You probably never thought learning how to write a blog post for SEO would matter, huh?
Every business these days needs a website. There’s no disputing that. However, in addition to a website, every business needs a blog. That means, whether you like it or not, if you want to be found in the modern business landscape, you’re a writer.
Why, you ask? Well, think of blogs as the superhighway Google uses to travel around the internet.
Without getting too technical, Google crawls the internet for information. The way Google finds its way around is by crawling websites, and links connecting those websites known as backlinks.
Therefore, you need content on your website for Google to crawl and that content should be linked to other similar content that makes Google happy. The type of content that makes Google happy is a topic we can save for another day.
It may seem nerdy and hi-tech, but you experience this in your everyday life. Think about it. When you search Google to answer a question or find a recipe, where do you usually land? Chances are your search brings you to a blog post 95% of the time.
That’s why learning how to write a blog post is so important to your business or website. It’s especially important if you want to start a niche blog about travel, sports, fitness, etc.
So let’s get into it. By the end of this puppy, I promise you’ll be a blogger extraordinaire.
How to Write a Blog Post for SEO
Every blog starts with the same question: what do you want to write about? If you have a business website, you already have an idea what your content is going to be based around. For example, if you already own a pizza shop, odds are you’re going to be writing about pizza.
When writing for SEO, however, you may have to put some more thought into your niche. Choose something that you would enjoy writing about. Maybe it’s travel, maybe it’s fitness, maybe it’s cocktails. Who knows? Keep in mind, though, that the more general and more popular your topic is, the harder it will be to rank for in Google.
For example, instead of writing about sports, you may want to write about golf only. If you could niche down even further to something like: golf equipment and course reviews, that would be even better.
A mentor of mine once said: a good rule of thumb is to brainstorm at least 50 blog topics around your niche. If you can come up with 50 different things to write about, chances are you have a good niche.
Step 1: Keyword Research
Keywords are the words and phrases that are being searched around your topic. There are all sorts of websites, apps, and software that help you to do in-depth keyword research. As you start to get more advanced with keyword research you may want to check out programs like SEMrush and Neil Patel’s UberSuggest. But, in the interest of keeping this an “intro” article, I’ll give you a quick little hack.
Let’s take this article for example. I’m a freelance writer. As such, I wanted to give you great people a series on how to write. (Pro tip: providing education on your chosen niche or business is a great way to position yourself as an expert and ultimately win more business).
In order to provide you guys with quality content that actually reaches potential bloggers and potential clients. I needed to research some keywords.
Using Google for Keyword Research
Now here’s the hack: rather than use complex keyword software (that you most likely have to pay for) you can do your research right within google.
I knew I wanted to teach you all how to write a blog post for SEO, because blogging is so important. I went to Google and typed “How to write a blog” into the search bar.
Before I could even hit “Enter” more search terms started to pop up below the search bar in bold (I’m sure you’ve all seen them before).
You can see, from the screenshot above, what began to pop up based on my search. These terms that automatically show up are basically Google predicting what you actually wanted to search for.
How does it predict that? Based off of the number of searches for that term. This means that for people typing in “how to write a blog”, “how to write a blog post” is the 2nd most popular term searched on Google. Are you starting to see the power of this?
After you read this section of the post, and it makes sense, go back through and read this entire post again. I’m sure you’ll begin to see the reasoning behind some of my word choices.
Some topics will be easier than others to find keywords this way, but the best way to do it is to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes. Think of who out there in Internet land is going to be looking for you. Imagine what terms they would be searching to find you.
If you do that, I’m sure you’ll come up with a number of keyword phrases to base your blog posts around.
Step 2: Keyword Placement
Ok, now we have our keyword. What do we do with it? Like I said before, this is going to be part of the roadmap Google uses to find you.
Once you’ve chosen your keyword phrase, it needs to show up in your article. But, where do you put it?
Well, Here’s where Google gets a little tricky. Yes, Google wants to see your keyword phrase show up. But, they also want your article to be helpful and valuable to the people who search for you. That means you can’t put your keyword into your article 70 times in a way that doesn’t make sense. That’s called “keyword stuffing” and Google hates that!
