SEO friendly blog writing is a great way to have your content get noticed by search engines. However, for that we first need to understand the purpose of writing SEO friendly articles. Some people write very informative and useful articles but they still fail to attract traffic because they are not SEO friendly blog articles Hence, if you want to direct the attention of your target audience to your blog you must write articles according to search engine optimization strategies. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines love SEO friendly articles because they can identify and categorize those articles easily and quickly.
In my earlier article, I talked about tips on optimizing your website for local search. Here I will share some useful insights with you on writing SEO friendly blog articles according search engine optimization techniques.
Following these simple guidelines will help improve your blog’s search engine ranking and drive more traffic to it.
1. Take out some time for keyword research
Before writing articles, make sure the category for which you are writing has a good chance of reaching more audience. Google Trends can help you out with that since it lists key word topics that people are talking about and searching for the most. You can pick a topic that is interesting and related to your industry and write an article about it.
Using Google Keyword Planner is yet another way to get ideas on keywords related to a given topic. Google Keyword planner provides monthly search volume of related keywords. You can get an idea on keywords that are trending globally or within your target locations. You can focus your article to one main keyword and two or three related keywords. Additionally, focusing on 1-2 long-tail keywords is better than selecting only one key word.
Once you have decided which keywords to use, you can search those keywords on Google to further get ideas by viewing the topics that turn up in the first few pages.
2. Make SEO Friendly Titles
Main Title:
When anyone reads the title of an article, it should give them an idea of what the article will be about. “The title is the first and perhaps the only impression you make on a prospective reader”. Make the title unique and attractive including target keywords or phrase. Title length between 50 to 70 characters is considered good because you can use the same for meta-title as well. You need to use only one H1 tag for main title so you don’t have to use more than one H1 tag for other sub titles.
Sub Titles:
When you are writing content, try coming up with sub titles for separate paragraphs. To make your article more SEO friendly, try using primary and secondary keywords in the sub-titles as well. You can use H2, H3, H4 tags for sub titles.
3. Write SEO Friendly Content
Your blog content should flow well and sound natural. An important thing to note here is having originality in your article and for that it must not be copied from any other resource. Additionally, each blog article must be at least 400 words long. Text volume that’s more than 500 words on a page is favorable.
The first paragraph of the article should be a brief description of what will follow and must include a combination of main and related keywords. The paragraphs that follow must also contain keywords. However, make sure not to overdo the keywords, because it can make your article look spammy and search engines might penalize your post altogether.
You can use keyword density tools or some SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO wordpress plugin to get an idea of how many times you should use a given keyword. Generally, keyword density between 3% – 5% is favorable.
You can also link some of the keywords to the important external recourses such as Wikipedia and Google to improve your articles search engine ranking.
4. Image Optimization
Your blog post must not be all text. You should also have images that help explain the content of your blog. However, search engines cannot read plain images. Rather, they look for images with alt-tag.
You can use main key word and sub keywords for image’s alt tag. However, images take longer to load and for mobile users this can be frustrating and they may leave your blog altogether. Not more than two to three images can do the trick for you. In order to optimize your images for search engines, try writing brief meaningful phrases with keyword for alt tags. You can use key words for image name and image title as well.
5. SEO Friendly Meta Title & Meta Description
You can use same main title as meta-title and same brief description that you used for the first paragraph of your article as meta-description. Meta-description length should be 145 – 155 characters. The only rule is that both tags must include your main keywords. Learn more on Meta description here.
If you have a word press blog, I recommend Yoast SEO wordpress plugin for SEO. After installation and activation, you can see yoast plugin drop box at the bottom of each post editor in back end. You can add meta-title and description of each post easily by yoast plugin.
6. Topic Tags
Topic tags can help organize your blog article content, but if you overuse them, they can actually be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, search engines may view it as duplicate content.
Eg: topic tags like blog, blogging, and blog posts are too similar to each other to be used on the same blog post.
You can use your keyword for topic tags or choose about 10 – 30 topic tags that you think are important for your website and that are not similar to each other.
7. URL of Blog Post
Your blog post URL should reflect your title, so make sure you use the keyword in your blog’s URL as well. Don’t use a tail URL or robotic URL like thishttps://solomoit.com.au/blog/art-565==s
Example for proper URL:https://solomoit.com.au/blog/seo-friendly-blog-articles
A great resource for finding out more about how to wire SEO blog articles is SEO section in Google Webmaster Tools.
Did you find my tips useful? What SEO tactics do you employ to drive more traffic to your blog? If you are looking for SEO services for your blog or website Let us help you out with this!
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