For Your Blog, SEO Best Practices
For Your Blog, SEO Best Practices
The secret to successful SEO blog content is to provide value to the reader. Publishing interesting, useful content that your readers will want to bookmark and return to again, share with others, or connect to on their own websites is one of the best SEO practices for your blog.
Your aim is to get people to find your website through organic search and then KEEP them there by providing them with useful content that answers their questions. Google would consider your page important if visitors spend more time on it for that search word. Search engine rankings rise for pages that are considered more important.
What are the best SEO practices for a blog in 2021?
In their most basic form, SEO best practices in 2021 can be summarized as follows:
Concentrate on producing high-quality content that your readers can appreciate.
With a minimum of 500 words, test long-form blog material.
Use technical SEO for headers, connections, and images to naturally incorporate your keywords into the text. Text in the ALT format
On key anchor keywords, link out to high domain authority websites.
Everywhere, mobile responsive design is crucial.
To help the reader on their exploration trip, link the blog to similar pages on your website.
Best SEO Practices Image for the Blog Header
What Constitutes a Good Blog Topic for SEO?
Blogs that pose a question and then respond with an answer “How To” articles
Lists of the Best (Top 5, Top 20, Top 100, etc.)
When presenting your response in your blog, use bullet points or numbered lists. In their featured performance, Google favors blogs that do so. Featured results are those that appear in-line in Google search. The featured result response is then followed by a link to your blog. Consider the following scenario:
Results for the query “Top 10 College Freshman Advice” on Google.
The Ultimate Blog Post SEO Checklist
the content
Content is king in SEO; useful, helpful content can entice a visitor to not only visit your website, but to use it as a resource to either hoard for themselves or share with others. Your aim is to make all of your content useful. In reality, according to a Backlinko.com report, long-form content receives 77.2 percent more backlinks than short posts. (Did you see what we did there? It’s useful: we shared a connection to it with you.)
Tip: One way to start writing a blog is to use Google to look up the top two results for the subject you want to write about. Make your blog better (optimized keywords, alt text inclusion, better spacing, your brand’s take on the material) and longer (but don’t plagiarize – Google penalizes duplicate content) by copying the content and layout of the top-ranked blog.
Is the blog’s word count sufficient to achieve the goal?
To share news/updates, write a blog post. A minimum of 500 words is required.
1,000–2,000 words to increase social shares
2,000–5,000 words to increase backlinks and domain authority
4000+ words per pillar page
Is the blog set up in a way that makes it easy to read?
For visual separation, use H2 and H3 headers.
Lists of bullets or numbers are preferred.
Font sizes that are easy to read
Keywords and phrases
In the blog, automatically have a main keyword as well as any secondary terms you’d associate with that keyword.
For example, the main keyword you’re looking for is “vintage handbags.” Other keywords to consider are “vintage designer handbags” and “vintage purses.” You can also include the terms “designer” and “purses” in your blog. If you use the terms “designer” and “purses” in your blog, search engines are now smart enough to equate them with the other keyword phrases you chose to hit.
Have you established the primary and secondary keywords and used them in the placements that follow?
Meta description (Maximum of 60 characters)
Meta overview (maximum of 160 characters; include keyword near start)
Name of the blog
Near the start of the blog, the first paragraph
Consider including keywords in the blog body’s H2 and H3 headers.
Is the keyword used automatically in the text with a native speaker’s writing voice?
Don’t think about keyword density; just make sure the keyword isn’t stuffed in an unnatural way.
Is the keyword being looked up already?
Try searching for the word in Google to see if it auto-completes.
Google Trends is a free analysis tool that shows keyword trends.
Include keywords that aren’t as common but have a lot of searches.
If you use secondary or related keywords in your blog material, include variations of that keyword.
Is there a keyword in the blog’s URL?
Avoid using symbols in your blog’s URL.
Use hyphens to separate sentences.
The URL should be as nearest as possible to the root domain.
The URL should clearly state what the blog is about.
Ensure that ALL photos on the site have ALT text that is descriptive. MOZ, the gold standard of SEO testing and learning, has a great article on ALT text best practices if you want to learn more.
What exactly is ALT Text? For web crawlers and screen readers for the visually impaired, these are definitions in the HTML code that define the image on the website. In addition to providing web accessibility for screen reader users, their aim is to view the text if the image fails to load and to provide background to search engine crawlers.
Images can also help to break up a large amount of text on a page, making it easier to read. The aim is to increase the amount of time a visitor spends on your site since this tells search engines that the content on your site is interesting enough for them to continue.
Did you rename the image file before uploading it to your website to make it more descriptive of the image?
Are all of your photos web-ready?
For faster page loading times, make sure all images are under 500kB.
Is there alt text on all of the photos in the blog?
Are all of the photos as detailed as possible?
Most posts, connectives, and prepositions can be omitted (examples: the, and, in)
Is it possible to use the keyword in certain photos while preventing keyword stuffing?
Are there photos strategically positioned in the blog to break up long stretches of text and add meaning to the content?
Include photos that are exclusive to your business or product, and make the file name and ALT text as descriptive as possible.
For example, if a user searches for pink flower girl dresses for toddlers and you happen to have a picture of this product online, this image can appear in Google images, directing users to your site.
Connecting
Linking to your blog is an important part of your blog’s SEO. Using anchor keywords, blogs should connect to other internal pages (for example, “See our available homes” should link to a “Available Homes” page).
Including these links in areas where the reader can find it useful to learn more. Add other related material to increase the amount of time a visitor spends on your site.
Is there any anchor keyword linking to other internal pages on the blog?
Add links to places where the reader can get more detail.
The content of the destination connection should match the text of the hyperlink.
Is there a clear outbound link to a high-domain-authority website on the blog?
External links should all open in a new tab.
Is the use of external connections beneficial to the reader?
Check that the blog does not connect to the same internal page too many times – once is enough.
SEO in a technical sense
In 2020, mobile traffic accounted for over 65 percent of all sessions on our client websites – responsive web design is no longer optional. In addition to useful content, ensuring that your website meets the technological criteria for a streamlined user interface is an important part of SEO strategy.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights will help you determine the speed of your blog page. Is there some way to improve the page’s performance?
Summary of SEO Best Practices for 2021
In SEO, there is no one-size-fits-all solution; best practices shift as Google’s algorithm does. However, one thing is certain: SEO’s position in connecting customers with valuable content that can assist them in their customer journey will not change.
Do you want to start an SEO campaign for your company?
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