There’s not much point in writing a blog if no one’s going to read it, is there? But to get more readers on your blog, you need to optimize it for search.
Optimizing your blog for search is a lot like optimizing the rest of your website. In fact, a blog provides numerous opportunities to boost your website’s overall search engine rankings. You just need to fill your blog with great content, keep it up-to-date, and use the right keywords based on user search intent. Work on building backlinks, and understand the elements of great on-page blog SEO.
Write Great Content
The better your blog content, the higher your blog will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). Great content is perhaps the most important factor that search engines use to rank pages. It’s what keeps users coming back to your site again and again – and it’s what keeps them interacting with the site instead of bouncing away.
Great content should be informative, authoritative, entertaining, up-to-date, and wholly unique. It should be easy to read – it should even be easy for busy readers to skim. It should be clearly organized with headings, subheadings, and bullet points or numbered lists. And, of course, it should satisfy user search intent – it should give them what they’re looking for when they enter keywords into a search engine.
Keep Content Up-to-Date
Outdated content will drag down your SERP rankings. You should do two things to keep content fresh: produce evergreen content and refresh your content regularly. Make time to go through old blog posts and update outmoded information. Replace old data and sources with more recent ones. Edit to remove portions that have become irrelevant with the passage of time. Update your calls to action or your recommendations. Revise the keywords used, to better match the search intent of current users.
Use Appropriate Keywords
Keywords should be relevant to your topic and they should correspond to users’ search intent. That is, users who type those keywords into search engines should get exactly what they’re looking for in your blog. Learn how to do keyword research and how to judge search intent so you can choose the right keywords for your blog posts, or hire a Phoenix-area SEO firm to help with keyword research and development.
Most blog keywords are going to have informational intent – readers will be looking for how-tos, thought leadership, definitions, comparisons, or listicles. Some blog keywords may have entertainment intent, especially if you’re blogging just for fun. To get an idea of your users’ search intent, check out the top-ranking returns in SERPs for your chosen keywords. These can give you an idea of what searchers are looking for and how they want that information presented to them.
Strategize to Generate Backlinks
Search engines prioritize pages that have authority, and generating backlinks is a good way to build that authority. Backlinks mean that other websites have found your blog useful enough or entertaining enough to link back to. They mean that users have found your content valuable enough to share it on social media.
Work towards building as many backlinks to your blog as you can. Look for unlinked mentions of your brand online and then ask those website owners to link to your page. Reach out to other blogs in your niche and ask for contextual links. Showcase your expertise in your topic so you can become an authoritative source for others. The more you make your blog a source of information or entertainment (or both) that people want to link back to, the more backlinks and shares you’ll get.
Understand the Elements of Good On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is just as important to the ranking success of your blog as off-page SEO, and although it’s complex, you can learn to do it yourself. Once you know how to edit metadata, you can make sure your relevant keywords for each post are included in the title and heading meta tags and in the meta description for each post.
Make sure your blog loads quickly and is easy to navigate. Write a strong meta description for each one of your posts. Put your keyword in the body of your content, but don’t sacrifice readability or the natural flow of your prose. Include hyperlinks to relevant content on your website. Make your blog more accessible to those with vision impairments by including alt text for images and videos.
If you want to grow your blog readership, you need to focus on SEO. Strong blog SEO can bring in more readers from organic search and help generate more buzz about your blog online. Commit yourself to improving your blog’s search engine rankings, and watch your readership numbers skyrocket.
Interesting Related Article: “What is SEO search intent? – How can you optimize your blog for it?“