4 Tips to Properly SEO Your Blog Posts from We Blog Better

Posted: 03 Dec 2013 09:00 PM PST

“SEO is dead,” a freelance writer said to me the other week.

I had to inform her that quite the reverse was the case.

SEO never will die, but it will change so dramatically that it becomes virtually unrecognizable from it used to be. And so far, it’s done that.

However, when you think about it, SEO will never die because people will always need some way to find stuff on the internet. People do that by typing keywords into Google’s search bar.

Now Google has dramatically changed how SEO works, and you’re always going to need some way to tell Google what your website’s about.

It’s that simple – SEO will never die. But, when you consider how to SEO your blog, the process is more natural than ever before, and this holds doubly true for blog articles because you want people to read the entire blog article.

So what SEO tips should you keep in mind as you write blog articles?

1. Focus on Natural Language and Sharing Useful Information

The best SEO is the free kind. So when you write some of your best blogs, make sure other people know about it, and then they’ll link to your posts.

With Updates like Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird, Google is forcing authors to write compelling content. Google has told us many times publicly this is what it wants in a website – compelling information.

Google wants that because that’s what searchers want to find, and Google makes a profit by keeping searchers happy. Write in-depth posts that go 1000 words, or even farther, in-depth. Make sure the information is specific and actionable.

Do that, and you’ll get the free kind of SEO.

2. …But do Include Keywords Too

My personal approach is to find 3-4 keyword phrases and optimize for each in every blog article. I go for keywords with this many searches:

1 should have 30-100 monthly searches
1 should have 100 – 1000 monthly searches
1 should go for 1000 – 5000 monthly searches
1 should be a big hitter and have 10,000+ monthly searches

You’re most likely to rank for the one with the fewest number of searches. But since it’s impossible to predict how Google will rank any of your content, why not shoot a little higher to rank some other blog articles?

And, if you’re doing good SEO later on down the line, you’ll link directly to your pillar blog posts from guest posts and other links you acquire from across the ‘net. That will drive up your rankings for those keywords, so who knows, you could end up ranking for a big-time traffic-driving keyword.

I personally don’t aim for a specific density of keywords within blog posts because with most phrases, it’s difficult to get them in multiple times and still have the post sound natural. I simply make sure that the primary phrase appears in the body content 2 times, and the rest at least once.

Another way to use keywords in your blog articles is to build your site’s “theme” for certain keywords. If you go to Google Webmaster Tools –> Google Index –> Content Keywords, you’ll see a list of keywords Google finds most frequently in your content.

This is what Google thinks your website is about. So, as you write your blog articles, think about what you really want to be found for and use those keywords often in your blog articles.

3. And Don’t Forget Links!

With blog posts, links can be used effectively a few different ways. Don’t forget that when you do use links in your blog posts, that you should use them in ways that sound natural, rather than in ways designed to improve your SEO for a given keyword.

On my personal site, for example, I want to rank for “freelance copywriter in Chicago.” A good place to link that keyword would be in the call-to-action at the end of the post. ”If you’re looking for a freelance copywriter in Chicago, contact Dan Stelter.” That sounds natural and makes sense.

However, I have to also be careful because Google now looks closely at your internal links when calculating your rankings. You don’t want to have greater than 10-30% keyword-rich anchor text. Otherwise, you risk taking a beating in the search engine rankings. This is pretty easy to get around – just link to other relevant blog posts from within your blog posts using the title of the post as your anchor text.

Other great ways to use links in blog posts include:

Linking to external authority sites. I use do-follow links when doing this. I’m not sure of Google’s actual position on this, but it would like “unnatural” to me to see all off-site links being no-follow. Google does expect that authority websites link to other authority websites.
Creating chains of links. If you guest post on site A and link to your site, you can pass more authority to your website by guest posting on sites B and C and linking to site A. You kind of create a “snowball” effect of links pointing to your website.

4. Did You Optimize Your URL?

Finally, the keywords you want to rank for should appear in your URL. If you change your blog’s title in WordPress while editing the blog article, you’ll have to manually update the article URL.

If you use any other platform to manage your content, then make sure you have the keywords in your URL as well.

If you follow all of these tips to promote your blog, you will find that your blog articles get found more frequently in the search engines and generate more organic traffic. At the same time, however, you will be providing good content for your readers.

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