As modern trends continuously shift across all industries, it’s important to stay ahead of your competition. One of the most prominent ways to outperform your competitors can be through your business’ blog posts. Keeping SEO top-of-mind from the start of your content outline makes Google SERP boosting efforts easier down the line. Below are five SEO tips to prioritize when writing your blog posts. 

  1. Focus on long-tail keywords

Once you’ve identified your target audience for an article, implement long-tail keywords that are 3–5 words in length. Remember quality over quantity. Nowadays, more success is seen with less keyword density. Including fewer, detailed queries is preferred over an attempt to target the maximum amount of keywords possible. 

SEMRush is a great tool to use for identifying keywords that are:

  • Relevant to your blog topic and target market 
  • Filtered to your preferences (keyword difficulty, search volume, etc.)
  • Competitive within your industry

This tactic will allow your content to reach the user or group you targeted once your blog is published. When writing blog articles, remember to focus on your audience and not the search engine. At the end of the day, your content is only as good as it is relevant to your target market. 

  1. Use meta descriptions with CTAs

Optimized meta descriptions are a common website component that tends to be forgotten. They are HTML tags that briefly yet directly describe what the user can find on a site’s particular webpage. Be sure to keep these at about 1–2 sentences with 160 characters total. Prioritize the integration of a call to action (CTA) to provide users with a better understanding of what they can expect from your page’s content.

Another key component to writing effective meta-description tags is to practice keyword targeting. Since users can see this on the SERPs, having a strong meta description can increase clicks and impressions on your content. Additionally, Google will bold the search query if it appears in the meta description.

  1. Incorporate internal and external links

Including links throughout your page’s content encourages users to engage further with your website’s other pages. It also informs the search engine of which aspects of a website are most informative and important. 

While interlinking is extremely valuable to your SEO score, refrain from including too many links on one blog page as it can take away from the value of each link. A common best practice for blogs is to keep about 2–5 per page (or at least for every 500 words).

Be sure to only include links that are directly applicable to the written content. When a user clicks on this link, they should be able to access further explanation on the subject your blog post references. 

External links also enhance your site’s SEO, since linking to credible sources show both users and search engines that your content is authoritative. Common types of external links include experimental studies you reference, products/services you review, or any source that can provide more insight into your blog topic.

  1. Use alt text on your images

Alt text is implemented on your page’s embedded image(s) to briefly describe what the photo entails. Describing your blog photos with alt text improves your SEO score not only by helping visually impaired users but also when images fail to load and text is displayed instead.  

Alt text also improves the SEO quality of your blog pages because it helps search engines correctly index content by understanding what your image is. Organically, your content will rank higher if you make alt text a common practice in your blog writing process. Google images account for 22.6% of all searches, so you want to be sure your business is tapping into that market.

  1. Use topic clusters to develop expert insights

Consistently writing about the same topic can actually be beneficial for your company’s blog, as it shows expertise and brand authority. That being said, be sure to watch out for duplicate content across your blog. You don’t want to include the same exact information on more than one post, as it will dilute the importance of each post that includes that content. 

Effectively navigate the duplicate content hurdle by using topic clusters, which is writing multiple blogs on the same subject with different subtopics. Think of it as an umbrella; for example, if the main topic you’re writing about is “SEO,” subtopics could include:

  • On-page/Technical SEO
  • Off-page SEO
  • Content SEO

Batching out blog content using clusters shows users and search engines that your content is reputable, which can ultimately drive more traffic to your article pages and website as a whole.

Conclusion

Use the SEO blog writing tools discussed in this article to enhance your website’s SEO score and increase the click-through rate on your blog posts. Maintain this practice as you expand your business, compete within your industry, and target your audience(s). Optimizing your blog content with SEO from the start will help your brand in the long run. 

For more information or help improving your website’s SEO content strategy, contact us.