action (CTA).
In the absence of a call to action, what good is a blog post?
A call to action (CTA) is meant to direct your readers to the next step in their blog journey. The key to a great CTA is that it’s relevant to the topic of your existing blog post and flows naturally with the remainder of the content.
Whatever your goal is with your blog, you’ll need an enticing call to action (CTA) on every post you publish. This could be anything from selling something to offering a newsletter subscription.
CTAs are available in a variety of formats, so be creative and try out different ones.
There are many different types of call-to-action buttons, but the three most common are buttons, hyperlinks, and widgets.
If you want the reader to make a purchase, add a big, obvious CTA like a button. A hyperlink at the end of the current article, on the other hand, makes it easy for readers to check out another blog post.
- Pay attention to how the reader feels while reading.
The reader’s experience is the most important part of a blog post, according to any good author or SEO. Readability, formatting, and page speed all play a role in the reader’s overall impression.
That means you’ll need to write content that’s easy to understand, covers all aspects of your subject, and is up-to-date based on the latest research and trends. Using headings and subheadings to organize your content is critical because it aids the reader in scanning your document quickly for the information they need.
Finally, on-page elements such as images and videos slow down the page load time. Don’t insert too many videos and keep your image file sizes small (250 KB is a good starting point). Focusing on the information that the reader wants to know and structuring the post to meet that need will help you publish a search-engine-optimized article.
- Refresh the existing information.
You may believe that in order to improve your SEO, you must write new blog posts. To some extent, this is correct, but you should also devote a significant amount of your resources to improving your current blog content. It’s all about recycling and updating your existing content while also getting rid of the stale stuff.
This is due to the fact that a completely new piece of content takes a lot longer to settle and gain authority on the search engine results page (SERP), whereas you could update a piece of content and benefit relatively quickly in comparison.
Your updated content along with ranking on the SERP faster also enhances the number of visitors and leads to your site. Moreover, it takes lesser time and fewer resources to update previous content than creating afresh a whole new article.
Furthermore, the process of updating and repurposing the successful pieces of your content enhances its stability and enables you to achieve great results for a long-lasting period of time and it works best for mostly evergreen content.
Finally, you have to remove outdated content that your audience finds no longer relevant. Though you have to focus on your content and make it evergreen, nonetheless some fragments of it become outdated with time. This includes statistics, product information (if you have any listed in your blogs — as your products and business evolve), or information that changes across your industry over time.
Ending lines
Using social media can be difficult if you aren’t sure what you’re looking for. To find blog topics that will improve your search engine optimization (SEO), it helps to know where your ideal customers are online.
Improving your blog content for SEO doesn’t have to be rocket science. Just finding the appropriate blog topics that improve SEO is one of the key features of a well-framed content marketing strategy that draws the best results.
It is not necessary to implement each of the above SEO best practices into your content strategy right away. But, as your website gains popularity your goals on search engines grow with it. Once you mark the goals and nature of your ideal readers, you’ll be on track to produce the right content that will raise the ranks of the SEO.
