SEO blog is a bog that uses a variety of on-page SEO tactics to ensure that it is indexable, crawlable and rankable on search engines. It is one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness while providing relevant and useful content to your target audience. Blogging helps you boost the quality of SEO by positioning your website as a relevant answer to the associated questions. A blog also gives you an opportunity for internal linking. It helps you target long-tail keywords. If you want to write your own SEO ready blog read this article carefully.
9 Steps to writing an SEO blog in 2020:
Blogging is useful for companies of all sizes, types, and industries. Everybody even the individual consultants and professionals uses blogging for sharing value to their customers, establish themselves as though leaders and more. Blogging is also an ideal choice to start with if you’re looking to become a brand. Let’s explore the 9 steps to write an SEO friendly blog. The steps are as follows:
1. Choose a topic
Before you choose a topic you must understand what is the difference between what is a title and a topic. The topic is the foundation, and the title is the literal heading. The title is something that will show up when someone searches for your page on Google. The topic is the idea behind the title and the blog. Tools such as Google Trends, Scoop.it, Feedly Reader, Ubersuggest, Buzzsumo, and Ahrefs content explorer can be used to identify the latest trending topics with the highest search volume.
2. Keyword research
A keyword is a phrase used to describe a word or group of terms used in a search engine by an internet user. There are two main types of keywords one is a short tail keyword and another one is longtail word. Keywords are very essential for every blog as they help to drive targeted web traffic to your website. There are many tools available on the market. Some of the few popular tools are Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEMrush, and Ahrefs keyword explorer. You can choose one base keyword and up to 5 other related keywords.
3. Topic Research
Now you can research the topic to put together the content that revolves around the keywords you’ve selected.
Whether you are working on an academic paper, writing a blog post, or just trying to learn something new about your houseplants, online research is vital. And when dealing with a complicated or niche subject, research is not always easy. You’ll need a well-established content plan to build and sustain a productive blog content.
Once you have gathered the content, you can organize your information, it will help you save time, and can save you from losing or forgetting anything you’ve learned from your study. You should keep a link to each web page you visit from the beginning to the very end of your research. It’s best to write down a bit of information for each link so you remember why you saved it and what kind of information you could take from it.
We suggest using a note-taking app like Evernote, OneNote, or Google Keep if you need to manage a lot of data through multiple devices.
4. Choosing a Title
Now we can actually start writing the blog. Blog titles are the first part of your blog post that your readers will see and the part that’s accountable for making them clicking through and read the rest of the blog. The title can contain words, numbers, emojis, punctuations that can help you design it to catch the attention of a user and attract him to reading what follows the headline. You have to choose multiple titles for a topic. While picking the number of variants, bear in mind that the more variants you want to test, the larger the sample you will need in order to achieve statistically appropriate results. Ideally, it is suggested to have at least 5 versions for a blog title for A/B testing.
How to A/B test blog titles?
In general, A/B testing (also called split testing) is the process of simultaneously displaying two variations of the same web page to different segments of visitors and comparing a variant drives more conversions.
Now, of course, you cannot have the same content under two different headlines. So you can choose any one of the headlines and then replace it with another from the list within a fixed time-frame (usually 3 months, considering you bring traffic organically by SEO).
Some of the best title templates are:
- Adjectives + Descriptive Words
- “Where, What, Why” Titles
- “How To” Titles
5. Create a structure
Of course, blog post structure is not the ONLY thing to consider as far as the approach and development of content are concerned. But if you want to create content that is read and shared, the structure is essential and 100% necessary.
In the blog post, you are reading right now, you can see that the body content headers are:
- The introduction
- The body content
- The conclusion
The structure makes it a lot easier to cover the topic matter in-depth. And it makes the entire blog writing process feel much less daunting.
Benefits of the structure:
Some of the benefits of having a clear structure before you start writing a blog are:
- You can organize and make it easier for the reader to understand the points you make and see how things are connected to each other.
- Readers won’t forget what you’ve written immediately–they’ll be encouraged to act.
- You will be able to spend less time staring at the screen and actually writing more content.
6. Start writing
Once you are done with the structure it is time to start writing the content. Do not make sentences very long. It is better to keep it short and sweet. To give a better understanding to your readers you may consider adding examples when needed. Grammar mistakes will reduce the quality of your content even if it is good. There are tools like Grammarly and ginger that can help you reduce your grammar mistakes.
What not to do while writing an SEO blog?
- Copy-pasting content from other sites will really hurt your SEO. It is suggested to use plagiarism checker tools to make sure your content is not matching from other websites.
- Do not repeatedly add the same keywords. It is not a good practice for SEO and can lead to a penalty from the search engine. You need to keep an eye on your keyword density to ensure this. For a really good blog, all you need to do is focus on creating beautiful content with proper structures and tags to enhance SEO.
7. Adjust the length of the blog
In today’s competition, one needs to write blogs of at least 1000 – 1200 words. Obviously, making content longer doesn’t automatically improve its quality. However, a number of studies have confirmed the link between longer content and higher search engine rankings.
8. Adding Images
After writing the article you have to check whether you meet your desired number of words to ensure this, it is always better to write more words than needed and then trim it. If the number of words is low then you have to add or rewrite the content again. So always write more words. However, instead of worrying about hitting a certain number of words, it is important to focus on supplying the most useful content you can for your target audience that matches their intent.
Attaching an appropriate banner is very important when it comes to blogging. Banner images display near the top of the page, adding a visual detail that can set the tone for your site. Ideally, your image should act as an additional explainer of your main point. For Instance, if you’re writing a blog post about twitter, then get a photo of a tweet that explains the blog post. A photo of a person on a computer is inappropriate and doesn’t add any value.
Also, adding infographic images would be a great advantage for your blog. Infographics are a visual source of information that is often used in the marketing and business industries. Evaluating your current audience and your target market can assist you with choosing the right photos for infographics.
There are many tools available that can help you create copyright-free images on your own. One such tool is Canva. If you don’t want to waste time on image creation you can simply download from online websites like Google Images and Shutterstock.
9. Review and publish the blog
Once you are done with all the works it is time to review and publish your article. Now, imagine yourself as a reader. Read your article from your users’ point of view. Note the suggestions and ideas that you want to give yourself. Then apply it to your article. Finally, publish your article.
After publishing the article keep tracking it. Record all the responses like clicks and conversions. It will help you to improve your future articles and compare them with previous articles. Make sure that you are getting feedback from your customers. It will help you to make yourself better.
SEO writing is a skill that nobody can master it overnight. We have provided valuable steps to help our readers. Following these steps while writing a blog will definitely get you to the next level. Even if the search engine algorithm keeps getting updated continuously your blog will remain to stay on the top if you have genuine, informative and valuable content. Thanks for reading, we hope this article would be helpful.
What do you think? Are you ready to start writing blogs now? Let us know in the comments below.
