People understand that they need blog post on their website but they tend to not see the value or know how to optimize a blog post. In this article we will cover:
The Value of a Blog Post
Research for a Blog Post
Theming Your Blog Post
Metadata for a Blog Post
Linking Structure of a Blog Post
1. The Value of a Blog Post
Why do we want to even blog in the first place? Well for one it produces new content for your website on a daily/weekly/monthly basis depending on your blogging schedule. This tells bots like Google that you are creating new content often and to check back with you regularly to see what's new and to index what's been changed. If you're website is stagnant, i.e. no new content, the bots won't visit as regularly and you won't grow online which tends to be the main focus when it comes to SEO.
Blogs also allow you to highlight services that you provide and strengthen their existence. For example if you have a service that has 10 links pointing to it from various blogs, Google will see this as a core service over one that perhaps only has 1 link going to it. Now this doesn't mean every blog should have a link to every service, it should look natural and not so calculated, so if you mention a service within your blog that you provide, link to that service page. These services pages will then rank for the particular keyword your targeting. Remember each page can only rank for 1 or 2 main keywords so you expand from an SEO perspective with more pages, not with adding more keywords to one page. As example the blog links to a page dedicated to lighting which is then trying to rank for "lighting installation Greensboro"
2. Research for a Blog Post
Where many people make a mistake on how to optimize a blog post is targeting "money" keywords in their post. You don't want your post to rank for "Roofer Boston", that should be your homepage if your a roofer specifically or the page dedicated to that service if your a general contractor. What you do want to look for are questions surrounding these keywords. We are sure you get these questions all the time. For the roofing example it could be like "how long should a new roof last?" or "What's the best shingles for my roof?" You want to answer these questions not just with industry standard information but your specific knowledge. Provide clarity through examples throughout your blog post from case studies to images.
The best part is once you have formulated one questions, Google will provide others to help you produce more content:
Everyone of these questions from the People Also Ask section can be new blogs.
3. Theming Your Blog Post
Great you have found your topic that you want to blog about. However, how do you make sure that Google understands that's the theme of that page? Remember we optimize on a per page basis for SEO, not a full site. Well the first thing we can look at is making sure that the theme of the page goes along with our blog post title. We do this in 2 ways:
Mention the title 3-5 times depending on the length of the blog post. So if we're focusing on "how often should I brush my teeth?" we mention this 3-5 times within the post
We want to bold or italicize these instances so each time you state "how often should I brush my teeth?" you want to bold or italicize it. This shows emphasis on this term and thus themes the page
4. Metadata for Your Blog Post
So now you want to create a strong foundation for your them when considering how to optimize a blog post. There are 5 areas you want to focus in on:
Meta Title
H1
Meta Description
Image Alt
Slug
Meta Title: This will typically be created automatically with the title of your blog post.
H1: This too will typically be automatically created with the title of your blog post.
Meta Description: You will have to dig into your "SEO" settings and add this yourself. Make sure to try to add the title as it's written towards the beginning of the description such as "Learn how to optimize a blog post and what specifically you need to do to rank higher" as an example.
Image Alt: So you hopefully have an image in your blog post at which we would say use the Meta Title exactly how it's written. if you have several images try to make image 2,3,4 etc. as alternatives such as "optimizing a blog post" or "optimize your blog" as ideas.
Slug: So your slug will automatically be create by the Meta Title such as /how-to-optimize-a-blog-post/ but what we would suggest is have it as close to the .com as possible. This isn't always possible based on the platform you are using. For instance on our platform blog post always come as .co/posts/how-to-optimize-a-blog-post/. This isn't a deal breaker but in platforms such as WordPress they may ask you to use the date the post went live, don't do that as that is just added steps past the .com
5. Linking Structure of Blog Post
When it comes to links in a blog post there are 2 different types:
Internal
External
For internal links you will want atleast 1-3 links in a blog post linking to various services that you provide. For instance when writing about how to optimize a blog post, we're gonna link to SEO as an internal link. You may want to take it a step further an say PPC marketing in Monroe but this tends to look a little spammy and Google already gets the idea of if your local or national.
External links first off should be used sparingly or never. Use it like a way to fact check your statement. You can learn more about optimizing blog post and see which post is most helpful for you.
We hope this blog was useful for you if you have further questions please feel free to text Rich at (704) 724-9353 and I'll be happy to chat.
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