Start networking and exchanging professional insights

Register now or log in to join your professional community.

Follow

How can I incorporate search engine optimization into my blog post writing?

user-image
Question added by Samar Saleh , Community Manager , Bayt.com
Date Posted: 2014/05/06
Amarjeet Sharma
by Amarjeet Sharma , Chief Digital Officer , Karmasthal Healthtech P Ltd

To incorporate the SEO Best practices into your blog post writing, you have to take the following into consideration :

1.  Write for the audience not the search engine. 

2.  Try to write the entire post on a single topic rather than a wide category.

3.  Write  a catchy title which may incite click through

4.  Break the content into small byte size chunks which are easy to digest

5.  Use proper formatting like headers, sub-headers, bullets, lists and proper emphasis on important words/phrases by using bold, underline or italics.

6.  Share what you've written in your social profiles.

 

zafar abbas minhas
by zafar abbas minhas , Freelance Writer , DAILY MASHRAQ

m realy sorry samar, i dont have much idea about digital marketing & blogs.

Search Engine Optimization is a very professional apporach and needs extra ordinary efforts to get really optimized, but I would like to suggest a link which could be helpful to you .

Please visit: http://www.brandwatch.com/2013/04/integrating-seo-and-social-media-marketing-activities/

Hope you will find it useful

 

Category1 – Sitewide SEO Concerns

The most important things to focus on with your site structure are:

  • Permalinks– In your WordPress admin dashboard, go to Settings – Permalinks.   Choose the custom structure and type this in the box  /%postname%/That makes your pages appear like this  http://parttimeted.com/how-to-do-seo-for-your-blog/   instead of like this http://parttimeted.com/?page_id=295

 

  • If your permalink structure is going to contain categories, make sure you strip the word “category” from the URL structure so that your URL is clean and contains nothing extra other than descriptive words.  There is a setting for doing that inside your WordPress SEO plugin settings if you have that Yoast plugin installed. There are other plugins to do that also if you don’t want to use Yoast for whatever reason.

 

  • Use descriptive anchor text for links between pages internal to your website.   Wherever possible, you want your internal links to use descriptive anchor text for the pages they link to.  For instance, if you have several places on each page that link back to your homepage, you might be able to find a way to add a keyword into the link instead of just using the word “Home” as anchor text. If you look at any page on my blog you will see that there is only one link to the homepage using the word “home”. Yet there are several other prominent links that point back to the homepage using various keywords.

 

  • Use XML Sitemaps – Sitemaps help the search engine find all of the pages on your website.  You want to get every single page on your website indexed so long as that page is meant to be seen by the general public.   The Yoast WordPress SEO plugin does this for you automatically.  If you aren’t using that plugin, then download a different one to do the sitemaps.

 

  • Because Social Links are a ranking signal for both Google and Bing, I recommend that you add some way for people to share each page on your website.   Making it easier for them to share your pages will increase the amount of sharing that is done.  That helps you to get higher rankings and brings you more traffic.  My new favorite way of doing this is by using the Shareaholic Plugin for WordPress.

 

  • Increase the amount of internal links between inner pages deep within your website.   Internal links within your own website also help improve rankings of your pages.  If you want to increase the amount of internal linking you do while also using descriptive anchor text, you can install a plugin like Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.   That plugin will accomplish much of that internal linking for you.  Plus it links related pages to other related pages which is ideal for both users and search engines. There is another plugin I sometimes use to embed relevant links right inside my blog posts.  That plugin is called Automatic SEO Links.  It works well for this purpose too. The Shareaholic Plugin that I mentioned in the previous paragraph also now has the ability to show related posts and link to them.

 

Category2 – On-page SEO

 

You have probably heard a lot of this before, but I am going to go over it all again so that you can have a one-stop source of information about how to SEO your blog.

  • Use your keywords in the page title.   If you have the Yoast plugin installed as I recommended, then at the bottom of each page and each blog post, you will have a spot where you can insert the exact page title you want that page to use.

