Blogs. We all know what they are. We’ve all read one. Whether you’re reading them or writing them, blogs have become pretty mainstream in the digital era and have a place in most businesses across most industries. However, there is more to them than you might expect.
From topic research and planning, to writing and publishing, the process of creating effective blog posts can be time-consuming. So I’m sure you can imagine the disappointment when all your hard work doesn’t attract as much traffic as you first hoped.
This is an all too familiar feeling for business owners & content creators. Luckily, your blog woes can be avoided with 3 little words. Search. Engine. Optimisation.
We have created a simple cheat sheet explaining the language of SEO and to help you ensure every blog post you create is properly optimised with the best chance of ranking highly on search engines.
Headings/Subheadings
Headings and subheadings not only provide structure to your blog post, but more importantly, they give Google and other search engines vital information about different sections of your post.
Google reads headings before the body of text, so outlining exactly what is talked about in your post will increase your chances of ranking higher for search queries that are mentioned in your blog.
Answer Questions
When you hit the meat of your blog post, the body, you should ensure that you are answering user questions. Besides building brand awareness, industry authority and trust between user and brand, providing content which answers common search questions can boost your rankings on search engines.
To get a better idea of your audiences’ search queries, you should carry out comprehensive keyword research and include these keywords throughout your blog post (within the titles and descriptions as well as the main body). At Colewood, we continuously add to a bank of current search terms that our audience is using, along with questions that we can answer in the form of a blog post.
Images
Images, infographics and other visual elements add interest to a blog post. However, they should never be an after-thought. Search engines don’t only read the blog content, but they also crawl images.
As they can’t yet understand the context of images, you should make sure the images you use are properly optimised. This includes renaming images to something relevant and adding meaningful alt text that describes the context of the image.
Slow page speed is the nemesis of most websites and search engines. Rather than uploading large images that slow down the load speed of your blog post, try compressing the image to a size which doesn’t compromise on quality.
Meta Data
A well-crafted title tag and meta description are vital to your posts visibility on search engines. They give search engines an indication as to what the post is about and also gives users a better idea of what they will find on the page.
If your metadata is well-written and properly describes the content, you will keep a relatively low bounce rate, which in turn, benefits your rankings.
For more information, read our full guide on creating effective metadata.
Internal links
Adding internal links to existing blog posts or pages at various points throughout a blog post is an effective SEO technique. Search engines will follow these links, so adding them into your content can allow Google and other search engines to fully crawl your website and create a more comprehensive and accurate sitemap.
When adding internal links, you should pay attention to the anchor text you use. Avoid nondescript phrases such as ‘read more’ or ‘click here’ in favour of specific keywords which give the reader (and search engines) a better idea of what they’ll find.
Here at Colewood, we love writing blogs and creating new content. We’re always willing to share our knowledge, so if you’re looking for help and advice with your content marketing strategy, get in touch with our SEO team.
