How to Make Your Blog Posts SEO Friendly
Reading Time: 4 minutes Back in 1996, Bill Gates wrote his famous article “Content Is King”, and this title became one of the most quoted phrases ever. It’s astonishing that more than two decades later, this still implies as the content is among the most powerful tools for building brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, and attracting your customers’ attention, among many other things. The key is in producing relevant, quality content that people want to read, and offer them useful and helpful information, and entertain them at the same time. Still, no matter how great your content is, and how much your target audience can benefit from it, you need to promote it and make sure that it can easily be found. SEO is the best strategy that can help you reach your target audience and boost your site traffic.
It’s all about keywords
Keywords are crucial for creating SEO-friendly blog posts. First of all, you need to do keyword research in order to find out what your target audience is searching for and identify the actual search phrases entered into search engines.
Additionally, keyword research can help you spy on your competition and generate new keyword ideas, as well as to better understand your audience. There’s no doubt that the more customers you attract to your site, the better, but bear in mind that only the right customers count because they’re those that are likely to convert.
This is especially important for e-commerce websites as they need paying customers in order to be profitable, which is why detailed eCommerce analytics is crucial for them. After you’ve found the best keywords for your content, the next step is to strategically place them throughout your blog posts.
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However, don’t use too many keywords in your content, because that’s a surefire way to get penalized by Google, meaning that your website will be buried in search results. Find out one of the most reliable agency, who can handle this with ease.
Word count
Some blog posts can be between 400-500 words long, but if you want better Google rankings, you should know that a study by Moz and BuzzSumo has concluded that articles containing more than 1,000 words perform much better, in the sense that they receive more shares and likes on social media.
Still, don’t get carried away and keep your word count below 5,000 because extremely long blog posts can be tedious and demanding. It’s advisable to vary the length and type of your articles, as this practice will engage your audience, and positively impact your search engine rankings.
Social media
If you want to promote your content, posting it on social media networks is a must. First of all, that’s the way to spread the word and expand your reach. According to research, Facebook produced 61% of all website visits generated on social media in Q3 2016, so promoting your blog posts on this channel is pretty effective in terms of traffic.
Secondly, the fact that your content is liked and shared will signal Google that it’s relevant, unique, and of high quality. When it comes to Google+, many businesses don’t use it, falsely believing that it’s dead. Although this social network isn’t exactly popular among users, there’s another factor that makes it indispensable when it comes to rankings.
Namely, if you post an article on Google+, Google will index it immediately, which means that it will appear in search results faster than the content posted on other social networks.
Optimize for mobile
Mobile internet traffic exceeded desktop internet traffic for the first time in October 2016. This means that mobile devices accounted for 51.3% of global internet usage while desktops and laptops accounted for 48.7%. Most people usually surf the internet and access websites through their mobile devices, and if a site isn’t mobile-friendly, they simply leave.
Moreover, Google displays mobile-friendly results first if a query is performed on a mobile device. So, in order to boost your rankings, make sure to opt for mobile responsive design as your blog will have only one URL for both mobile and desktop, which will improve your post’s SEO.
Optimize titles
Besides coming up with a compelling title that describes what the article will be about, it’s also important to keep its length under 50-60 characters if you want it to be displayed properly.
We’ve already mentioned the importance of keywords, and experts suggest including your target keyword in the title. It’s a good idea to use numbers in your titles because they are attention-grabbing, and you’ll agree that “13 Reasons Why SEO Is Essential for Your Business” sounds better than “The Importance of SEO in Business”. WH-question words, such as why, how, or what are triggers that arouse curiosity in people, so no wonder that How-tos are among the most popular content forms on the internet.
SEO is a complex and long-term process, and it can be costly, but you can be sure that the results it produces make all that worthwhile.
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