One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your business website and start making money is through blogging. However, simply writing blog posts is not enough. To maximise the impact of your blog and attract more readers, it is important to optimise your posts for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). So let’s dive into how you can make your blogs better for your readers and rankings in this blog today. 

What Is SEO Copywriting?

So before we dive into how to write an SEO-optimised blog post, let’s take it back to the basics for people who may not know what SEO means or fear this word (most do) but trust us it’s not scary. 

SEO copywriting is basically content writing but with a lil magic and more thinking. It’s about not just writing but writing with a purpose, towards a topic and keyword. The goal of SEO copywriting is to improve a website’s visibility and rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs). This involves using relevant keywords and phrases within the content that potential customers are likely to search for. In addition to keyword usage, SEO copywriting also involves creating high-quality, original and valuable content that is designed to attract and engage website visitors, ultimately encouraging them to take a desired action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. 

Why Does Blogging Improve Search Engine Optimisation?

When it comes to SEO, there are various strategies and intents for how people search. One type is informational intent, where individuals are seeking answers and looking to expand their knowledge on a particular topic. This is where blogging comes in handy, as it allows you to provide in-depth information and educate your audience.

By regularly writing blog posts that are well-optimised for search engines, you can improve your website’s visibility and ranking. Blogs provide an opportunity to incorporate relevant keywords, meta tags, and internal links, which are crucial for enhancing SEO. Additionally, they allow you to create fresh and high-quality content, which search engines favour.

By consistently updating your blog with valuable and engaging articles, you can also attract more organic traffic, increase your website authority, and generate backlinks from other reputable sites. Overall, blogging is a powerful tool for improving search engine optimisation, as it helps fulfil the informational intent of users, boosts website visibility, and enhances overall online presence. 

The Steps To SEO Optimised Blog Posts 

1. Choose Blog Topics With Keyword Research

Often when it comes to keyword research, people think you need to pay for this, and yes, there are paid tools which can make things simpler, but you don’t need them. We recently created a blog on the Best SEO Tools, Including Free Tools For SEO, covering at least 5 of our fave keyword tools. 

And so, from this, how do you use them to create your blog? Often when it comes to blogging, the trickiest thing is to know what to write about, and keyword research allows you to identify the words and phrases that people are searching for on search engines like Google, giving you all the ideas for your blog.

By using these keywords in your blog posts, you can increase your chances of appearing in search engine results and driving organic traffic to your website. To start your keyword research, you can use various tools to provide valuable insights into search volume, competition, and related keywords that can help you optimise your blog content. When choosing keywords, our recommendation would be to start with lower volume keywords or lower difficulty and competition, as this can increase your chances of quick ranking. Just because a keyword has only 50 searches doesn’t mean its not of value, it actually means more as one you will get more eyes on your business and have to work less on trying to get the keyword. 

Once you have identified relevant keywords, you can create blog posts around them, ensuring that you are providing valuable information that your target audience is actively searching for. 

2. Write A Compelling Blog Post Title

When it comes to writing a blog post, the title is one of the most important aspects. A compelling blog post title instantly grabs the reader’s attention and entices them to read further. It acts as a hook, drawing the reader in and making them want to know more. The title should be catchy, intriguing, and relevant to the content of the post. It should pique the reader’s curiosity and make them eager to discover what the post is all about. A great blog post title is also crucial for search engine optimization (SEO), as it helps improve the visibility of the post in search engine results.

Where possible, you should try to include your relevant keywords in the title, as this way, the post is more likely to appear in search queries related to its topic. 

3. Outline Your Blog Post With SEO In Mind

When it comes to the structure of your blog, it’s all about keeping it relevant. You have the main keyword that you want to target, but within this will be lots of relatable topics and other supporting keywords you can target within the blog. You want to ensure your blog flows in terms of a story as well as the topic. For example, if your blog keyword is best wedding shoes (you can tell I’ve not long been married), then other relevant topics/keywords around this could be best-heeled wedding shoes, best flat wedding shoes and so forth. From this, you can see the content is all around one topic keeping it relevant. 

Now from this, when structuring your blog post, you want to make sure to include the main keyword within the content, where possible, but also where it feels natural. As well as this, the key is to place at least the keyword in the H1 title, and then where possible/ it feels natural, you want to put your keyword or supporting keywords within other headings like H2’s and H3’s. Leading on from this, when mapping out your blog, you want to think of headings as order priority so search engines will read an H2 as more important than an H3, so be sure to think about structuring your content in this way. 

As well as headings, it’s also good to use bullet points or numbered lists for important information. This also helps break the page up, making it easy for the reader.

4. Add SEO-Optimized Images And Videos

everything you put in your blog is toward SEO, and that doesn’t just mean content! Adding SEO-optimized images and videos to your website can greatly improve its search engine visibility. When you optimise your media content, search engines can better understand what your website is about and rank it accordingly. To ensure your images are SEO-friendly, make sure to use descriptive file names and alt tags that accurately describe the image. What this means is before uploading your image to your website as 00295.jpg upload it to include your keyword. So taking the wedding shoe example, you could name your images best_white_wedding_shoes_1.jpg; here, you can see this already has more meaning. As well as this to also give your SEO an extra boost before adding to the site, you can use Tiny.png to compress the size of the images but not the quality, meaning this keeps your technical page speeds down.

And then the alt tags! Now when you finally have uploaded the images or videos to the website, you will see a box such as an alt tag, and this is used for accessibility as well as a description of what the image is showing if the image fails to load. 

5. Don’t Forget The Important Technical SEO

Step number five but also one of the most important steps! 

So your blog is what the reader sees when they come to read, but before they read the blog, we need to tell them and entice them to read. This is where your SEO titles and meta descriptions come in, and these are what show up on Google or other search engines. 

These play a really important role in your SEO and also should be unique to every page, although they should be anyway, as each page is targeting (or should be) targeting a different keyword. Also, like your blog, these should all be related to the keyword following some rules as below:

SEO Titles:

• Always include your keyword and the whole keyword where possible 
• Make sure the start of each word is capitalised 
• Make sure the whole SEO title is no longer than 60 characters

Meta Description: 

• Always include your keyword and the whole keyword where possible 
• Make sure the whole meta description is no longer than 160 characters but aim for 140 to keep in line with Social sharing. 

And lastly, your URL. The same goes for this where possible, including your keyword within the URL and aiming for 70 characters for this. 

Are You Ready To Create SEO-Friendly Blog Posts?

Now hopefully, this blog has helped you to know how to get the most out of blog writing, but the key is to keep consistent at blogging and not over to think it. Even without knowing, you are likely ranking for keywords without thinking about it, but with this extra help, you can get your blogs to work smarter plus harder. 

But don’t forget we are always here to help! Whether you are looking for one-off support to help you build out an SEO blog strategy or want monthly blog writing done for you, you can book a quick coffee (or tea) and a chat and see how we can support you. Book a call here today.