06
Having a blog is a great way to educate your audience, but is your audience finding your posts? There are certain ways to optimize your blog posts so that when people are typing a search query related to the post, your blog post will pop up. Discover what strategies can help optimize your blog posts for the web.
Write searchable titles
It’s natural to want a witty title for your blog posts, but try and stick with a title that reflects what people are most likely to search for to come across your post. Always have in mind what the major search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, want to see within your content; especially keywords that could help rank your blogs higher than others. Create titles that grab a reader’s attention and can answer a potential customer’s question.
Utilize the heading tags
Heading tags are used to create headings in your blog posts. Heading 1, <h1>, is your most important heading tag and should be the title of your blog post. Heading tags are numerical and go in order of importance. So for your heading 2s, <h2>, make them the subheadings in your blog post. These large bolded points are the heading 2 tags in this blog post. Heading tags are crucial because they help Google and other search engines scan your content and get the gist of your blog posts. You can create heading 2s by highlighting the points and pressing down on Ctrl+Alt+2.
Put alt tags on your images
Alt tags are the captions that people who are blind or visually impaired read to understand your images. By incorporating alt tags with images used, you’ll make your website and content more accessible, which search engines love.
Include links
Adding internal and external links to your blog posts is another way to optimize your posts for the web. Internal links are other URLs on your website and external links are URLs from websites outside of your own. Having high-quality links to your blog posts shows credibility to search engines and that you’re giving your readers something of value. Links in your blog posts also decrease bounce rates and keep visitors on your website longer.
Request indexing on Google Search Console
When you publish a blog post, you should request indexing afterward. When you request indexing you are alerting Google to crawl the new web page you have created. You request indexing through Google Search Console.
Make Sure Your Content Attracts the Right Audience
One factor that can make or break your content and its searchability is if it is clear, accurate, and interesting to the reader. Will a potential customer gain enough insight to trust your brand? This is where you must be performing audience research for your product or service so you can adopt the right tone of voice. Will your content be more educational, professional, or perhaps a little more casual? The tone of voice in content can showcase your brand’s style, your company culture, or even your personality. Your voice could very well determine the type of readers your content attracts. Make sure to choose carefully and stay true to your “inner writer.”
Stay on Top of AI
The rise of AI in SERP is making a big impact on SEO. Now, search engines like Google have AI-generated responses that are located at the top of the page. For blogs to stay optimized and get to the top of search results, content needs to be well-structured, accurate, conversational, and follow the EEAT method (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
Want to learn more about blogging and search engine optimization? Be sure to check out our blog posts on those two topics.