 

  • Use the keywords in your meta description.   Take a few minutes to really concentrate on your meta description especially for the pages you really want to rank well.   Craft a few sentences that use your keywords in the right order while also giving the searcher a reason for wanting to visit your page.  The Yoast plugin makes this easy because it shows you exactly how your listing in Google is going to look in the search results.Hardcore SEO people will argue that adding keywords in the Meta Description does not help improve rankings at all. This may very well be true. But after paying attention to my own habits and experimenting, I am convinced that it matters a lot for click through rates no matter where your page ranks in the search results. I have also found that it helps to make sure whatever sentence you use in the Meta Description is also included in that exact order on your page somewhere. That makes Google more likely to use the Meta Description that you have created instead of generating one itself.

 

  • Modify your URL structure manually for each page where the URL is really long.   Shorter URL’s have better conversions.  They get more clicks.  So, if you write a blog post that has a really long title, then you will want to remove some of the less important words from the URL.  Make sure your keywords appear in the URL structure for that page and make sure they are in the right order.

 

  • Long blog posts rank higher than short ones.  Try it and you will see what I mean.  Cover your information thoroughly if you want to rank high.

 

  • Use your keywords in the right order in at least a couple spots inside your blog post.  Yes it helps to put them inside headers such as H1, H2 and H3.  It isn’t the header that really matters though.  It is the size of the text that matters to Google.  They aren’t looking for the H tags.  They are looking for font sizes.  So, don’t get hung up on adding more headers to the page in order to be able to include more instances of the keyword in there.  You can accomplish the same effect by simply using a larger font for your keywords anywhere on the page.  The more times your keywords appear (and other synonyms or related words & phrases) on the page the better so long as the post reads well and doesn’t look like those keywords were stuffed in there.   Don’t worry about keyword density at all unless you notice you are having trouble getting a page to rank.

 

  • Outbound links to high quality relevant information on other really high quality sites can help boost ranking.  Use descriptive anchor text if you are adding any outbound links to your blog posts.

 

  • Using your keywords or related keywords in special ways on your page can give you an ever so slight increase in ranking. The special ways I am referring to are using them as anchor text in links on that page, using bold, italics, underline, strong, or using different font sizes.

 

  • Add images and/or video into your blog posts so that it provides a richer visitor experience and because Google likes it.   Using written text is the best way, in my opinion, to deliver important high level information to people.   But, by incorporating other forms of content into your blog posts like images and videos, you are improving the visitor experience and also making Google like your page more.

 

Category3 – Inbound Links

inbound linksGetting links to your blog is essential if you want it to rank well in Google, Yahoo and Bing.   In a perfect world your blog would be so awesome that it would naturally go viral and attract a whole bunch of links.  You and I both know that isn’t going to happen.  It is a great thing to shoot for, but highly unlikely to happen.  So, we are left having to build many of the links ourselves if we are to see results within a reasonable amount of time.

Luckily, blogs are one of the easiest websites to build links for because of the existence of millions of other blogs.

Ways of Manually Getting Higher Quality Links

  • Guest Posting is probably the favorite method that bloggers use to get ideal links back to their blogs.  The great thing about guest blog posts is that you can sometimes get an ideal link from an authoritative site within your own niche.  Guest blogs should be used to create those perfect links back to the specific pages you want to get ranked high on your blog.  You aren’t going to be creating them in mass numbers.  So, spend time on creating a high quality article that will make both you and the other blogger happy.  Once your guest blog gets published, you should promote it using social media and also build at least one contextual backlink for it from wherever you can.   You can use a common article directory article to do this if you don’t have anywhere else to get that link.

 

  • Build other blogs.  One often overlooked method of getting high quality links is to use other blogs on other websites.   For instance, you could start a new blog on WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Tumblr.com and Blog.com.   There are four good examples.  You build a blog on each one of them.   You go leave blog comments on other dofollow blogs so that you build some link juice to those other blogs.   Then you can use that link juice to create high quality contextual links with ideal anchor text for pointing back at your primary blog.   This method is exceptionally effective. 

