How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts for Your Website

Posting blog articles on your company website is not only a way to engage with clients by offering valuable, useful information; but, it is also a way to boost your search engine rankings and improve overall website SEO. Blogging is one of the core practices of inbound marketing; and, every new published blog post is a new indexed page, increasing online visibility and driving traffic. You shouldn’t forget that these published posts need to be SEO friendly as well in order for you to enjoy their benefits. Just like your homepage and landing pages, blog posts should be optimized using the best practices. What exactly does this mean in the era of ever-changing algorithms? Find out below:

Determine your keywords based on user intent

Gone are the days when it was acceptable to cram 15 Keywords into an article and get rewarded by Google for it. Now, user intent is the future of modern SEO. Your blog posts shouldn’t include dozens of competitive keywords, but only one or two long-tailed keywords that answer the user’s intent – that is, what was the user looking for when they came across your post and how can your post answer their query?

Why so few keywords, why long-tailed, and what happened to keyword density? Well, for one, long-tailed keywords are more targeted, they answer a specific request and can help you gain more visitors who convert. Secondly, long-tailed keywords are more natural, whereas forcefully including competitive keywords into your posts affects readability and user experience, which are two essential factors that Google takes into account.

Keyword placement

Now that you’ve decided on the most relevant keywords for your blog posts, you have to make sure they appear within the article. Here’s where you should incorporate them:

• In META tags – it’s very important for your main keyword to appear in the title tag, in the first 60 characters. Then, it should also be in the META description – which, as of December 2017, has a recommended length of 300 characters.
• In headers and body – since the keyword is also the focus of your article, place it in the headers and in the article body, but make sure that every mention makes senses and flows naturally. Forced keyword mentions do more harm than good, because they affect readability.
• In the URL – if your blog posts don’t have friendly URLs, you’re missing out!

Use inbound links

Inbound links are internal links between your site pages. If you’re blogging about a topic you’ve written about before or if you’re referring to a service that has a landing page, link to that page. This is useful for three reasons:

1. It’s very helpful for readers because it gives them more information,
2. It shows search engines that you produce relevant content
3. It reduces the bounce rate, because users spend more time on your site

Choose your blogging categories wisely

The blog of a corporate website is not a personal diary or a dump for articles on all possible topics. In a way, it’s a micro-website, so it should be very well organized and structured. Every post should fit into a blog category and these categories need to be chosen wisely, based on your niche. For example, HubSpot organizes their blog into marketing, sales and customer success. This will create an infrastructure that users will become familiar with in time and that will help your readers find information more easily.