There is no set rule of thumb for how often to use your keyword within your article. But, if you’re looking for a number to go on, try to stick to once every 250 words. For example, if your post ends up being 750 words long, don’t use your keyword phrase more than 3 times.
Within the body of your article you can place your keyword phrase wherever it makes sense. Again, do not just stick your keyword phrase in wherever you want. The article needs to flow, and read like normal English.
In addition to the body of your article, you want to work your keyword phrase into the following places
- Your Article Title (towards the beginning)
- Your Intro Paragraph (in one of the first few sentences
- At least one of your subheadings
We could go into this in much more detail, but I want to keep it as simple as possible for you guys. A great resource to check out on how to write a blog is Yoast SEO’s Ultimate Blogging Guide.
Step 3: How to Write Your Blog Post for SEO Format
Google’s big thing is User Experience. They want everybody to find what they’re looking for as fast as possible when using Google search. This is where the format of your blog post comes into play.
If you’ll notice in this article, paragraphs are very short. You want to use this same technique. Keep your paragraphs between 1-3 sentences. If you’re on a roll and you wind up with 5, the blog police won’t grab you, but stay under 5 for sure.
Whenever you’re writing a blog post, you always want to keep “how to write a blog post for SEO” in the back of your mind. Like I said earlier: Google is all about User Experience.
Part of that User Experience is an idea called: Scannability. Users should be able to quickly scan your article and find what they’re looking for. This is the reason for the short paragraphs.
It’s also the reason why you should be using subheadings. Use this article as an example. Notice how the content is broken up by several subheadings? That’s done by design.
Don’t go lower than an H2 or H3 format, and try to keep sections to about 300 words. Again, there’s no “golden rule” but that’s a good starting point.
Step 4: Links
Ok, let’s get nerdy with it. Backlinks. Backlinks are hyperlinks placed within your content that link to other similar content out there on the web. Google likes these. You’ll see why in a minute.
There are two types: inbound and outbound. Inbound links go to other pages on your site. Outbound links go to other sites on the web with similar content.
Less is more when it comes to backlinks. Quality over quantity. Every website has something called Domain Authority.
Moz.com has a plugin for Google Chrome called the MozBar. It will give you the domain authority of every site that shows up for a particular Google Search. Use this to select sites with high authority for your outbound links.
You should be shooting for websites in the 70-90% range in Domain Authority. If that’s not possible, please don’t go below 60.
For a 1000-word post, I’ll typically have 2 outbound and 2 inbound links.
Important Note: You should be linking to specific pages within a website. Don’t link to home pages. Find other blog articles that will genuinely help someone that is reading your article, make sure they are from sites with high Domain Authority (DA) and you’ll be fine.
For inbound links, the same rules apply. You don’t want want to link to your home page. Link to other articles within your site that will be helpful, or link to a Contact Us page so your audience can get in touch with you.
Links, just like keywords, should be worked into your article naturally. Don’t just say “click here to find out more”.
Bonus: Readability
Your blog needs to be readable as well as scannable. Some people struggle with arranging their words in a way that’s easy on the eye.
Thankfully, I was blessed with that gift. It’s no big deal, really. (*yawns* *stretches*).
But for you mere mortals out there (just kidding) , you can check out an app called the Hemingway App. It’s free to use.
When you’re done writing, go to the Hemingway App. Delete the sample text that’s in there, and copy and paste your article in there.
This tool is incredibly helpful with writing a blog post, because it will instantly show you all of your grammatical errors. It shows you which sentences are hard to read, which are extremely hard to read, how many adverbs you use, and how often you use the passive voice.
It even grades the readability of your article based on grade level. The goal is to have your article read at a 6th grade level.
Now You Know How to Write A Blog Post for SEO
That’s it. That’s the “down and dirty” version of how to write a blog post for SEO in 4 simple steps. I’ll be providing more articles in this blogging series to help you along your journey.
If all this is overwhelming and just to much for you, or you have questions, reach out anytime. I’m always happy to help.
I also have another article here on the blog that goes way more in-depth on SEO. It covers all your questions about SEO for your blog, and will put you well on your way to rocketing your site to the top of Google!
Now get blogging!