 

  • Try Creating Link Bait – Create a special page on your website or a special piece of content that you think people will naturally want to share because it is so funny, so interesting, so unique or so useful.   It can be an article, an epic blog post, an infographic, a public survey, a video, a cartoon, an interview, an MP3 download, a free piece of software or anything else you can think of that has a chance to go viral.  I admit that this is very hard to execute well.   Then you promote this content on social media and also to your own circle of friends.   Encourage them to help you spread the word about it by sharing it with their friends on social media or by linking to it as a resource from their blog.

 

  • Build Relationships – I hate to break it to you, but the guys who earn the best links are the ones who know the most people who are in a position to help generate those links. For example, you will see popular bloggers linking back and forth to one another within their blog posts. That happens because those people know each other to some degree. Those popular bloggers don’t know you. So, they are very, very, very unlikely to link to you out of the blue even if you have good content.However, if you do have great content and you build a casual relationship with that blogger over a period of time, then the chances of him/her linking to you at some point goes up drastically. If you become good friends, then the chance of him/her linking to you goes up big time. The really good juicy links are going to come from established blogs that have been around a while. Blogs tend to link out more than other sites. Static websites that are commercial in nature generally don’t link out very much. So seeking links from them is likely to be more challenging. Start building relationships with bloggers in your niche right now. It is going to take a while for it to payoff.

ALAMGEER HUSSAIN HASHMI
by ALAMGEER HUSSAIN HASHMI , REGIONAL SALES & OPERATIONS MANAGER , Uth Healthcare Pvt., Ltd

Dear Samar

Unfortunately Digital Marketing is not my field and can't help you with an answer.

Rajiv Yajnik
by Rajiv Yajnik , Vice Pesident Fmcg & Sugar , EID Parry India Ltd

One of the biggest sources of traffic to your blog will be search engines, particularly Google.  You can boost the traffic that comes to your blogs from search engines by implementing search engine optimization (SEO) tricks into your blog layout and writing.  You can get started by doing some keyword research and determining which keywords are likely to drive the most traffic to your blog.  Then focus on incorporating those keywords into your blog posts using the tricks below.

1. Use keywords in your blog post title.

One of the best ways to incorporate keywords into your blog posts is to use them in your blog post titles.  However, don't sacrifice a title's ability to motivate people to click through and read your entire blog post. 

2. Focus on using just one or two keyword phrases in each blog post.

To maximize the traffic that comes to your blog via search engines, focus on optimizating each of your blog posts for just one or two keyword phrases.  Too many keyword phrases dilutes the content of your post for readers and can look like spam to both readers and search engines.  You can learn more about using specific keywords to maximize search traffic by reading about long tail search engine optimization.

3. Use keywords throughout your blog posts.

Try to use your keywords (without keyword stuffing) multiple times in your blog post.  For best results, use your keywords within the first200 characters of your blog post, several times throughout your post, and near the end of the post.  Take some time to learn more aboutkeyword stuffing and other search engine optimization don'ts.

4. Use keywords in and around links in your blog post.

Search engine optimzation experts believe that search engines like Google place more weight on linked text than unlinked text when ranking search engine results.  Therefore, it's a good idea to include your keywords in or next to the links within your blog posts when it's relevant to do so.  Be sure to read about how many links are too many for SEO before you start adding links to your posts.

5. Use keywords in image Alt-tags.

When you upload an image to your blog to use in your blog post, you usually have the option of adding alternate text for that image which appears if a visitor cannot load your images in their Web browsers.  However, this alternate text, can also help your search engine optimization efforts.  That's because the alternate text appears within the HTML of your blog post content as something called an Alt-tag.  Google and other search engines crawl that tag and use it in providing results for keyword searches.  Take the time to add keywords that are relevant to the image and post in the Alt-tag for each image you upload and publish on your blog.

 

Rgds

Rajiv

Feroz Khan
by Feroz Khan , Project Manager (Online Marketing) , Business Technology Management Inc.

Hi,

SEO is the process of making content visible online everywhere. In simple words, SEO is like a surgery where we need to take care on each and every aspect while posting content online or else we will lead into a trap.

 

See the checklist below which I prepared and follow for all of my clients. To be honest, I got better results using the below:

-Create a new Google Account and Email address for your site.

