Blogging is regarded as one of the most reliable methods of inbound marketing in the hands of online marketers. Brands from across various industries and product categories try to engage their target audience through blogs that offer some value to the readers.
This, however, is an organic marketing tool, and it requires a fair bit of time and patience for the results to show. For writing a blog that is effective and that can drive organic traffic to your website; many aspects need to be taken care of. And, one of the most important aspects, in this regard, is Search engine optimization.
SEO has been an essential part of digital marketing from the very beginning, and its place in the field remains just as important today. When it comes to blogging, the role that SEO plays is essential, to say the least; without the right SEO activities, getting a high search engine rank for your blog is nearly impossible. Be it blogging or any other form of content marketing activity, SEO has a part to play in many marketing initiatives.
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In this blog, we’ll discuss some ideas that can help you leverage SEO to create high-ranking blogs:
- Choose keywords carefully
If you want to create a comprehensive SEO strategy, the first and foremost thing to consider is ‘Keywords’. By placing the right keywords in your blogs, you’ll make it easier for Google and other search engines to understand the content, and improve its chances of getting displayed for relevant searches.
Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and there are tools like Adwords Keyword planner available to help you identify the right keywords. Keyword research is a vast subject by itself and it generally takes a competent SEO professional to find the right keywords however, some of the core concepts you must pay attention to are user intent, long-tail keywords, and keyword difficulty.
- Optimize for Featured Snippets
When you search for something on Google, you’ll often see that the topmost result has appeared in a box-form with either a paragraph or a list from the respective blog/webpage. This information appearing at the topmost organic result is called ‘featured snippet’.
If the content in your blog is well structured and it has been optimized for SEO, it greatly improves the chances of the blog getting reflected as a featured snippet. Users find featured snippets rather useful, and it is a great way of increasing organic traffic on your website.
However, creating blogs that are good enough to be reflected as a featured snippet is quite difficult, and it takes a lot of careful research.
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- Ensure High-quality links
One of the most effective SEO techniques is link building, and if you want your blogs to rank well on Google, you need to reinforce it with a robust link building strategy.
The primary requirement for link-building is that you write content that others consider worthy of being linked. Once you have the content in place you can use many backlinking methods at your disposal like guest blogging, broken link building, outreach, and paid links, etc.
There are many benefits to having a well-rounded link building strategy. To begin with, it is an important metric if you want your blog to rank high on Google. Over the long run, link-building also helps in bringing credibility to your website, and it becomes a reliable source of traffic.
- Have a responsive blog page
There are many devices through which content is accessed these days, with smartphones being the most frequently used device. You should, therefore, create a website that is responsive to different devices like Mobiles, tablets, and desktops.
Mobile-fist indexing is another reason to opt for a responsive website. If the mobile version of your website is optimized, it is more likely to perform better on the search engine. The user interface and the user experience of your mobile site are also important as it allows the users to navigate with ease and find all that they are looking for.
- Titles and meta description
What your link looks like on the search engine can have a big influence on whether people choose to click on it or not. Writing titles and meta-description carefully, therefore, become very important.
The meta-description you write for your blog must be a comprehensible summary of its contents and should include the keywords you are targeting. You should ensure that the description has an optimal character count and that keywords have not been stuffed.
When it comes to the title of the blog, you should write one that grabs eyeballs and includes the necessary keywords.
- Leverage local search
If you want a high rank on Google in a particular area, and/or you wish to be more visible on a map, you must invest in local SEO. While creating content for local search, you should write blogs that are relevant to that region/area you should also create a Google My Business Account to make you more prominent on a map. If you are a small business based in a particular area, local SEO is something that you’ll find especially useful.
- Write meaningful content
The content that you finally publish on your blog should be something that readers find useful and engaging. There is a common tendency to compromise on content quality for the sake of certain technical SEO aspects. This, however, can be counterproductive as search engines these days are smart enough to identify malpractices like Keyword stuffing and duplication of content, etc.
Conclusion
Blogging has a certain nondescript nature, and its value as a branding and marketing tool is often ignored. For some reason, people do not expect blogging to yield good results.
The truth, however, is that if you invest enough in writing high-quality blogs that your audience finds valuable and keep publishing regularly, you can generate a lot of business through this medium. All you need is a capable content marketing agency, which has a good understanding of your industry and has content writers who are competent enough to produce engaging and high-quality content.
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