How Do You Do SEO for a Blog Post?

Blogging is much more than just throwing words on a page and waiting for people to come flooding to your site. Without the appropriate planning and execution, a post is much more likely to fail than it is to succeed – and SEO is one of the biggest parts of executing a blog post successfully.

SEO for a blog post isn’t just about the technical elements that you add to a page, and it isn’t about using the right keywords in the right places either. It’s about writing and structuring the post in a way that both provides a good user experience and makes the topic clear to Google. In this guide, I’m going to explain how to do SEO for a blog post from start to finish.

Start with Keyword Research

If you want to write a blog post that generates significant traffic, writing about the first thing that comes to your head is usually just about the worst thing that you can do. Writing about whatever comes to mind might be appropriate if you have an existing audience of people who are already visiting your site on a regular basis to see what’s new. If you want to get organic traffic from Google, though, you need to write about things that people actually search for. 

To find out what people are searching for, you need to use a keyword research tool. AHREFS and Semrush are two popular tools for this purpose. These tools allow you to input seed topics and see keywords related to those topics along with their associated search volumes. You can also use these tools to see what keywords are bringing traffic to your competitors’ websites. 

Keyword research can help you identify what your blog post’s main target keyword should be based on its monthly search volume. It can also help you identify several closely related keywords that can serve as subtopics for the post. 

Outline the Post

Now that you know all of the most important keywords and subtopics that your post should include in order to capture the maximum possible organic traffic, it’s time to start working on the content. I always recommend beginning with an outline, because it’ll help you organize your thoughts and ensure that you won’t forget any of the things you want to cover. 

The outline can also help you map out the post’s subheadings. Ideally, some of the higher-volume keywords that you discovered in your research should be used as H2 subheadings within the content.

Don’t forget to look at some of the articles that currently show up on the first page for your target keyword when you’re outlining your content. Do any of those articles have any interesting angles or bits of information that you could include in your article?

Write the Post

Once you’ve completed your outline, it’s time to write the post. Make it as good as it can be. Don’t just regurgitate things that you’ve read online; let your own expertise shine through. Get to the point quickly and don’t add fluff to try to hit a specific word count. Let the topic dictate the post’s length. If you’ve covered the topic comprehensively, the post is long enough.

Check the Post for Readability

After you’ve finished writing your draft, you should scan it for readability. Try to avoid overly long paragraphs. Break up long H2 sections by adding bullet lists or H3 subheadings. If the content isn’t easy to scan, people won’t read it. 

Add Images and Optimize Them

Every blog post should have a headline image, and it’s usually good to add at least one image to the body of the post as well. Images add interest to a blog post, and they’re also good for SEO because they show that you care about the reader’s experience.

·     Don’t use generic file names for your images. An image’s file name should include important keywords from your article. For example, an appropriate file name for an image in this article might be “blog_post_seo.jpg.”

·     Every image should also include alt text, which is used by screen readers for the visually impaired. The alt text should describe what’s shown in the image, and it’s also good for SEO if the alt text includes some of the post’s main keywords.

Proofread the Post and Compare It to Its Competition

At this point, you should have a blog post that’s informative, interesting and comprehensive. Hopefully, you’ve kept your paragraphs short and used subheadings, bullet lists and images liberally to keep the content interesting and make the text easy to scan and absorb.

Before you hit the “Publish” button, take one last look at your competition. Can you honestly say that your content is better than what currently appears on Google for your target keyword? Are there any additional viewpoints or bits of information that you could add to make your content even better?

Remember that being comprehensive means that you’re providing a great user experience, and a great user experience will always help your content rank as well on Google as it possibly can.

Give the Post a Relevant and Appealing Title and Meta Description

Now that your blog post is just about complete, it’s time to give it a title and meta description. 

·     The title tag doesn’t have to be the same as the H1 header displayed at the top of the blog post. The one thing that both the title and H1 header must include, though, is the post’s main keyword. You can also use the title tag to include the name of your blog or any other information that might make people want to visit your site when they find it on Google.

·     The meta description doesn’t affect SEO directly. Google might display it in the search results, though, so it’s an opportunity to “pre-sell” people who are trying to choose which result to click. Promise value and encourage people to click through. Although meta descriptions have no direct impact on SEO, having a higher click-through rate will improve a post’s rankings over time.

Publish the Post and Do Outreach to Amplify the Effect

If you really want to do a great job with blog post SEO, you should know that your work isn’t done when you click the “Publish” button. One of the biggest factors that influences how well your content ranks is the quality and quantity of the links pointing to your site from other sites. People in the SEO field call these backlinks. 

There’s a little bit of a catch-22 involved with backlinks, though, because you can’t get links if no one knows that your content exists – but if you don’t have backlinks, it’s going to be hard for people to find your content because it won’t rank for anything. So, you’ll need to do some outreach.

When you’ve published something truly special – original research, for instance – it’s time to let people know about it. Reach out to other website owners and explain why your content is worth linking to on their sites. 

Link building outreach is a time-consuming process that’s often very slow to produce results. Once your site begins to reach critical mass, though, you’ll find that it’ll begin to pick up links without any effort on your part – and that’s when you’ll know you’ve really made it.

About the Author: Jason Artman

Jason Artman is the owner and author of eCig One, the world’s first full-service SEO agency tailored exclusively to meet the needs of websites in the vaping and cannabis industries. Founded in 2010, eCig One has helped small and large vape businesses around the world grow their organic web traffic and achieve dramatic and sustainable growth.