Search Engine Optimization for Blog Posts: 7 Tips for Success

Search Engine Optimization for Blog Posts: 7 Tips for Success

Did you know that blogging is the go-to strategy for 45% of content marketers? While social media may be all the rage nowadays, blogging is still as prevalent as ever. Blogs have always engaged online audiences in personable, meaningful ways. But when it comes to marketing through blogs, they not only help to build brand awareness. They also increase web traffic and generate leads as effectively as other platforms. Regardless of how long you’ve been in the blogging game, you may not be yielding the results you need. Understanding search engine optimization for blog posts is key to success. How do you go about attracting readers to your blog posts in the first place? And once you do get that traffic, how do you render it into profit? With these 7 tips, you’ll not only understand SEO for blogging – you’ll turn your efforts into real, tangible results!

1. Give Your Blog Purpose

Blogs once served as online diaries before social media and SEO came into being. But with so many out there, blogs must have a clear and obvious purpose nowadays. So, what will your blog be about? If it will be part of a bigger website, how will it enhance it? The purpose of your blog is deeply entwined with who your target audience is. If it doesn’t appeal to your audience, it’s doomed for failure.

Relevance is Key

SEO is all about appeasing the algorithms search engines use to rank websites. Bounce rate is one of the factors these algorithms take into account. Websites with high bounce rates don’t rank well on search engines – even if they use other SEO strategies. How many times have you clicked away from a website because it wasn’t relevant to what you were looking for? Chances are you do this all the time. And you’re not the only one, either. People’s attention spans are very short nowadays. You have about 15 seconds to communicate what your blog post is going to be about. If you can’t pique their interest or help them find what they’re looking for, they’ll move on. This will translate into poorer traffic numbers.

2. Create Content with Your Audience in Mind

SEO for blogging helps your target audience find you. Once they do, it’s up to the content to keep them coming back for more. You can practice all the SEO strategies you want. None of them are as paramount as publishing well-written, quality content. Bad grammar, spelling mistakes, and improper punctuation are off-putting to most readers. If you don’t take the time to check your blog posts, whose to say you don’t treat your products and services the same way? The little details can make all the difference in how readers perceive your content. But the content itself – the topics, the writing style, and the message – is truly what engages your audience. You aren’t writing for the search engines. You’re writing for your audience above all else.

Brainstorming Content Your Audience Will Love

Your first round of blog articles could talk about the products you create or sell. Or, you can answer common questions or cover run-of-the-mill topics. These ideas can help form a good base – even though they’re sub-par at best. To create truly unique and fresh content, find inspiration in what’s currently trending. What are some industry-related breakthroughs everyone seems to be talking about? Is there a news story that would stop your typical reader or customer dead in their tracks? Give insightful information only an expert or insider would know. This will help establish your blog as an authoritative voice in the industry. You should also get in the habit of visiting message boards popular within your industry. Quora and Reddit are just some examples.

Engage with Your Audience for Inspiration

We’ll explore the connection between SEO for blogging and social media later on. But when it comes to brainstorming blog content, you can find a lot of inspiration via social media. You can browse popular (and relevant) hashtags on Instagram and Facebook. You’ll then get to see what people are sharing and talking about. You can also never go wrong with asking your audience about what they’d like to read. Encourage your readers to leave comments at the end of your blog posts.

3. Prioritize Keyword Research

Indexing, using opt-ins, and posting on social media are some of the ways you can increase web traffic. But of all these methods, none are as fundamental as keywords. Have you ever wondered how search engines rank web pages after you enter in a particular word or phrase? To a large extent, this has to do with keywords, which are the words and phrases we look for on search engines. Search engine algorithms pick up on a website’s use of keywords. This helps them pull up the most useful results for web viewers. By featuring strategic, results-driven keywords, you can garner more traffic to your website. How do you find keywords which will enhance SEO for blogs?

Use Keyword Research Tools

After coming up with ideas for blog posts, you’ll want to use keywords that are relevant to the topics. Keyword research tools can help with this. They’ll help you gauge how the keywords will perform on the search engines. Some keywords have search volumes exceeding into the tens of thousands – even millions. You can use them once in a while. But because the competition is too expansive, they won’t yield the best results. At the same time, you don’t want to feature keywords with low search frequencies, either. At times you’ll strike it gold with trending keywords that haven’t yet gone viral. Other times, you’ll want to feature a mix of high and low search frequency keywords.

