What is blog writing for SEO?
Blog writing for SEO is the process of writing content that will rank on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) such as Google. This entails researching keywords, writing high-quality content that matches user intent, and optimizing your content, headers, and images for easy page crawling.
7 Steps to Blog Writing for SEO
1. Blog Writing for SEO – Identify and Set Goals
Identifying and setting goals is the first step in all marketing projects. It is no different with blog writing for SEO. I have outlined some common goals below for blog posts.
- Educate your audience
- Grow your brand’s audience
- Increase website traffic
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate sales or leads
2. Blog Writing for SEO – Define Your Target Audience
Knowing who you are writing to and for will help you when it comes time to plan your blog content. Developing personas of your target audience can help you to really understand the audience for your blog content. Important information to identify includes:
- What are people searching for?
- Who is doing the search?
- When are they searching? (Seasons, Trends)
- What platforms are they using to search?
- Why are they searching? (Motivation)
- What problem are they looking to solve? (Challenges)
- What are their interests?
- Where are they located?
3. Blog Writing for SEO – Complete Keyword Research
Understanding the keywords that searchers are using to find information is key to writing a blog post that will be found in SERPs. Also, knowing how competitive the keywords are will determine whether your content will have an opportunity to rank. Selecting keywords that will drive the right traffic and rank will determine the success of your blog article.
Free Keyword Research Tools
- Google Keyword Planner – https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
- Google Trends – https://www.google.com/trends/
- Keyword Tool.io – http://keywordtool.io/
4. Blog Writing for SEO – Plan Your Blog Content
Planning blog content can get a little complicated with all these SEO guidelines. Remember that you are writing the content to answer the searcher’s questions and to provide value.
The best way for you to improve your chances of ranking is by writing high-quality blog posts with user intent in mind that offer a solution to the questions being asked.
What does that look like?
- Thorough answers
- Scannable sections
- Organized subheadings
- Visual aids
Remember the target audience profile you created. Keep your buyer personas, and their motivations, challenges, and interests in mind. Choosing topics that interest your target audience and that offer solutions to their questions make a successful blog post.
5. Blog Writing for SEO – Optimize the Content and Images
This is one of the most important steps in blog article writing. The keywords that you want to be found for should be used in the article and optimized for important sections of the content.
- Make sure that the keywords are used in headings multiple times. Use the keyword in your h1. Then use it again in H2s, H3s and H4s to break up the content.
- Use the keyword in the first paragraph of the blog content.
- Include keywords in your meta title and description.
- Add keyword rich alt tags to all of your images (and make sure your images are compressed for fast loading).
- Link to high-authority websites.
- Plan for longer posts that can be scanned.
- Link to other posts on your website.
- Optimize content for featured snippets (answer the question thoroughly and succinctly).
6. Blog Writing for SEO – Distribute and Promote Your Content
Refer to your target audience profile again. This will help you to determine where best to distribute your content.
- Social media is a great way to push new blog content out as it is free to post. The channels that we recommend posting on include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Profile, and Twitter.
- Adding your blog content to your corporate newsletter is a great way to distribute to your existing client base.
- If the goal of the campaign is to drive traffic to the website, you may want to consider a paid campaign to drive traffic to the blog post.
7. Blog Writing for SEO – Measure Your Success
Finally, you will want to measure the success of your blog article. The measurement strategy will be determined by the goal that you set. Google analytics is a great way to measure traffic that has reached your blog article.
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
Finding out your best performing blog posts will help you to determine what your readers are most drawn to and what they are engaging with. This will help you to determine what future blog posts will be useful to your audience.