Adding search engine optimisation (SEO) friendly blogs to your website will drastically help your website ranking. If you’re looking to broaden your audience and reach new people, then blogging is the way to go.
Whether you’re running an e-commerce or brick and mortar business, your small business will benefit significantly from the extra online exposure that comes along with blog posts. 93% of online encounters begin with a search engine¹, and your business could be reaching these people!
Consider SEO blog posts a form of organic marketing. When done correctly, your blog post will act as an organic traffic pipeline, generating lots of traffic to your website. Traffic that may not have heard of your product and could be potential customers.
What will a good SEO blog post do?
- Improve your website SEO
- Help your website rank higher
- Reach new people
- Generate traffic to your website
- Convert visitors into customers
- Promote your business on social media
- Create a loyal fan base
Writing an SEO-friendly blog post is different to regular blogs and news articles, and this blog post will give you the tips and tricks to become a successful SEO copywriter. Here are five tips for writing a successful SEO-friendly blog post:
1. Source and include keywords
SEO keywords are words or phrases that help your content become discoverable via search engines. It’s essentially the keywords people use when searching for something specific.
Keywords are important for businesses as it informs Google and other search engines about the content on your website pages. For example, when a user searches for something, their search will contain several keywords or phrases. The search engine will then try and match their keywords and phrases with web pages that specifically mention these.
Understanding your target markets keywords is vital to performing well online. Google Keyword Planner is an excellent tool for beginners as it assists you in obtaining your target market or competitors keywords. To do this, Google will ask you to enter either a product or service related to your business or a URL of a competitors website. From there, an array of keywords and phrases will appear with additional information on their average monthly searches, level of competition and advertising budget range.
Try Google Keyword Planner: Click here
Another great tool to research keywords and keyword ideas is Neil Patel’s SEO tool Ubersuggest. Ubersuggest gives you the ability to search for keywords, view their search volume, SEO difficulty and cost per click. The best part is that it also helps you discover additional keywords and content ideas.
Try Ubersuggest: Click here
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2. Turn keywords into content ideas
Now that you know what keywords and phrases your target market is searching for, it’s time to shape a piece of content around it.
To do this, you need to find out what your target market is searching for and what questions people ask around your keyword.
A keyword research tool we recommend for beginners is answerthepublic.com. On this website, you enter your desired location and keywords (1-2 for best results) and Answer the Public generates relevant topic ideas and questions based on what your audience is searching for online. It’s a gold mine for ideas and will quickly become your best friend.
Try Answer The Public: Click here
Once you have mastered Answer The Public, we recommend taking your content to the next level and using the forum search engine, Boardreader. Boardreader allows you to dig deeper and see what people post in online forums using your keywords. It’s a great way to answer customer questions and create fresh content other businesses might not have tapped into yet.
However, the downside to creating content based on forum searches is that it might not be popular, and people may not be searching for these questions as often as they would via search engines. We recommend limiting your time using forum search engines when starting.
Try Boardreader: Click here
3. Follow a headline formula
Headlines play a critical role in achieving a high click-through rate. According to a study, 70% of Facebook users only read the headline.²
If a headline is poorly written, it will detract the viewer from reading more, regardless of how well-written your post was.
To optimise your headline, ensure it meets the following criteria:
- Use target keywords in the first half of the headline
- Aim for 12 words and 70 characters
- For Facebook headlines, try using a three-word phrase (trigrams)
- Include emotional words
A great website to test your headline is Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule. Their headline analyser tests the overall headline quality, offers improvements, rates its SEO value, and ranks possible conversation rates. We recommend aiming for a score of 75.
Try Headline Analyzer from CoSchdule: Click here
Tip: Revive old pieces of content and update your headline slightly every six months. Google loves to crawl and promote new content. Updating your headline and content is a great way to stay relevant and boost traffic.
4. Break up your paragraphs
Blog writing is a new can of worms. The demand for immediate gratification and quick fixes has led a human’s attention span to drop to 8 seconds, less than a goldfish’s of 9 seconds.³
What does this mean for blog posts? Instead of writing well-formed paragraphs, each paragraph should be short, to the point and contain only one unit of thought.
The logic behind shorter paragraphs ties in with the diminishing attention span. According to data from Hubspot Research, they found today’s readers are more inclined to skim blogs than read long-form content.⁴
Tip: A paragraph should contain a maximum of three sentences.
5. Use plain language and no jargon
This may blow your minds; it certainly blew ours! According to a study conducted by The Literacy Project, the average American reads at a 7th-8th grade level.⁵ That’s roughly an 11-year-old child.
Due to this, jargon and complicated words need to be left out of blog posts. The simpler, the better.
Ten complicated words we recommend leaving out of blog posts include:
- Fallacy
- Livid
- Platitude
- Prolific
- Whom
- Enormity
- Underhanded
- Gratuitous
- Obstinate
- Unquestionably
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[1] 8 SEO Stats That Are Hard to Ignore. Retrieved on 14 October 2021. From: https://www.imforza.com/blog/8-seo-stats-that-are-hard-to-ignore/
[2] Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting. Retrieved on 14 October 2021. From: http://thesciencepost.com/study-70-of-facebook-commenters-only-read-the-headline/?fbclid=IwAR0qPmLRq0YS5QQB8uefBiGhcGFYybh6ALZ6Dre0KQtyrGbcTnL1HlF29rA
[3] You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish. Retrieved on 14 October 2021. From: https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/
[4] The Goldfish Conundrum: How to Create Content for Short Attention Spans. Retrieved on 14 October 2021. From: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-creation-short-attention-spans
[5] What’s the latest U.S. literacy rate? Retrieved on 14 October 2021. From: https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/08/whats-the-latest-u-s-literacy-rate/
