5 Tips To SEO A Blog Post
Everyone knows that content is king, however if you don’t know how to SEO a blog post then you might as well not create any content at all.
Here’s why… in today’s hyper competitive internet marketing landscape if you’re not “SEO’ing” (optimizing) your blog posts…
… the search engines (like Google or Bing) will have a hard time ranking your content.
What does this mean?
- Your blog posts or content will be hard to find when people search a topic
- People won’t realize the value you have to offer on that topic
- Your audience won’t get to know you
- You won’t build a relationship or trust with your prospects
- Your offers won’t be seen
- It is highly unlikely anyone will buy from you
Simply put: if your content or blog posts can’t be easily found…
… your brand and your business will wither away and die a slow death.
However, there is a solution to ensure that your prospects see your amazing content that I’ll share with you here in a bit.
This article will walk you step by step through 5 tips to improve your rankings and visibility in the search engines.
Plus, at the end of the article I’ll provide you with additional resources to guarantee that you’ll get more views to your blog posts and your content.
Pillar Post/Content Hub Structure
I’ll get to the 5 Tips to SEO a blog post in a bit… but first lets talk about what “pillar posts” are and why you need to start creating them.
A pillar post (or a pillar piece of content) is a massive, much longer piece of content than you might typically create for your blog.
Additionally, the pillar post is the piece of content you’re really looking to get ranked in the search engines.
To get your pillar piece of content ranked in the search engines though you can’t just build one blog post about your keyword theme.
You’ll also have to build supporting content around that pillar piece and point links to it.
The way to do this is…
- Choose your keyword phrase for your pillar piece of content
- Create your pillar piece of content optimizing for that keyword phrase
- Build more blog posts around the same sort of topic
- The other blog posts will be optimized for other similar keywords
- Link the other sub posts back to the pillar post to give it more backlinks and more support
Content Hub Structure: How To SEO A Blog Post
As we previously discussed, the Pillar post is the seminal piece of content on a specific topic.
The Pillar post will have connecting pieces of supporting content that you have also created.
You can structure your pillar content strategy like this:
- Central HUB: Main topic, most competitive keyword phrase
- Related sub topics: answers to the main questions, “how to”
- Supportive Base: Helpful info on broader range of related topics
Think of a spoked wheel.
The pillar post is at the center of the wheel with the supporting posts acting as the spokes.
All links and content lead back to the pillar post or the hub of the wheel.
You should have pillar content pieces for the different topics that you want to get ranked by the search engines.
You’ll need to choose what is the pillar content and what is the supporting content outside of it.
How To SEO A Blog Post: 5 On Page Elements
The first thing you’ll want to do is choose your focus keyword(s).
Make sure you choose your focus keywords wisely though.
Once you’ve optimized this blog post for those keywords and you have other supportive posts linking to it…
You’re not going to want to change the keywords within your post.
So lets dive into the 5 on page elements to SEO a blog post.
They are…
1.) Title Tag
2.) The Slug
3.) Alt text of Images
4.) Keywords within the body of the article
5.) Keywords in the Meta Description
Let’s get a little deeper into each of the 5 on page elements to SEO a blog post.
5 On Page Elements To SEO A Blog Post
To help explain how to SEO a blog post using the 5 on page elements I am using screen shots from an actual blog post I previously wrote.
The title of the blog post is “3 Basic Copywriting Rules You Should Never Break”.
My keyword phrase was “basic copywriting rules”.
To help us with on page SEO elements we use a Worpress plugin called Yoast SEO.
Yoast is user friendly, simple to use, and it easily allows you to optimize your blog posts.
Yoast has both free and premium options and I’ve provided a link to learn more about Yoast in the “Additional Resources” section at the end of this article.
So, without further ado… here are the 5 On Page SEO elements.
1.) Title Tag:
To being your on page optimization, you must first grab your keyword phrase and add it in the title tag.
If you’re using Yoast SEO look for the section where they ask for the “SEO title”.
There may already be a permalink pre-populated here. If there is, don’t worry.
Simply change the permalink to whatever keywords you’ve chosen.
Remember, in the examples below my keyword phrase is “basic copywriting rules”.
Your SEO Title can be more elaborate than just your keyword phrase.
Put your “copywriting hat” on for a bit and think about what type of title would appeal to your target audience.
2.) The Slug:
The “slug” is essentially the url for this particular post.
So if your blog is myblog.com
And your writing a blog post about how to generate leads…
The full url will be…
myblog.com/how-to-generate-leads
Again, use your keyword phrase and add it in the field asking for the slug. If your focus keywords are “How to blog like a pro”… then within the slug it should look like this… “how-to-blog-like-a-pro”
In the example below, my slug is… “basic-copywriting-rules”
3.) Alt Text of Images:
By adding images that support your topic within your blog post you will increase the reader’s ability to consume your content. The use of images to SEO a blog post is done by editing the image and adding the focus keyword to the Alt Text line.
4.) Within The Body Of The Article:
The fourth element you’ll want to use to SEO a blog post is to use your keywords throughout the body of the article.
We want to the keyword(s) to then appear within the main blog content
You don’t have to have the keyword in the content but it helps a lot.
Use your keyword phrase as many times as comes natural within the body of the article.
But remember, you want to write both for the search engines as well as your readers.
However, don’t over do it.
Too many uses of your keyword phrase may seem weird or forced to your reader.
Too few uses of the keyword phrase and the search engines may not pick up on the topic of your article.
As a general rule, your keyword density should be somewhere between 1-2%.
But don’t worry…
If you’re using Yoast SEO they’ll show you exactly how many times your keyword has been used and if it’s too much or too little.
Below is an example of how I layer in my keyword phrase into the body of the article.
5.) The Meta Description:
The Meta description is a concise explanation of what the reader can expect to learn if they click on your article.
When a user types a keyword phrase in the Google search bar, several entries will come up as a result of that particular search.
Among all of those entries the user will see 3 things:
- The title
- The slug
- The Meta description
However, the meta description is the only of those 3 things that you can use to persuade or “sell” the user to click on your article instead of the countless other results that came up.
Therefore, a good Meta description can help to increase the Click Through Rate of your article which will in turn help to increase your article’s ranking in Google.
What works today is organizing your content in a way that’s useful for search engines and for people to understand what your article is about.
If you understand that your content needs themes and if you understand the 5 basics of SEO keyword placement… then you’ll start to see traffic coming to your blog from the search engines.
SEO A Blog Post: Other Resources
Check out these other resources about how to SEO a blog post or to help with your blogging content:
SEO A Blog Post: Final Thoughts
As you now can see, creating pillar content and knowing how to SEO a blog post can be the difference between:
A highly ranked and visible piece of content
Or..
A piece of content that comes up on page 8 of Google and therefore is never seen by anyone.
So make sure you take the time to implement everything you’ve read here today and utilize the 5 On Page SEO elements to SEO a blog post.
The worse thing you can do is spend hours or even days writing a great blog post that ends up getting lost in a sea of content, never to be read by anyone.
Questions? Comments??
Feel free to ask questions below and share any SEO tips that you’re currently using.
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