Want to boost traffic to your blog? The best long-term strategy is do some good ol’ SEO – search engine optimization. SEO can get complex and detailed. In fact, there are people, platforms, and journals dedicated to doing, teaching, and advancing SEO. But even if you’re no SEO pro, there are some simple things you can do to boost the SEO power of your posts. Check out these 5 blog post SEO tips from the experts.
Want to create a consistent source of traffic to your blog and make your posts visible to the people who are looking for brands like you?
Download my free ebook SEO Basics for Blog Posts.
1. Keyword density
If you search for blog post SEO tips online, you’ll find a lot of info on keywords. In my recent post “5 things to do when starting a blog,” I talked about building posts around keywords. Keywords are the words you expect your target audience to use when searching for things online. So if you build high-quality posts around keywords, you have a shot at being discovered by your target audience in Google search results.
But remember that keywords work best when you use them sparingly. So there’s no reason to go keyword crazy. In fact, if you stuff your posts with keywords, you’ll get a penalty. Why? Because Google will assume that your post is spam. That’s why SEO experts suggest keeping your keyword density low. How low? 1-2% This means you should aim to use a keyword 1-2 times for every 100 words in your blog post.
In “5 things to do when starting a blog,” my keyword density is 1%.
2. Headline
Do you hastily pull together the headlines or titles for your blog posts? You may want to think twice. If you check out common blog post SEO tips, you’ll see that getting your headlines right matters. Your headline is the first thing that Google and actual people (we shouldn’t forget about them) will look at to figure out what your post is about. So you want a headline that appeals to search engines and to people.
How do you optimize your headlines? For tips on creating headlines that are too tempting to not click, check out the Advanced Marketing Institute’s headline analyzer. This tool lets you type in a headline and assess the percentage of emotional marketing value words in it. You’ll have a better shot at generating interest in your post if your headline falls into the 30-40% range. And if you can get into the 50-75% range, you’ll be setting yourself up for success. Need ideas for where to start when crafting a headline? Check out these headline templates from SEO expert Marshall Adler.
So that takes care of how to appeal to people, but how do you make your headline a magnet for search engines? Include your keyword in it. And not just anywhere, but in the first 65 characters of your headline. If you have a long headline, Google’s search engine results page won’t be able to display the whole thing. For this reason, you want to place your keyword toward the beginning of your headline. This way, people will see the keyword in your headline and know that your post is relevant to what they searched for.
For our post on the 5 things to do when starting a blog, our keyword starts right at the beginning of the title:“5 things to do when starting a blog.” In fact, the keyword phrase is the title.
Related: 9 blog title generator tools to help you craft the perfect headline + 72 title templates
3. Subheadings
Another key blog post SEO tip is to use subheadings strategically. Subheadings are the headings for different sections of your blog post. They’re great for helping your readers navigate a blog post by breaking it up into different sections. But that’s not all they’re good for. They also help Google figure out what your post is about. This is especially true of H2 headings, the second level of headings that came after title headings (H1).
To get the most SEO juice from your H2 subheadings, include important words related to your blog post topic in them. And in particular, use your keyword in at least one of them. When you do this, it helps Google match your keyword to your post. It also contributes to that 1-2% keyword density.
Here’s an H2 subheading from my “5 things to do when starting a blog” post that contains my keyword from that post: “There are lots of important things to do when starting a blog.”
Want to create a consistent source of traffic to your blog and make your posts visible to the people who are looking for brands like you?
Download my free ebook SEO Basics for Blog Posts
4. Meta description
When we’re talking about keywords, we need to talk about meta descriptions. Meta what? Meta descriptions are the excerpts of your posts that you see on search engine results pages. They’re another place Google and people look at to find out what your post is about and how relevant it is to a keyword that people search to. That’ why a common blog post SEO tip is to optimize your meta description.
How do you write a meta description that Google and people alike will love? Follow SumoMe’s tips:
- Stick to 150-160 characters (to make sure the whole thing will fit on a search engine results page)
- Use your keyword once (so people and Google can see the relevance of your post to the searched term)
- Explain why your post is valuable. What does it offer people?
If your blog is on a self-hosted WordPress site, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to enter meta descriptions for your posts.
Here’s the meta description for my post on the 5 things to do when starting a blog: “Do you want to know how to craft and share high-quality posts for your new blog? Check out our list of the 5 things to do when starting a blog.”
5. Links
This wouldn’t be a post on blog post SEO tips if we didn’t talk about links. Links are key for SEO because they help establish the credibility of your post. A lot of people focus on inbound links – when blogs (ideally well-known ones) link to you. But links within your blog, ones that link one of your posts to another, also boost your SEO credibility. They also keep visitors on your site.
Outbound links – links to other sites – are also key to include. They show Google that your content is relevant to other stuff out there, and that’s something Google likes to see. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been linking to SEO experts throughout this post. I’ve also linked internally to our post on the 5 things to do when starting a blog.
Related: How to properly add links to your blog posts + free worksheet
Summary of blog post SEO tips
Optimizing your blog posts for SEO can seem like something that’s too complex for the average business owner or blogger to tackle. After all, it seems so technical and complicated. But if you implement the simple blog post SEO tips I’ve discussed here, you can build your SEO juice and put your blog on the cyber map.
Want to create a consistent source of traffic to your blog and make your posts visible to the people who are looking for brands like you?
Download my free ebook SEO Basics for Blog Posts.
