So, you’ve got a blog but it’s not ranking high on search engines. We understand your struggle and are here to help ease your pains by sharing our knowledge on optimizing blogs for SEO. Let’s dive in!
1. Use 1–2 long-tail keywords.
Incorporating long-tail keywords in your blog content goes a long way in your overall SEO strategy. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific keyword phrases that users are more likely to use in the ‘intent’ stage of the buying cycle. They are also useful with voice searches! These types of keywords tend to get less search traffic but will generally have a higher conversion rate.
Let’s put it into action. For example, Merithot is a creative marketing agency, so we may want to write content around general keywords pertaining to our industry like “marketing.” This single term has a search volume of 33.1K (US) per month with a keyword difficulty of 86%. So, while people seem to search heavily for this keyword, it’s incredibly competitive to rank high in SEO. It would take a whole lot of on-page SEO, internal and external link-building, and content promotion efforts to make any leeway with this term. Is it still relevant and worth including on our site? Absolutely. But if we truly want to reach our audience, that’s where we’d introduce long-tail keywords like “ann arbor marketing agency.” This keyphrase has a search volume of 50 and a keyword difficulty of 31%. That’s a lot easier to rank for than a more general, unspecific keyword.
Even early-stage startups can compete with top companies when it comes to keywords. All it takes is creating a content strategy with the right focus and goals. For example, if you’ve looked for corporate design trends in 2022, you probably came across this article we wrote in the first or second spot on Google.
2. Use keywords strategically throughout the blog post.
Keywords help you classify your business, target your desired audience, and dictate the content on your website. However, one thing you want to avoid is keyword stuffing! Attempting to manipulate search rankings by unnecessarily repeating specific phrases will cause a site to rank lower in search results.
Example of keyword stuffing: Taylor Swift is one of the greatest artists of our generation, and Taylor Swift writes amazing pop music. In 2014, Taylor Swift released the iconic 1989 album that not even Taylor Swift could’ve predicted its success.
Not keyword stuffing: Taylor Swift is the greatest artist of our generation. The release of 1989 in 2014 was a pivotal moment in pop history and proved to be her greatest album of all time.
Luckily, we have a few best practices to keep you out of the dog house.
- Include your keyword in the page title: This helps search engines quickly dissect what the page is about.
- Don’t forget your meta description: Think of meta descriptions as a little preview snippet of what content a reader can expect in the blog. It may not boost rankings, but it could help improve click-through rates.
- Trickle keywords throughout the page: When writing the blog article, try to only incorporate keywords naturally. Don’t force them to fit into the body of the content.
- Get another opportunity with image ALT text: Implement keywords in your images. You’ll want to add the keyword to the alt text and within the filename itself.
3. Optimize for mobile devices.
More than half of the global web traffic today comes from mobile devices, and search engine algorithms can detect whether a site is mobile-friendly or not. Google even prioritizes mobile page load speed as a key metric when determining a website’s search ranking. The fact of the matter is web visitors don’t interact with pages on mobile devices the same way they do on desktop. Your blog (and entire website) must consider the mobile user experience. But what does that? In short, your blog needs to have a responsive design that’s fit for all screen sizes and devices, prioritize load speed, and use dynamic url structures to guide the visitor across your content.
4. Link to related blog posts.
Internal link building is when you link to your own blog content or other pages on your website. One suggestion we always recommend to our clients is strategically thinking about the type of content your business is creating, the natural flow of follow-up questions that your site visitor may have, and building content around that topic. For example, if you’re a company that is interested in building a strong link strategy to improve SEO and lower your site’s bounce rate, our blog below is a quick how-to guide to get you started!
Related Blog: How B2B companies can build SEO backlinks (See what we did there?)
5. Publish fresh content & repurpose the old.
A regular blog content strategy is imperative to improving SEO rankings. Depending on your products or services, target audience, and bandwidth, we typically recommend our clients start with 2-3 blogs per month. Each blog article should be different, with its own goals and niche audience. This way, visitors to your site can find valuable resources at any stage of their journey. From the top of the funnel to qualified leads, blogging is a sure-win way to draw traffic to your website and position your organization as a heavy-hitter in the industry.
Search engines crawl websites from top to bottom and left to right. By incorporating these tips and tricks, you can start to improve your blog SEO and overall site ranking in search engines. But if you want a quirky team of experienced marketers at your side, give us a shout!
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