Writing blog posts that rank well on the search engines requires careful preparation. Start by doing keyword research. What follows is interesting and useful content that caters to your readers. Our goal is to create the best resource on any topic.

But your blog needs to be SEO compliant as well. By doing some basic on-page optimization, you are more likely to rank for the keywords you want.

There are many factors that go into a well-optimized article. But the most important thing is quality. Our goal is to create the best resource on any topic.

Formatted with headings, paragraphs, images, and lots of white space. User experience, relevance, and search intent are increasingly important to Google.

By creating the best possible experience for your readers, you are also creating some of the best ranking signals for Google.

In this walkthrough, I've outlined 11 easy steps you can use to create an SEO-optimized blog post.

Do you want to keep this article? Download this publication in PDF format. (+ Google SEO checklist)

1. Key research

Before you start writing, you should first do some keyword research.

This is the key to content creation that generates organic and free search traffic from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

What keywords are people currently typing on Google?
What questions do people ask?
What problems are they trying to solve?

Find out what your audience is already looking for.

When I started, I made the mistake of writing A LOT of content without keyword research. I just wrote what I thought would be of interest to my readers.

Because of this, I missed out on a lot of free search engine traffic.

Do not misunderstand me. Your audience always comes first. First, you write for your audience.

But ... do your research first to find out what your audience wants. What are you already looking for on the Internet? Then optimize your blog posts for those specific keywords.

You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, and KeywordFinder.io to see how many times a month people search for specific keywords and phrases.

Another great free keyword tool is Ubersuggest. This tool allows you to discover hundreds of possible long keywords. Identify your competitors' homepages and the exact keywords they are ranking for. Find the approximate keyword difficulty for any keyword based on domain authority and backlinks supported

for top 10 results.

Ubersuggest is probably my favorite free keyword tool. The owner (Neil Patel) is constantly improving it and adding new features. In fact, Ubersuggest has a lot of cool stuff that was previously only available in paid tools. Many thanks to Neal for making our blogging work so much easier.

In fact, even Google itself will tell you what people are looking for using the autocomplete tool. Just enter a subject in the google search bar and see what else comes up.

With just a few tools, you will have tons of content ideas.

2. Follow the long tail of keywords.

It is much more difficult to evaluate by one or two phrases on Google. These phrases are usually very competitive. It is much easier to go after a sentence of 3 words, 4 words, or even more.

When you're just starting out, it is much easier to rank for long-tail and low-competition keywords. As your website gets more and more domain access rights, you can start looking for better deals.

In fact, half of all searches are for terms with more than 4 words. And 70% of all search traffic consists of long keywords. So, while everyone else is aiming for the most competitive keywords, you can rush in and get super specific long search traffic.

Source: Moz.com

Long-tail keywords are a bit like the Wild Wild West, where there are still many golden gems and hidden possibilities.

These less competitive terms are much easier to classify. But you still need to create a better resource on this particular topic.

Another advantage of long-tail keywords is that they often have a clearer search target.

For example, if someone types on Google: make money online

First, it will be incredibly competitive. But it is also very broad. We don't know if the search engine wants to make money through affiliate marketing, freelance work, blogs, surveys, as a virtual assistant, etc.

Which can lead to a lot of inappropriate traffic to your website. Our goal is to collect targeted traffic that he converts.

So instead of looking for the phrase “make money online,” we put it in a niche. Compare That With Who You Are Looking For: How To Make Money From Affiliate Marketing

This phrase receives about 1,300 requests per month and is much more specific. This makes it much easier to determine what the search engine is actually looking for.

You can also learn similar long-tail phrases:

How does affiliate marketing work? (880 searches per month)
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners (3600 searches per month)
Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners (720)
Affiliate programs that pay more (1600 requests per month)

Notice that as we start going further, the purpose of the search becomes much clearer.

When you know the purpose of the search engines, you can create much more relevant (and therefore more valuable) content for your reader.

Google encourages those who provide relevant and valuable content that fully answers readers' questions.

3. Put your main keyword in the headline.

This is one of the most important places to include your primary keyword. The key phrase you want to rate on Google. Your title will tell your readers and search engines what your page is about.

It is also one of the first things people see on a search results page. Therefore, you want to create an engaging headline that also encourages people to click on your result.

The key to a good title is combining relevance and good writing.

Link Building for SEO: The Ultimate Guide (2019 Update)

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Note that each of these examples includes the main keyword at the beginning of the heading. But they also include a description that gets people to click.