Base Your Content Around Your Keywords

Think about the words and phrases your ideal reader would search for. How would they phrase them into a search engine? Try to use different variations of these questions, words, and phrases.If you’re looking to pull in readers from your local area, you’ll want to hone in your local SEO efforts. This is especially the case if you run a business with a localized customer base. People are using search engines to find local businesses more than ever before. Keywords geared towards local searches will only improve your website’s visibility. You can also look at competing blogs and see which keywords they’re using. Keyword research tools can also be a huge help if you’re not sure what to write about. It’s okay to publish blog posts that don’t have keywords from time to time. It’ll make your blog seem more personable. You don’t want to come across as a content machine that values the search engines more than the audience.

4. Juice up Your Blog with Links

Keywords are the main ingredient in search engine optimization for blog marketing. But they aren’t the only thing that can indicate what a web page is all about. Adding link juice to a blog post can also improve the page’s search engine performance. That’s because search engines value websites featuring valuable links.

Internal Links

These types of links connect readers to other blog posts or pages on your website. Not only do they help to guide your audience to additional and relevant information. Internal links also add value to the rest of your website in the eyes of search engines. You should aim to include a couple of internal links in each blog post. A great opportunity to do so is at the end of a blog post where you should have included a call-to-action. As your blog expands, don’t forget about your older content. You never know when an old blog post can have relevance in the future. Over time, older posts can rank higher – especially if you link to them.

External Links

These types of links direct readers to other websites. To understand the importance of external links, try this analogy:

Think of websites as a social ladder, like the one you would experience in school. There are popular websites that rank the highest and get loads of attention. Then there are the websites which go unnoticed and get lost in search engine results pages. Let’s say you were to link to a high domain website in a blog post. Search engines would then create an association between that website and yours. It’s similar to how an unpopular student and a popular student would wave to one another in the hallway. With this link, you’ll climb the “SEO social ladder” so to speak. It’s even better if a high domain website links to your blog. To search engines, this is a significant interaction that will pump your popularity. Which leads us to our next tip…

5. Consider Guest Blogging

Search engine optimization for blog marketing is ever-evolving. One of the newer, more prominent practices is guest blogging. If you’re serious about increasing your blog’s visibility, it’s something worth investing in. Guest blogging works like this:

Find a popular website with a high domain authority and a large following. Their audience should essentially be your target audience. Contact them and explain why you’re interested in publishing a link on their website. Ask them what their process entails for guest blogging. In most cases, you’ll need to pay to get featured. You’ll either write a guest blog post yourself with a link to your website. Or, the website will create the blog post themselves and include a link to your website.

6. Market Your Blog Posts on Social Media

Right before social media became what it is today, SEO for blogging was the crème de la crème of marketing. Nowadays, it may seem like the emphasis has shifted to social media. But both blogging and social media supplement each other in huge ways. For starters, promoting your blog posts on social is sure to boost your traffic. Not only is it free but it’s guaranteed to reach your followers and people who are already invested in you. You can also build your social media and blog followings simultaneously. Your blog readers will start to follow you on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook – and vice versa. And with some monetary investment, you can step up your advertising game.

Paid Social Media Advertising

A particular social media platform may be popular among your target audience. For example, the fashion niche is huge on Instagram. Meanwhile, restaurants are more prevalent on Facebook. Depending on where your target audience “hangs out” on social media, you can pay to advertise there. Let’s say your ideal customer or reader is someone who would use Facebook over any other platform. You could advertise your blog on Facebook one of several ways. You could then earn money by attracting new and returning viewers to your blog. Most digital ads have time limits. You’ll pay to have a platform show your ad for any given number of days, weeks, or months. How long you advertise will depend on the nature of your blog and its content.

7. Try Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is another way to enhance search engine optimization for blog posts. It involves promoting an affiliate company and their products and services. Affiliate bloggers earn a commission when they generate sales or leads for that company. For one thing, affiliate marketing builds link juice, which is pertinent to SEO. So, not only can you improve your blog’s visibility on search engines. By blogging as an affiliate marketer, you can potentially earn more money in the process.

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

The best affiliate marketers are those who write well and know how to connect with an audience. They know how to portray themselves as experts within a niche. And they also understand how to engage, inform, and sell an audience simultaneously. As you expand your blog’s audience, you can eventually become an affiliate marketer. Implementing search engine optimization for blog posts is crucial towards accomplishing this. Once you have a strong audience, you can start to browse affiliate companies in your industry.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization for Blog Posts

With SEO as prominent as ever, there has never been a better time to profit from blogging! There are so many possibilities with search engine optimization for blog posts. Implementing these 7 tips will build a strong foundation all while increasing traffic. And with a little perseverance, your blog will grow in ways you never imagined. Curious how else you can make money online? Looking for other ways to supplement your blog and expand your online profitability? We got you! Learn more about how to earn money online so you can dominate the game going into 2019.

As always, we hope you found this article both informative and helpful! If you did please share it with your friends and family through your social media accounts, it’s always greatly appreciated!