How To Optimise Blog Posts for SEO (Get Ranked Faster!)

SEO?

One of the most difficult things, when you start your own blog, is to get your posts ranked. How will other people read your blog if they can’t find it?

The better way is to get ranked on search engines. That means that next time someone will search for something you’ve written about, they’ll find your post on search results.

This is not a fast way, but it’s free, and I do believe it’s the best for long-time success.

Before Writing

1. Find the Topic

First, you need to find the topic you want to write about. If you don’t have any ideas, here are some ways to find some ideas to blog about:

Check out Old Articles

Not only the articles but also the comments, as well. Maybe your readers asked you about something that you can make into a full article. In this case, after you write the post, leave them a link there.

Quora

Quora is a Q&A forum you can use to get answers or answer other people’s questions. It’s a great place to read some great stories and also to promote your blog a little bit.

Don’t spam, because you’ll get banned, but if you leave a link to your site along with a great answer to someone’s question once in a while, it doesn’t hurt. Just make sure the question is relevant to the link you’ll leave.

Ask on Social Media

Ask your followers on social media for ideas. They’ll probably love to help you.

If you use their idea, ask them if they’re ok to thank them on your post. If they’re following you for a while, they’ll probably love it.

Find The Title First

Usually, we find the topic first, and then we find the title of the post. But sometimes, you can work the other way around. Check out some title generators to get some new ideas.

Here are some you can use:

Google Trends

Check out Google Trends to see what people search for. You can also use it to check out potential niche ideas.

Search Engines

Usually, we use search engines for finding posts that are already published. But what if we can use them to find posts that are not even written yet?

- Google Instant
- Related Searches
- People Also Ask

2. Get Your Perfect Keyword

Finding a good keyword for your post is essential if you want it to rank fast.

Keyword tools

The fastest way to find a good keyboard is through a keyword tool. The one I use is Jaaxy, but if you’re looking for a free one, UberSuggest is good enough.

Google’s Related searches/Autocomplete

To get some ideas for keywords, you can search for your niche or a topic you’ve written about and check out the related searches box at the bottom of the page.

Another great way is to utilise Google Instant, the autocomplete feature when you’re writing on the search bar. Google tries to guess what you want to write based on what most people search for.

Of course, after finding potential keywords, run them through a keyword tool to see how good they really are.

3. Check out the Competition

Before you decide that’s a good idea to use this keyword, check out the competition. The MOZ bar can help you with that.

Things to take into consideration:

Date: The newer the post is, the harder it is to outrank it.
Domain Score: The higher the domain score, the most difficult to outrank it.
Post length: The more thorough is a blog post, the most difficult to outrank it.

4. What’s the Goal of your Post?

Who visits your site and what do they want? What is the problem whose solution people search for?

If you find the answer to this question, then you’ll know how to help your visitors effectively and to give them the right answer, the right solution to their problem.

5. Plan the Post

The last step before writing is to outline your post. It’ll make your writing easier and faster.

Write Article

Now, let’s move on to the writing part:

1. Write a Lot

Search engines prefer long, thorough posts. So try to write 1500+ words per post to outrank more easily posts from older sites.

2. Write about Personal Experience

Talk to your readers about your personal experiences. Your readers can’t look into your eyes to see if you’re telling the truth, so try to get closer to them by talking to them about your life.

3. Call To Action

Tell people what you want them to do after reading the post.

Write a comment?
Subscribe to newsletter?
Check out something?

Maybe it’s obvious for you, but not so obvious for them.

4. Check Grammar

Check out your post for grammar or spelling mistakes. Grammarly is a good one, and it has a free version you can use.

5. Summarise Above the Fold

Make sure you have a good introduction and to tell them what to expect in your article.

After Writing

Phew… now the writing is done. Let’s move on to the next part:

1. Find an Interesting Title

The title is the first thing people see from your article. Make sure it won’t be the only one. Find an interesting title, so people want to see what else you have to say and they won’t skip to the next article.

You can check out title generators to find a catchy blog post title.

What else you can do to get attention for your post is to Capitalize the First Letters of Each Word. It makes your title stand out more. Also, don’t forget to include the keyword in your title. Preferably as close to the beginning as possible.

2. Write a Good Meta Description

You have other 155 characters to persuade someone to click on YOUR post. Make sure you use them well.

And don’t forget to include the keyword in it, as well.

3. Keyword in Url

The URL is the most difficult thing to change once search engines know about your post. Changing it afterwards causes 404 errors that you have to fix.

So please, check out to see what it is before you publish.

4. Internal Links

Link to any other posts that are related to this one. Use as an anchor text – the text you highlight as a link – a phrase that represents the other article well.

5. Put it in the Appropriate Category

If you use categories – and I’d advise you to use them – don’t forget to put the post under the appropriate category.

Images & Videos

And now the more visual elements:

Images

Use high-quality images, but make sure you optimise your images for web use. Images are the main reason for your site slowing down. When I started optimising my images, my site got way faster than before.

Use the alt-text to include a description of the image. If possible, include the keyword to one of the images’ alt-text.

Alt-text is the text that appears if the image doesn’t load for some reason, and it helps visually impaired visitors to find out what the images are about. But, search engines use this, too to learn more about the images.

If you need to find more images or edit them, check out Canva. It’s a free online tool you can use for basic editing.

Videos

If possible, embed a video on your post. They offer a variety of content, and they give your readers some more info in a different format. Some things are difficult to explain in writing but easy to explain in a video.

You can even make your own videos. Even if you don’t want to have your face in them, you can make screencast videos with tools like OBS Studio or animated videos with tools like Animaker or Biteable. You can even create a voice over so you won’t have to record your own voice.

Also, make sure the video is responsive, so it looks good on mobile.

After Publishing

Now, it’s time to publish your post. Don’t think that you’re done yet, though. Now, it’s time to promote your post.

1. Link other Articles to it

If you have any other articles you can connect to it, do it. Preferably, by using the keyword as an anchor text.

2. Share it on Social Media

After publishing your post, notify your followers that there’s new content on your blog. Ask them for comments and feedback, ask them for their thoughts on it.

If you do email marketing, send an email to your subscribers, as well.

2. Google Search Console

Go to Google Search Console and do an URL Inspection. Don’t forget to request indexing, as well. This way, Google will know of your post faster.

3. Bing Webmaster Tools

Maybe Google is the big player, but Bing and Yahoo still get searches. So if you’re not ranked in them, you lose traffic. Now, why would you want that?

Plus, most people try hard for Google, but not so hard for the rest of the search engines, so it’ll be easier to get ranked.

Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your URL there, as well.

Final Thoughts

Ok, that’s my full checklist I use every time I write a new post, and I have to say, it works pretty well.

Let me know what you think about my checklist and, if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer! Any suggestions are always welcome, so tell me about topics you’d like me to write.

And if you liked this, check out more tips about blogging.

See you next time!