You can use profit-based numbers and headlines to grab people's attention and increase your click-through rate. Just make sure to include your primary keyword phrase at the beginning of your headline.

Quick note: Google also looks at the CTR of your search result. Because a higher click-through rate probably means your site is more relevant if people are clicking on it more than your competitors.

A higher click-through rate can also increase your rankings. So the title is very important. For both your readers and your rankings. 4. Include your keyword in the URL.

4. Include your keyword in the URL.

In WordPress, you can customize the URL for each blog post. Also called permalink.

WordPress Permalink

This helps your readers and search engines see at a glance what your content is about. Always customize your URL before posting.

But DO NOT include any date in the URL. This will make your content less relevant after it expires, and can also lower your CTR as search engines often look for the freshest, most relevant, and relevant information.

I find short permalinks to be the best. For example, if your article is titled “10 Steps to the Ultimate SEO Blog Publishing”.

The bullet URL will be:

yourwebsite.com/seo-friendly-blog-post

Keep it short and sweet, while also including the top keyword you want to rank for.

5. Optimize your headlines.

There are three main headings. H1, H2, and H3. These title tags will help you structure your blog. They also help search engines know what your page is about.

Your blog should only contain one H1 tag. This is usually the same as the title of your blog. Most WordPress themes are designed with an H1 tag around the title of a blog post.

H2 tags are used for all of the individual subtopics that you post on your blog.

And h3 tags are often used for a list of sub-elements below the h2 tag.

Here's an example of how we organize our blog posts. In fact, this is the same blog post you are currently reading. The title is wrapped in an H1 tag, and all the main blog topics are wrapped in H2 tags.

You don't always need to use h3 tags on every page. Sometimes all you need is just an H1 for the heading at the top and an h2 for your subtopics below.

6. Optimize your images.

You knew you can optimize your images to rank in Google Image Search. We often forget that Google has different categories of content that you can search for. In addition to your web results, you can also search for images, videos, and news.

Your particular image search is getting a huge amount of search traffic on its own. You can take advantage of this by optimizing your images. It also helps to increase the relevance of your blog.

Here are a few things you can do to optimize your images.

Name your images with relevant keywords. (For example Blog-Post-SEO.jpg)
Add the alt attribute.
Reduce the size of your images. This will help your pages load faster, which is another important Google ranking factor. Google wants to create the best possible experience for its users. Therefore, they encourage fast-loading sites.

Make sure your pages load quickly. Optimizing your images with a free tool like Kraken.io or a WordPress plugin like Shortpixel can speed up your website significantly.

7. Link to previous publications.

Links are still one of the most important ranking factors that Google uses in its algorithm. But it's not just external links. Internal links also help transfer link juice from one page to another on your website.

Wikipedia is a great example of a website that uses a strong internal link structure to help them earn thousands of top page rankings on Google.

It is important that you link to relevant blog posts that will help your readers explore this topic in more depth. This helps to convey a link to that page and also sets the relevance for the topic you are covering.

Whenever possible, use appropriate text to link to these older posts. But it's important to vary your anchor text using a variety of long and related search phrases.

This internal link structure not only serves your readers but can also improve your search engine rankings.

linkwhisper.com

Meta descriptions do not affect your rankings. However, they are visible to search engines. Every time you do a Google search, you will see a meta description for each result.

The more relevant and engaging your description is, the more likely it is that someone will click your result on someone else's.

For this reason, it's important to include your main keyword (and possibly some long-tail variations) in the meta description. This lets readers know that your blog post is relevant to your search term, and they are more likely to click on it.

Higher click-through rates often equate to higher rankings because it is a signal to Google that your site is more relevant to that particular keyword. But, of course, there are many different classifications. More than 200 in fact.

Another benefit of including your keyword phrase in your meta description is that it often appears in bold in search results. Highlight your result.

But keep in mind that Google doesn't always use the meta description you provide. They usually do. But in other cases, they may pull the content from the content on their page that they deem most relevant.

Either way: creating a relevant and relevant meta description is important to optimize your blog posts.

8. How long should my blog last?

Research shows that blog posts with 2,000 words or more are more likely to rank high on the Google homepage.

This reason alone is enough to start creating longer blog posts.

But there are other benefits as well.

Longer messages usually provide more value to the reader. It's hard to cover a topic in just 500 words. But by writing a guide of 2,000 words or more, you can create a comprehensive resource that answers all your questions.

