5 SEO Tips for Attracting Readers to Your Blog
Climbing the search engine ladder ranks means more than just publishing your blog posts. First, you will need to become acquainted with search engine optimization to appear among the top search page results. This requires making your site accessible and easily read by search engine bots, so your pages are listed for relevant searches. In addition, you should regularly update your content with useful, unique information that readers can't locate somewhere else. Whether you are adding a blog section to your website or creating a blog, our experts on SEO in Orlando offer some tips for attracting readers to your blog.
SEO and why it matters
Search engines locate, audit, and recommend blog posts to people searching for them. Your blog will appear on the search engine results page (SERP) if your content is fitting, educational, and in-depth. Optimizing your blogs for SEO allows you to generate leads, increase traffic to your site, boost visibility, and improve site authority.
Publish the right topics
Unfortunately, many great writers with well-established blogs have covered topics related to your industry, making it more challenging to ensure that your blogs stand out on search engines. The first step to success is to identify your target audience. Focus your blog on a few key topics when you are starting. Develop posts that appeal to your target audience’s questions, challenges, emotions, and needs. Providing users with a tailored experience improves how search engines recognize your site as an authority and offer value to your readers.
Once you have identified your target audience, you need to target niche keywords that match your expertise to determine the best topics to offer your readers. Keywords are the short phrases entered into a search engine by users. You will boost your chance of appearing in the search results for a topic by inserting these keywords into your content. To get more eyes on your post, you want to choose the most popular terms, but that is not always simple because popular terms are highly competitive and usually present a range of results. More is always better when selecting keywords because longer keywords tend to be less competitive and more precise.
To locate the best keywords, list any broad topics you want to write about. Then take some time to break them down into more specialized topics. For example, for a paving blogger, the broad topic would be asphalt, concrete, tar and chip seal, etc. The more specialized topics might be asphalt parking lots, pavement repairs, sealcoating maintenance, etc. There are many free and helpful tools for finding article topics and keywords and discovering their search volume.
Bloggers often make the mistake of writing content that does not address the intent of the keyword in Google's eyes. As a result, even when you locate a keyword that you feel aligns perfectly with your blog, the blog will likely not rank if the content fails to address what Google thinks the searcher is looking for. For example, if you write about the keyword "resume templates" through a blog post but the SERP focuses on products, your post probably won't make it to the first page.
The best way to overcome your competition is to Google it. First, you need to find ways for your content to outperform the current ranking options. Start by searching your chosen keywords and looking at the content provided by your competitors to have a better idea of what users want when searching the term. Next, take notice of the average blog post lengths and stay within them. Next, use your competition's posts as a source of inspiration to create the most in-depth content possible. Then add valuable elements that set you apart from everyone else. Whether you have better photos, a step-by-step video, or a life hack, features that make you unique and valuable will help highlight your authority and level up your content.
Use SEO friendly formats for blogs
You have to provide content that offers value to outrank your competitors. Search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Google prioritize research-based, comprehensive content with unique data. Consider using case studies, expert round-up posts, infographics, how-to guides, tutorials, and listicles to communicate valuable information when brainstorming possible blog ideas.
It is also valuable to choose keywords that users look for year-round. These topics are known as ‘evergreen' topics and will bring steady traffic to your site without the need for frequent updates. For example, an evergreen topic would be ‘best food for dogs," and a topic that is not evergreen would be 'best dog food 2022’.
Optimize your posts
Once you find keywords and know your competition, dive into the SEO of your individual posts. SEO can help expand your viewership and open opportunities for monetization by driving traffic to your site. Include the main keyword of your post in the title, first paragraph, the beginning of your SEO title, the SEO description, the page URL, and a couple of times within the post. It is essential to keep in mind that you are writing for users, not search engines, so the rules of effective writing still matter.
Keep content structured
Your content needs to be well structured for search engines to distinguish between the different text types and their importance within the page. So, simple formatting is essential to give your readers the best experience possible. For example, h-headings are HTML pieces ranging from H1 to H6 in descending order, meaning H1 is the main title, H2 is the heading, etc. Picture it like reading the newspaper where you have the primary headline, subheadings, and paragraph text.
Incorporate media features
Bloggers should do anything possible to keep readers engaged for as long as possible because Google's algorithm sets rankings based on user behavior. For example, adding a podcast episode or video to your post may keep readers on your page longer and lower your bounce rates. In addition, studies show that videos ranking in SERP have higher click-through rates than other content types, so it is vital to have a robust video marketing strategy in place for your blog.