Every digital marketer in the field knows the importance of Search Engine Optimization or SEO for elevating the traffic and visibility of a website, blog post included. Marketers employ varied SEO tactics and practices by optimizing on the keywords that will bring the related website to the forefront when a search is made.
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Recently, blogs have become one of the ‘hot’ stuff for websites of every field via which they not only keep their consumers informed and updated but also, use it as an advertising tool. Where most are taking of advantages of blog posts and increasing their website’s visibility, there are a few who are not even aware of its importance in the marketing world.
In a recent study conducted, over 60% of the businesses have blogs and out of this 60%, more than 70% don’t update their blogs. They really don’t know what they are losing.Blogs have enormous marketing potential that needs to be minted properly.
Most website owners employ people to update their blogs but are still not sure of the methods they can use SEO for upping their blog content. They are still not too sure of the search engines’ algorithm updates, have no idea about what is in and what is out, what really matters and what will be a mere waste of time, which SEO practices and which won’t.
We, here, are to do just that; help you in your SEO efforts for your blogs.
How to get your blog noticed?
- Research the keywords
It is advisable to do a little research and study the market for the keyword that will work best for your blog. In many cases, the keywords are included in the blog without the owner’s knowledge regarding its importance. Highlighting and catching the readers’ attention is equally important as strategically placing the keywords. There are numerous tools that will help you find the right keywords for optimizing on your blog.
- Place the keywords where they will get noticed
Finding the right and valuable keywords is important ad equally important is to place them strategically in your blog so that they highlight themselves when the reader is reading the blog post. You can place them at the
- Title
- Headings
- Sub-heading
- Beginning of the first paragraph
- Conclusion
- Anchor text
- Meta description
Placing the keywords at strategic points is what works for your blogs, but placing them in the first 65 characters of your post is what will work best as that is Google’s cut off for the search engine results pages (SERPs). If your title is long, it is advisable to place your keyword within the title to make the most of it.
Bear in mind not to overdo it and stuff your blog with the keywords as this will distract the readers at the same time, you will get fined by the Google. Placing them at important points where they will compel the readers to take notice is what will make your blog tick.
- Using one or two keywords
By now, you would have understood the importance of keywords for your blogs and also about placing them right. It is equally important that you don’t overdo with the number of keywords in a post. It is advisable that you place one or two keywords in a post so that they don’t become obstruction the readers and hinder the meaning of the post.And also, your focus will remain on the goal.
Another important factor that will help in optimizing your blog is using long tailed keywords. By doing so, you will be able to ensure more qualified and quality customers for your blog who are better potential converters.
- Make your blog mobile friendly
Studies have revealed and we have also experienced that people use their smartphone more than their laptops or PCs. In the world of handheld devices, Google and other search engines give prominence to mobile-friendly sites and blogs. Responsive designs and mobile-friendly content have always been favoured but now they have become a necessity for the SEO practice.
- Use eye-catching images
Blogs are not about lengthy texts alone; one can include images, pictures, caricatures and such to make it more attractive and eye-catching. And images should be such that they explain your content and has some relevance to it. But, bear in mind that the image has to have an alt text as the search engine cannot actually ‘see’ the pictures but identify it by its alt text.
- Refrain from using similar topic tags
If a post has too many similar topic tags, it can get penalized by Google for having duplicate content. Each time you create a topic tag, a new page with the tag gets created and having similar topic tags in one post can be quite confusing and will lead to duplication of the content in the search engine pages.
- Internal linking helps
Inbound links works in a way to provide validity of your blogs in the search engines. We can say the same about internal linking which is a key tactic for SEO. Internal linking is a practice of linking a page of the same domain to another page of the same domain and by doing this you will be able to retain the customers on the website, moving from page to page.
For instance, your post is about a product or service or has a mention of the said product or service that is listed in the website, it is advisable to provide internal linking so that the customers will be compelled to click on the link and go to the product page, which in turn, might turn into sales. This will also increase the accountability of your blog.