Writing blog posts for SEO – 8 basic tips

You decide to write a blog to help your website climb up the search engine results pages (SERPs). It takes time and effort for you to research your subjects and then actually write the blogs. But in the end, you see very little return for your efforts.

What can you do to write blogs that maximise SEO more? Plenty. There’s an art to writing blogs that are particularly SEO-friendly. By knowing some of the ‘SEO language’ and bearing a few things in mind in your approach to blog writing, you can maximise your blogs for SEO success and see improvement in your rankings.

How to write blogs for SEO

1. Think before you write

Do not set about writing an article just because you know something about a subject. It’s easy to assume, especially if you are knowledgeable about this or that, your audience want to know what you have to tell them.

Instead, your blog should be directly answering a question your audience want to know the answer to. The more you frame your blog around the answers people are searching for, the more useful, and therefore more searched for, it will be – and the more credibility and trust your business will earn as an expert in your field. Google will reward you for it.

Research the keywords and phrases around your subject to write your blog post in a way that directly answers common questions. You can use a keyword research tool, or even Google itself, by using search, experimenting with different terms and paying attention to the ‘people also ask’ and ‘people also search for’ sections.

2. Use headings

Headings not only make it easier for your reader to skim an article, but they are picked up by the search engines too in response to what searchers are looking for, as well as the title.

Take this post – the title is, Writing blog posts for SEO. That is one phrase commonly typed into Google, but then the searcher will naturally want to know how to do that – hence our heading, How to write blogs for SEO, which is also a searched-for term.

Try to signal the value that comes in your blog. Searchers looking for answers commonly look for headings starting with: How to, Here is, Tips for, By doing this, to signal that the post has the practical knowledge and help they need.

3. Optimise, not over do, keywords

Keywords and phrases are vital in your blog post for SEO. See what I did in that last sentence? I mentioned – just in case you didn’t already know – that this is a blog post about SEO.

Keep referring to your main keyword phrase as you write. But don’t over do it. The search engine has to clearly comprehend your blog, and if it’s keyword-stuffed and nonsensical you’ll just do worse rather than better.

Take the last few lines we just wrote. If we made them like this:

But don’t overdo it when it comes to writing blogs for better SEO. The search engine has to clearly comprehend your blog that’s aiming for improved SEO, and if it’s keyword-stuffed for SEO purposes and nonsensical you’ll just do worse with your blog that’s supposed to improve SEO rather than better.

Not only is it unpleasant to read, it’s repetitive, dull and clearly overstuffed with the keywords and phrases. Google will see this type of writing as a mark of low quality and pass you by.

4. Feature keywords throughout your blog post

Make sure your keywords and phrases are not just in your main text, but feature to some extent in your titles, headings and sub headings, URL, meta description and image alt text.

5. Be prepared to evolve your keywords

Keep an eye on the market, tech and sector developments, so that you can adjust your keywords accordingly. For example, ‘blog writing’ used to be a highly searched-for term, but now blog writing is intrinsically bound up with SEO, so that the two subjects usually feature together.

As terms become more familiar and common usage, they evolve, incorporating new terms and phrases. Remember that language is always on the move. Tech never stays still and neither do the words we use within that tech. Be prepared to change with the times and make your keywords and phrases relevant to your audience.

6. Link to other sites and articles

Concrete stats and well-researched articles that link to reputable websites make your blog stand out as trustworthy - information to be relied upon. Links to respected sites have knock-on reputational value for you and let your reader know they can have confidence in what you are telling them; and let Google know that you’ve done your research – you’ll be rewarded in the rankings for it.

However, beware ‘link schemes’ where organisations link to each other purposely in order to manipulate page rank. This illicit practice violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, for which you will be penalised.

7. Make your blog posts easily scannable

No reader wants to spend two hours of their day reading a blog post unless it is truly exceptional and exactly what they’re searching for. With this in mind, aim for your blog posts to be an easily scannable, quick read. Blog Hub Spot recommends posts should be at least 300 words of short, easily readable paragraphs.

Although long-form content is more likely to rank for your keywords, your writing skills will need to be excellent to pull off a 1000 to 2000-word article. As a compromise, aim for something beyond the 300-word minimum to have a better chance of ranking.

8. Utilise internal links

Link to other relevant content on your website, within your blog posts. Don’t use spammy phrases to do it, like ‘click here’. Do it naturally and don’t overdo it. Relevant links will help crawlers determine a better map of your site and take browsers to other relevant, related information that might help them.

For instance, if you’re reading this, you might also be interested in SEO tips for website writing.

Just remember, writers are learning more about SEO as they go, so it’s worth being clued-up with these basic tips so that your blog writing is in with the best chance of being seen by the browsers you want to discover you.  

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