Blog Optimization Checklist: How Do I Optimize a Blog Article?

SEO, short for search engine optimization, is a vital part of your digital marketing, and optimizing your blog pages is equally important as optimizing any other page on your site.

SEO is the only way for online users to find your blog. When a blog post isn’t optimized, only your website visitors will be able to find them, but how many visitors will come to your site if your pages aren’t optimized anyway?

Optimizing your blog will allow you to grow your website traffic and your website appear in more search queries on Google or similar search engines. Even if your blog is high in quality in terms of content, you’ll not see the fruits of your labor until you optimize it, and here are the essential steps you need to take in the process.

Find and Target Relevant Keywords

Many newcomers in the complicated digital marketing world launch their blog, trying to best guess the topics to write about and keywords to use.

Although your blind guesses may sometimes be correct, SEO is more sophisticated than that. Keyword research is an essential part of optimizing your blogs, and ideally, you should research relevant keywords to target even before you start writing the blog. That way, you can begin optimizing your article even before it’s done.

Every experienced content creator and SEO expert use keyword research to help discover related topics to write about and integrate essential keywords on the page. Therefore, when users search for the topic online, their blog can appear in a query.

Keywords can help shape your content strategy and help you address the topics your audience cares about, so keywords will help you generate ideas for your articles.

One of the best keyword research tools you can use is SEMRush. It offers in-depth keyword analysis, competition, difficulty, organic ranking, related keywords, related questions, SERP analysis, and a wide variety of information you can use for optimizing your blogs.

Target Long-Tail Keywords

Although primary keywords are essential, long-tail keywords (3-5 or more words) are crucial. Still, many content creators put much less emphasis on long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are vital to include in your articles. Usually, they are way more specific, so while blog writing can mean many things, writing a successful blog for your business is far more specific. Users who use long-tail keywords search for in-depth results and are way more likely to convert than customers who land on your blog from a primary keyword.

The best thing about long-tail keywords is less competition. Although it also means less search traffic, the audiences that land on your blog have higher conversion value.

Long-tail keywords allow you to gradually build an audience for your blog without heading into a crazy competition of short-tail general keywords. It’s way easier to rank for long-tail keywords, and using them in your blogs can bring lots of targeted traffic over time. 

Choose a Compelling Title

Most of the time, people judge a book by its cover and, similarly, an article by its title. That means, then, even if your blog shows up in search results, some users might not click it solely based on the title.

Your blog’s title is also crucial for search rankings. When users click on your article because of the compelling title, the click-through rate (CTR) also increases, an essential factor in organic rankings.

Besides, a good title also includes the focus keyword, making it more SEO-friendly and relevant in a search query. On top of using the primary keyword, use adjectives and adverbs to spark readers’ interest. You can also use lists, examples, and how-to statements in the title. For example, if you write a blog on optimizing a blog, you can use “5 ways you can optimize your blog like a pro” or “have you ever tried these 5 methods for optimizing a blog?” or “how to optimize a blog with these 5 SEO techniques.” Although there is no recommended length for title tags from Google, most mobile and desktop browsers can’t display more than 50-60 characters, so it’s best to keep your title length under that range.

Use Internal Links

After a while of having a blog around a particular topic, you’ll find that sometimes you have to write about the same things more than once. At times it can be only a tiny part of a bigger article, other times, you’ll devote an entire post to that topic. When this happens, the SEO god gives you an excellent chance to use the incredible power of internal linking.

Internal links point to your other relevant posts so that users can visit them in just a click. More importantly, these links allow you to build a contextual relationship between your articles on your blog and help Google better understand and rank your website when relevant. Internal links also help boost metrics like pageviews and PageRank, improve time on page, and lower bounce rate.

Use Visual Elements

Some blogs need visual elements more than others, especially in how-to-do or how-to-make posts. Thus, Google favors interactive content over plain text in specific queries.

Images, graphics, or videos help illustrate your written ideas better and make texts easy to read. People love visuals, so your visual elements can help them better understand the written content and take a breather in between paragraphs. Moreover, visual elements add value to your website and boost critical SEO statistics such as time on page.

Use images only if you have permission. If you don’t have such pictures, royalty-free images online can help. In addition, online graphic design software such as Crello or Canva will help you create engaging custom graphics for your blogs.

Don’t forget to use Alt text – it’s crucial for screen readers so that everyone can have a positive interaction with your site, and it also affects your search engine rankings.

Use an Engaging Structure

If your blog post is just a massive chunk of text, chances are it’ll not rank well in queries, nor will many people read it even if they somehow find it online.

Having a clear structure, breaking up text in paragraphs, using bullet points, H2 and H3 subheadings, visuals, internal and external links make your blog post more scannable, easy-to-read, and most importantly, SEO-friendly.

Some tips to help you better structure your blogs:

• Use Headings and subheadings
• Have a short introduction
• Use bullet points
• Keep your paragraphs short
• Use visuals
• Use internal/external links
• Have a conclusion

Focus on User Experience

Although ranking your blog well in queries is crucial, you write your blog for humans, and you shouldn’t forget about their experience.

Whether it’s the format, readability, page speed, or mobile-friendliness, ensure that the page is easy to use and provides value to visitors.

These factors also play a role in ranking – page speed and mobile-friendliness are amongst few confirmed rankings for the Google algorithm, so addressing these factors will also help boost your search engine rankings.

In Conclusion:

Writing a blog needs way more than writing a compelling blog post on a relevant topic, but in-depth research of keywords, optimization, and hard work that pays off. The blog is one of the most crucial aspects of your digital marketing strategy, so if you left the boxes unchecked and need professionals’ help, don’t hesitate to reach out to us today. We have a pool of skilled content creators and SEO experts at Internet Marketing Geeks to help – they work in synergy to create content your website visitors will love to read, and of course, search engines will love to include in relevant queries!