How to write a SEO friendly blog that works - my top ten tips!

You need skills to write a blog post.  You need to think about the structure of your content so that it is enjoyable and interesting for the reader. If people like and understand an article, they will be much more likely to share it with others which will increase your rankings. So here are my top 10 tips to help you improve your writing skills and rankings with your blog posts.  Good luck!

There is no conflict of goals if you are writing for SEO purposes and at the same time aiming to interest and captivate your audience.  You can focus on ensuring that the words you want to be found are in a prominent place for a SEO friendly blog post.  However, excessively using keywords can have a negative impact on the readability of your text, which you do not want.  A high key phrase density can even act as a signal to Google that you are loading your text with keywords which can negatively affect your rankings.

The tips listed here will enable you to write blog posts which are SEO friendly and readable. Keeping these two goals as primary considerations will produce blogs in understandable language that attracts visitors and keeps them on your site.

Starting point: do keyword research

If you want to dominate the search results, you’ll have to figure out which words your audience typically searches for. These determine which topics you should write about and the keywords you should use in your text.

When you’ve done your keyword research and have a list of focus keywords to write about, it’s time to get on with writing. Here are 10 tips to help you end up with a fantastic blog post!

Tips for writing SEO-friendly blog posts

Your blog post must be a good piece of writing. When starting a new blog post, many bloggers just start writing, typing whatever comes into their heads. This approach may work for some people who have natural writing talents, but it is not recommended. Personally, I always follow these ‘rules’ when I write a new blog.

 1. Think before you write!

Think carefully about the message of your piece before you start.  What do you want to tell your readers or which central question do you want to answer? What’s the purpose of your article? What is the call to action you want your readers to take at the end of the page? Write down the answers to these questions before you begin and think about the search aim a reader may have. An easy way to get an insight into this is by looking at the search results for the search term you want to rank with.

2. Devise a structure for your post

To write a readable and SEO-friendly blog post, you need to create a clear structure. Every post should have three sections:

• an introduction to your topic;

• a body in which the main message is written;

• a conclusion summarizing the main ideas or drawing a conclusion.

In a few sentences, write down what you want to say in all three sections. You’ve now created a summary of your post. This will help you create a structured and readable blog post. Now you can begin with the real writing.

3. Use paragraphs and headings

Everybody uses paragraphs, but not everybody uses them well. Don’t start each new sentence on a new line just because it looks nice. Also, try to keep them concise, as each paragraph should have its own idea or subject. Ask yourself what the main idea of each paragraph is. You should be able to summarize that primary idea in one sentence. If that’s not possible and you need more sentences to explain the main idea, you simply need to use more paragraphs.

Proper headings also help your readers understand what a specific part of your text is about. If you want to guide people through your articles, use sub-headings to lead them. Sub-headings help readers scan your page and clarify the structure of your articles. They’re not just important for readability, but for SEO as well. That’s why I would also advise using your keyword in some of your sub-headings. But limit how much you do that, as using your keyword in every heading will make the text clunky and unnatural. This will put people off reading further.

 4. Use related keywords

Stuffing your article with your focus keywords makes it less attractive to read, and it can also hurt your rankings. Google is smart. It wants you to write content that users will love. It doesn’t want you to use your focus keyword in every other sentence and has other ways to analyze what your text is about. One of the ways that Google understands the topic of your text is by recognizing synonyms and other keywords that are related to your focus key phrase. That’s why you should use synonyms and related keywords throughout your copy.

Synonyms are relatively easy to think of, but thinking of the right related keywords is a bit more challenging. That’s why we use tools like SEMrush that help you find related key phrases right away. Based on your focus keyword, we can automatically produce several related key phrases! We can also tell you how many times that keyword is searched for and what the search trend looks like.

5. Use transition words

Transition words help people scan through your text and understand the relationship between sentences and paragraphs. For example, let’s say that there are three reasons for people to buy your product. You should use signal words like: ‘firstly’; ‘secondly’ and ‘finally’. Also, words like ‘however’, ‘similarly’ and ‘for example’ give a clear signal to your readers. Readers will instantly get that a conclusion will follow after words like ‘to sum up’ or ‘in short’.  Transition words are therefore very important. They create structure in your text.

6. Optimize the length of your article

Make sure your blog posts have a minimum of 400 words but keep the length of your article proportional. Google likes long articles, however, if your article is too long it might frighten users away. I would advise to only write long articles when you know you’re an expert writer. It’s asking a lot of your visitors to read your entire post when it’s very long.  Remember to keep using your focus key phrase throughout your text to make sure you end up with an SEO-friendly blog post!

7. Link to existing content

Don’t forget to link to and from posts on similar topics which you have already written. It will make your new blog post, and the existing posts, stronger because you’re showing authority on the subject. In addition, your link structure is also important for your rankings in Google. Linking to other content about a subject is great for your readers, as they may be interested in reading these related posts too. It helps them navigate your site.

This writing technique is called Internal Linking. It helps your readers and Google tto manage your content and understand relationships between different content on your site.  Taking the time link to and from your previous content will have major benefits for your blog. We can advise you using our internal linking tool and suggest relevant pages and posts on your site which you can link to.

8. Let others review your blog

Before publishing your blog, make sure to let someone else read it first. Ask them whether they understand the main concept and invite them to correct any typos and grammatical errors. This can help you by providing an objective view of the readability and stickiness of your text. If you have someone in your team who happens to be an expert on the topic you’re writing about, make sure to run your blog past them. That way they can check whether you’re covering everything you need to and give suggestions to make your post even better.

9. Update your content regularly

Regularly adding new blog posts to your website tells Google that your website is active. This is important because if your site isn’t active, Google will crawl it less often and this might negatively affect your rankings. But don’t just post for the sake of posting. Make sure that everything you post is high quality content: informative, well-written articles that entertain readers and fit their search goals.

We can support you with the creation of an editorial calendar If you have difficulty posting on a regular basis. This allows you to structure this process in a way that fits you and your team. Updating your old blogs from time to time is also a way to keep them fresh and interesting for readers.

10. Use our SEO blog post writing services

Our team is here to help you.  We can use our expertise and analysis tools to help you write readable and SEO-friendly blog posts which deliver a positive ROI. We start by choosing the most important search term you want people to find on your blog page. This is your focus key phrase. Once this is known, we implement relevant tools to determine whether your post is optimized or still needs improving:

• We check your blog to see whether you’ve used the key phrase in the right places, like your copy, SEO title, meta description, alt text and URL.

• We check the readability of your text: Are your sentences or paragraphs too long? Do you use transition words?

• We check the internal and external links in your article and make suggestions for links related to your site.

• We give you suggestions for related key phrases that you can add to improve the quality and relevance of your content.

• We can use our tools to calculate how often you use your key phrase throughout your text: not enough or too often? We can also check if you’ve distributed your key phrase evenly throughout your post.

• We also check to see if other pages on your website use the same focus keyword.  This can prevent you from competing with yourself.

If you write a relatively SEO-friendly blog post using the tips given above, our systems will show green which indicates that your blog will improve its ranking on your website. If you have any questons arising from this blog post then contact us to learn how we can help you.

30th October 2023