If you have a blog, chances are you already understand the importance of business blogging. Follow this blog post optimization guide and learn from this tutorial how to optimize your blog posts to make them more search engine friendly.
Content writing should be a vital element of every SEO strategy. How do you ensure your blog posts have the highest chance to rank well in Google? What are the successive steps you’ll need to take? In this post, I’ll take you back to the very basics of SEO with blog post optimization.
Post Optimization Tips
Find that Keyword
The very first step of every content SEO strategy should be keyword research. You should figure out for what search terms you want to be found. Figuring out the right keyword can be quite daunting, though. You have to get into the heads of your audience.
A word is not a topic, though. Besides a keyword (or keyphrase), you’ll need an angle, a specific story around that keyword. Read our tips on coming up with ideas for your blog if you want to know more about that.
Yoast is most famous for the Yoast SEO plugin, of course. Our plugin will help you in the blog post optimization process. The first step is to fill out the keyword you want your post to be found for (the focus keyword). After that, the plugin will give you feedback on how to improve the SEO of your blog post. It will, for instance, check your post for these things:
For Blog Post Optimization, Use This Keyword
If you want to rank high for a certain term, you should definitely use that term quite often in your text. That way, Google will know that your text is about that specific keyword. But don’t overdo it. Google doesn’t like the over-optimized text at all. A keyword density of 2 % ( in which one in fifty words is your keyword) is excellent. It’s best to create a rather lengthy text; we recommend a text of at least 700 words. That way, you’ll be able to use your keyword quite sometimes.
Optimize Your Headings
First, choose a catchy page title. Technically, you have two opportunities to give your article a title. The page title is the first of them. You can find it in the HTML header element of your page between the tags.
Here are some tips for creating more effective page titles for the optimization of your blog post:
- Keep it brief. Search results will show the first 50 to 60 characters on mobile devices before truncating them.
- Keep it accurate. Your title should accurately reflect what the page is about. So, use words like “how,” “what,” or “why,” and include solid descriptors to convey the kind of information the reader will find.
- Keep it unique. Recycling the same title tag throughout your site may be tempting, but it’s not helpful for your SEO or audience. Instead, write a new title tailored to each page.
Check if your focus keyword is in your headings. The title of your post is really important. You should definitely use your keyword there. Try to use your keyword in at least one of your subheadings for your blog post optimization.
How About a Rich Snippet?
The snippet is the thing Google shows in the search results. It’s the title of your post and a short description. Yoast SEO will help you optimize your snippet: it shows you a preview of the snippet and allows you to edit the content easily. This is very important, as it’s your audience’s first read. So this piece of text will have to convince them to go to your site.
Unfortunately, we’re never sure whether Google will show that specific snippet. However, creating a kick-ass snippet preview should be part of your SEO strategy. Of course, don’t forget to use that focus keyword again for blog post optimization!
Write a Great Post!
The optimization of your post for search engine is something you should do. But more importantly, you should make sure you write an excellent post. So, the topic of your post should be original, and the message of your text should be appealing to your audience. On top of that, your text should be pleasant and not too difficult to read. So, without compromising the readability of your post, use this blog post optimization tutorial to optimize your post and make it stand out a little more!