Additionally, research has shown that long-form content is more likely to generate quality backlinks. Which is still incredibly important for Google rankings. People are far more likely to link to long, full posts than to thin 500-word posts.

This is one of the main reasons Google formatted content performs better on Google. In fact, Hubspot has done research on how content length affects backlinks. As you can see, there is a strong correlation between word count and average link domains.

Longer content also gets more social media shares. While it is insightful, well written, easy to read, and contains many visuals to help illustrate the content.

Nobody likes to read long "walls" of text without spaces and images. So make sure your content is not only easy to read, but also easy to view.

If you want to be sure that you can beat your competitors on the search engines, make your content more valuable, attractive, and comprehensive than any other website in the top 10 results.

Remember, most of the time, the best content wins. Therefore, your goal is for your blog to publish the BEST resource for your specific topic/keyword phrase.

So now let's answer the most important question: "How long does it take for your blog post to rank on the Google homepage?"

While there is no perfect answer, the best thing you can do is research your competitors. This will give you a good idea of how much content you need to bring to the table in order to compete.

Open Google and enter a keyword. Then, find the word count for each blog post that is in the top 10.

Once you find the total of ALL 10 blog posts, divide by 10 to determine the average duration. Your blog post must be at least long enough to compete on the cover.

Remember, you can always come back and improve your posts later. But the first thing you want to do is just publish as much content as possible. It is desirable not less than 1500-2000 words to start with.

This can vary from market to market, but most markets these days will see better results from over 2,000 blog posts.

Remember, it often takes many months to get a new page rank on the first page of Google. Thus, the sooner you can post it, the sooner you will start seeing the ranking.

9. Link to reputable sites in your industry.

External links provide search engines with important clues about the relevance of a particular page topic. Links to useful sites with high authority, you create a better user experience. This shows that you've done extensive research and can also improve the reputation of your own content.

Many SEOs believe that links to reputable sites create additional trust signals for Google. And research is now showing strong evidence that this could be the case.

Also, by linking to other sites, they are more likely to notice you and possibly return service to you. Hence, it is beneficial for the reader, SEO, and overall user experience.

10. Update old blog posts.

Gone are the days when you could post a new blog post, get ranked on the search engines, and never touch that post again.

Theoretically nice. But these days the factor of "freshness" is becoming more and more important. Over time, blog posts become outdated and out of date. It is important to maintain and update your articles to keep them current and updated with the latest information.

In fact, it is often far more profitable to update old content than to create a new blog post. By updating old content, you can often see your rankings rise much faster than with new content. Because new pages often take many months to get to the Google homepage.

Here are some ways to update and improve your previous content:

Update / Add new information
Refresh / Add new images
Share on social networks
Repair any broken links
Add infographic
Add tweeted links
Create a new Pinterest Pin
Add relevant internal / external links
Add a video to your post that will be in more detail.
The interweaving of new long-tail phrases is displayed in the Google Search Console.

Find additional long-tail keywords where your page appears in the Google Search Console but is not yet ranked on the first page. Go back and update your previous content for these extra long-tail phrases. This adds value to your posts and generates additional traffic.

If you're wondering what content needs to be updated, log in to Google Analytics and look for old posts that have started to drop in rank in the last few months (or years).

Oftentimes, you can bring these blog posts to life by simply updating them with new information. Go back and see who is in the top 10. Make sure you cover all the major issues your competitors are facing.

Whether it's a previous post (or a new post), we always strive to create the most valuable resource on the Internet.

This can mean adding additional images, infographics, statistics, charts, tables, etc.

Go back and see which article you are linking to. Are they still the best resources for this particular topic? Are there any broken or outdated links?

You can use a WordPress plugin called WP Last Modified Info to show when your posts were last updated.

This plugin will display the date of your last update. Also added the appropriate markup that notifies Google when your content is last updated.

Updating old content is one of the easiest (simple fruits) ways to increase traffic to your search engine.

Output

New blog posts can take many months to find the keywords you want. Therefore, it is important to start creating and publishing as much high-quality content as possible.

Start your 30-day challenge and write 2000 words a day. After those 30 days, 60,000 words will be written on your blog. This can generate a significant amount of free search engine traffic if you research your keywords correctly.

But the key is to start now. Every day you don't write is another missed opportunity to grow your blog. Now more than ever, quality content is key. Good, long content generates more backlinks, shared social media, retweets, and visitors coming back to your site.

Google's algorithm will keep changing, but the most important thing you can do to create SEO-friendly blog posts is to simply write the best resource you can. Good content never goes out of style.