Everybody wants their blog to rank top on google search results and get searched easily. And to achieve this, you must optimize your blog posts for SEO.
There are lots of blogs and sites that have not implemented even basic SEO techniques. They just ignore the concept and wonder how their site is not at the top in search engine result pages (SERPs).
If you really want to be found in the first two pages of search results, you must start implementing optimization techniques since day one. Because, to be found in the first two pages of search results, is not a one day process. It takes time.
In this article, we will have a look at basic optimization techniques that everybody must implement.
9 Best ways to optimize blog posts for SEO
1. Content is king
Yes..!!! Content is king in search optimization. Every user looks for content related to his/her query. If they do not find your article useful, they go to another blog for the solution.
Search engines play an important role here. They push those sites up in the search results who have great content in their blogs. So when the user makes a search, he can get related content as per his search.
It also benefits bloggers. How? If the user likes your post and finds out that other articles are also good and full of content, next time, he directly comes to your site. So always try to provide quality content.
2. Keyword Research and its Use
Keyword research is the process of finding alternate search terms in which people enter into search engines while looking for a similar topic. You need to understand the needs of niche users and anticipate what they will search for. Your keywords decide the quality and quantity of traffic you will get on your site.
There are lots of keyword research tools for SEO available in the market. Google keyword planner is the best one. It will help you choose the best search term(keyword).
Once you have keywords, you must use them in your site. As search engine crawl through H1 tag, Permalink, Title, Meta Description and alt Attributes of images, you must use keywords in each. It will help search engine to understand that your content is really related to your keywords.
Do not forget to include keywords in actual content. SEO world suggest general keyword density around 2%. But, I’ll suggest to include keywords at appropriate positions. Does not need to be always 2%.
Ex. If your blog is of 800 words, then according to 2%, you will have to use keyword for 16 times which will look like spam to crawling bots.
3. Meta Description
Meta description is not a factor to be considered in Google’s search algorithm but it play vital role in ranking. It appears below the blue link in search result pages. The standard description length is 150-160 characters.
When user get search result pages, they see this description as preview of the site. The description must be good enough to force user to click through your link. It help you improve your ranking.
4. Meta Title
Meta Title means blue link which show on search result pages. Many times developer get confused with title. There are two titles.
Meta Title – Its SEO title appears in search result pages
Post Title – Its title of post/article
As I mentioned above, keyword must be in Title. And its much better if you could use it at start of the title.
5. Permalinks
Permalink is nothing but URL or site web address. It should be structured. WordPress provide various structure out of which we must use one with “post name”.
I created URL with custom option as shown above. I mentioned category in URL. It is useful when search engine bots crawl through URL.
6. Page Speed
Time required for loading complete page content is nothing but page speed. If your site is slow, it affects your ranking in two ways.
- Google – It reduces the ranking of sites with poor speed as slow pages increases bounce rate.
- User – If page speed is slow, user will automatically leave the site and adversely effect traffic & conversions.
For more information, please check – How To Speed Up Your WordPress Site
7. Mobile Friendly
Google says, more than 60% of web search is happening through mobile. And that’s why google made mobile friendliness mandatory for sites.
Mobile friendliness also get affected by two factor as above i.e by Google and by User in same way. Therefore, if your site not mobile friendly, google will punish you affecting search ranking.
8. Internal Linking
Google always keep collecting linking data from sites to understand their hierarchical structure and to index new pages into their search system. For that, google send its bot to crawl through sites. Site have internal and external linking. Internal linking means linking within particular website itself.
If you have best internal linking practice, it makes easy for google to understand relationship between those pages. In fact, you are making things better for google.
Another benefit of internal linking is, user stays for longer time on your site. Search engine notice these trails and reward the site by pushing it up in search ranking.
9. External Linking
Many people think, external linking is not fruitful. Why to send our visitors to other sites and increase their traffic. How come it benefit us. Well, its WRONG thinking.
According to search engine algorithms, external linking earn more value than internal linking. You get rewarded from both search engines & users.
How come..? Here is an answer.
1. From USER – When you send traffic to other site with external linking, you gain more trust from your user. Because they are getting exactly what they need from those links. And they know, if they want such information again, they can get it on your site.
2. From search engine – If you are short of data for your user, you share an external link with a whole lot of info he need. Search engine realizes, that you are sending your traffic to other sites for better info. Eventually, it works out well for search engine, as all they want is to provide best information to their users. And so, they reward you by improving your page ranking.
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Conclusion
So, these are the 9 best ways to optimize your blog posts for SEO. Till now, you must have to understand the importance of optimization. There are lots of other ways too. But these are important and commonly known.
All the last 7 ways are easy to implement. The first 2 are quite difficult and the most important one. Content writing might be easy but quality content writing is not that much easy as you might think.
Whereas keyword research and implementation is also a tricky way. Your keyword selection can make and break the site. So be careful about it and use keywords wisely.
That’s it..!!!
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