With a well-optimised blog, you can literally increase your organic visitors tenfold. Of course, you also need to know how to SEO a blog.
In this article, we’ve put together everything you need to successfully increase your visitor numbers. We warn you in advance: it will involve a lot of work, but it will be worth it.
Let’s get to it!
Find a main keyword for each blog post
All content is based on keyword research. Of course, it’s good to have keyword research software, but even if you don’t, you’re not out of luck – you can gather a lot of ideas yourself.
Let’s say you are a personal trainer and you want to write about the importance of protein.
So this will be your main keyword.
For the main keywords, the search volume is high 99% of the time, so you also need long tail keywords. This means you are searching for search terms of 3 or more words.
And your good friend Google search will help you do it, so let’s find out how.
Find long tail keywords
So let’s stick to the protein topic mentioned above. If you want to write an informative article about this, you have to talk about what people are really interested in. Here’s how you can find out.
Type protein into Google search.
Beng, you already have a lot of long tail keywords that your readers are interested in. It is worth noting and thematising these, as they can serve as good ideas for later. I personally, for example, would write a comprehensive article on “Protein in urine: what causes it and what does it show?”
But now let’s write a more comprehensive article on protein, and let’s call it Protein in training: these 9 things you need to look out for to build muscle.
This brings us to our next point.
Use these keywords in your headlines too
It is important that you also use these keywords in the headline. There are only 1 title and 1 H1 headline per post – these are worth paying attention to.
The title is also a very important pillar of blog SEO, as it is the key to whether someone clicks on your article in the search engine. To let Google and the reader know what the post is about, it must contain a keyword. But everything else should be about clicking on the article and being read.
Take the title mentioned above. If you want to work out and learn more about protein, you probably want to focus on building muscle. It will be the “catch” or “hook” in the title that will draw the reader in.
It’s good to have a number in the headline, because statistics show that readers are more likely to click on a post with a number. This number is best when it is odd, and some studies have also been done on this.
(Here is an example of Moz’s research, where the same article was examined with different headlines. For the article with a number, the click-through rate was 36% for men and 39% for women, compared to 22% and 20% for the article without a number.)
But let’s scroll on and see how the rest of the content is built!
Install a SEO plugin or use the existing system
To get the best SEO for your blogs, you will need a plugin for WordPress, such as Yoast or RankMath.
And if you have a site like Wix or Shopify, use an internal SEO system – you’ll find one on most rental websites.
Appropriate length of H1 heading
First of all, it’s important that the H1 heading itself (otherwise known as Heading 1) is the right length, otherwise Google will cut it off. For example, Mangools’ free SERP simulatoris an excellent tool for this.
This is an indication that the fictitious heading is too long and needs to be modified:
So let’s see: Protein these are the 9 things you need to look out for to build muscle. We have the green light for this.
It’s about 65 characters, which Google does not trim from the length of the headline, so it’s worth aiming for.
Once you have the headline, the rest of the blog can follow.
It is also worth including the keyword or a synonym for the keyword in the introduction (but not more than the first 100 words).
But what shall we write about next? How should the headlines relate to the topic? Once again, Google is here to help.
Related searches will appear for the keyword “protein muscle building”:
And also the other suggestions:
These can even be headlines, with some changes.
Let there be a hierarchy
Speaking of headlines! It is very important to have the right hierarchy. The H1 heading is followed by H2 headings, and then, as in books, chapter subheadings, H3 and then H4.
It breaks up the text, it actually gives it a shape, otherwise it would be a scary, huge, unstructured block. (And yes, this is when the majority of users will slam down their laptops in tears.)
Relevant images and alt text
There should also be related, relevant images and alt texts (replacement texts) in the post, as they make the blog more exciting. In the alt text, also include text that is somehow related to the image, but also includes a keyword or long tail keyword related to the topic.
Write meta description
The meta description is also very important, because (chances are) this is what will appear in Google, under the title bar, and we’ll show you what it looks like in practice:
In the meantime, let’s write one ourselves and see how it would show up in Google in Mangools.
The maximum recommended length of the meta description is 145 characters, which must be respected so that Google does not cut it off.
Make your url search engine friendly
The url must also be of the appropriate length and format to meet the search engine’s requirements. In practice, this looks like this: this-is-the-right-url
That is, without accents, separated by a hyphen, and as short as possible, including the main keyword.
So this is how our SERP and user-friendly blog takes its final form:
Pay attention to internal and external links
In addition to the right content, you should also pay attention to external and internal links in the text. If you have previous material on proteins, link to it, or link to external sources, especially if you are referring to statistics.
It’s the only way to be credible, because it’s the only way to back up what you say with numbers, and the only way to back up the numbers with the statistics you base them on.
Create evergreen content and update old articles
Evergreen content is something that never goes out of fashion, for example, in the case of the blog above, it could be a recipe, or even a blog post about protein. Of course, some content may need to be updated from time to time (e.g. these are the most popular diets in 2022), so it’s also worth keeping an eye on these.
Need help with SEO?
As you can see from the above, search engine optimization is not easy for blogs either, as there are a lot of things to pay attention to. Furthermore, the above article is only a small slice of the big picture, as you need detailed keyword research and a content plan to really grow.
In addition, you need to constantly monitor in Search Console and Google Analytics how your articles are performing, which content is doing better and which is doing less well, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
If you need a team with years of experience, feel free to contact us at SEOlmypic and we’ll help you develop your strategy. As a result, your blog will be read by more people than ever before and your revenue will multiply.