-Install Google Analytics

-Install Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools

-Check Google Webmaster Tools for404 /500 errors, duplicate content, missing titles and other technical errors. Make sure to keep up with any messages Google is sending you.

-Use Browseo [http://www.browseo.net/] to find technical errors.  The most common detrimental errors people tend to make are302 redirects that should be301 redirects.

-Use Xenu to find any broken links. Its completely free, easy way to check.

-Use Google’s Keyword Research Tool. Be sure to consider searcher intent and difficulty, pick1 keyword per page, and you’ll generally want to start with lower-volume keywords first.

-Incorporate primary keyword (or something close) into your page URL

-Use Title tags -65 characters or less.

-Use Meta description tags  -155 characters or less.

-Use H1 tag;  Use keyword in the tags 

-Check search engine-accessible text on the site? At least100 words; Check unnecessary text on the website.

-Use synonyms; synonyms are great, and using natural language that’s influenced by keyword research (rather than just pure keywords) is highly encouraged!

-Check Images have descriptive ALT tags and filenames. Search engines “see” images by reading the ALT tag and looking at file names, among other factors.

-Check the linking to internal pages.

-Use absolute URLs instead of relative ones.

-Check site speed with Google Page Speed Tools

-Create an XML sitemap and submit to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. Use XML-Sitemaps.com or the Google XML Sitemaps WordPress Plugin. [http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/]

-Create a Robots.txt file and submit in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools

-Check on multiple browsers with BrowserStack [http://www.browserstack.com/]

 

I hope the above would be helpful for you.

 

Happy Blogging

 

Thanks

Feroz Khan Saleem

Khatim Abbas Seed
by Khatim Abbas Seed , BUSINESS CONSULTANT , Google

Rule of thumb:

Keep in mind that SEO for blogs is about making you blog postings easily found by the human reader, using the assistance of the search engine bot that scanned (indexed) your content first and labelled as "useful" or "worthy of a high SERP" or search engine result position. You will be serving both, but the human reader should ultimately find your positing useful enough to vote it or spread it or commit any other desirable call-to-action place by you.

 

General:

If your blog is about one main topic or serving one purpose, it becomes much easier as you can deploy relevant SEO content techniques all over the website (like key word clouds, tags, sections, titles etc.). When you are posting content in different topics and genres, you need to put in extra effort per post. There are many technical and writing-related ways to optimize your text for best key words:

Tips:

  1. After determining you topic & target audience, conduct Keyword Analysis research on high search volume keywords in a given period or a geoprgrpahical area, using Google Key Word Tool (free & intuitive). Download or export the report for later use.
  2. Start writing with the top-5 or top-10 keywords in mind, WITHOUT jeopardizing the quality of your content (your style of writing or readability of your text by the human visitor).
  3. Concentrate on title: make it catchy, attractive while carrying heavy related keywords.  Be creative and avoid commonality or absurdity in writing.
  4. Incorporate useful internal links to previous (related) postings or to your related social media profiles. Don’t clutter your post with too many links.
  5. Do active (incoming) extranal links building on social bookmarking, video sharing, social networking sites to promote your post into the viral world and let it spread it wings.
  6. Use (embedded) dynamic and visual content images, videos, whitepapers, slideshows to make your text attractive & colourful to read. Avoid long blocks of texts and paragraphs without breakings.
  7. Use available technical SEO aid in your blog CMS: add tags in the form of relevant keywords, add a description.
  8. Add (or enable) social sharing buttons or tools to each positing.

 

Mohammed Awwad
by Mohammed Awwad , Digital Marketing Consultant , BDO Jordan

try link billding in your keywords ^_^

Menerva Melad
by Menerva Melad , Account Executive, Key Accounts , Graphic Home Company

To incorporate the SEO Best practices into your blog post writing, you have to take the following into consideration :

1.  Write for the audience not the search engine. 

2.  Try to write the entire post on a single topic rather than a wide category.

3.  Write  a catchy title which may incite click through

More Questions Like This

Do you need help in adding the right keywords to your CV? Let our CV writing experts help you.