How To Write Ranking Blog – SEO – The Ultimate Guide

Writing for SEO purposes can be difficult and time consuming. However, it’s time well spent, as SEO helps us rank better in the search engines. You have to be smart about choosing and writing your topics, in order to keep your reader engaged. How To Write Ranking Blog – SEO – The Ultimate Guide

It is not the same as writing an article, as such. You need to pay attention to the small details and implement a set of SEO rules.

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Despite what many people think, it’s not a complicated process. There are some simple steps to follow. To ensure that everything you publish on your website or blog is SEO friendly.

How do you write an SEO-friendly blog post, you might ask? Using a step-by-step SEO checklist, of course!

By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to write search engine friendly blog posts. So, give it a good read!

A well-optimized blog post with great quality content has more chances of ranking higher in search. While a well-optimized blog post with not so great content has limited chances of achieving high rankings.

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What we are trying to say is, if you want to improve your rankings. You need to improve your writing skills. Start with these tips on how to write an SEO-friendly blog post.

Think Before You Write: How To Write Ranking Blog

Before you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, give yourself some time to think about what to write in your blog post and jot down your thoughts. This will save you time later in the process.

I recommend reading a number of articles related to SEO and Digital Marketing on a daily basis. When you find a title or topic that is interesting, copy the URL and title and save it to your notes.

At the beginning of each month, look through your notes and decide which topics to cover. Set a publishing date for each topic in your content calendar.

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When it is time to write the blog post, do a detailed analysis to answer the following questions:

• What specific topics to cover in the blog post?
• How will the new blog post benefit your readers?
• What is the goal of the blog post (to get better rankings for a keyword, to get more subscribers, to promote my SEO Courses, etc.)

It will make it easier to move on to the next step once you have answered these questions.

Create the structure for your blog post

Start your blog post by creating a clear structure. Splitting a blog post into various sections can make writing easier.

Every post should have:

• An introduction (to the topic at hand)
• A body (with the main message)
• A conclusion (a summary of the most important ideas)

Write down what you want to say in all three sections, and you will have a summary of your blog post. This will make the process faster and more efficient.

Instead of writing larger sections, you can write 200 words to cover a specific part of the blog post.

Decide on the title of your blog post

Crafting a good and interesting title is a very important step for SEO purposes and user-friendliness.

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Some bloggers prefer to do this step first and then create the blog structure, others prefer to come up with the title once you have a good concept of what the blog post will cover.

Follow what is more efficient for you.

Whatever you prefer, a good title should have the following characteristics:

• It should have a character limit between 55-60 so that it is shown without breaks in the SERPS.
• It should contain your target keyword (but without keyword-stuffing).
• And it should provide an accurate description of the content that will live within the blog post.
• It should be intriguing enough to make users click when being displayed in the search engine results pages.

Take for example the title of this post “How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts – My Step by Step Process”.

My target keyword was “SEO friendly blog posts” and instead of just creating a title with that keyword alone, I added the ‘How to’ and the ‘My step by step process”, to make it clear to both search engines and users of what to expect in the content.

 Use Headings, Correctly: How To Write Ranking Blog

The headings within your blog post will structure the whole page, so use them, but correctly.

They are important not only for readability but also for SEO purposes. They help Google grasp the main topics of the blog post and can help in your ranking.

Subheadings allow people to find their way through your blog post, by clarifying the structure of your blog post.

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Make sure you use your keywords in some of the subheadings, but not in every single of them, as it will make the text unnatural.

Create the Title Tag of the Blog Post: How To Write Ranking Blog 

The HTML title tag is responsible for the headline shown in Google. It’s very important as it will directly impact your Click Through Rate.

Spend some quality time crafting it. Don’t worry ! You can decide to make some modifications to it later as well, in case some brighter idea pops up in your head.

Here are some key points you should consider when creating your title:

Use the main keyword in your title tag: If you want to rank for a specific keyword you’ve picked in part 1 of this checklist, then the title tag should be the first place you add it to.

Try to place it towards the beginning of the title, but don’t make it look unnatural.

Maximum 70 characters: The title tag should not be too short.

It’s easier to rank for long tail keywords anyway. If you exceed 72 characters though, the end of the title will become invisible to the user, and it will value less for the search engines.

Make it captivating: On average, only about only 20% of people who see your headline will be interested to click to read the article, so make it good!

Use numbers and captivating words like Free, Awesome, Unbelievable and so on. People usually enjoy how-to articles, top lists, and case studies.

Keep Your Paragraphs Short: How To Write Ranking Blog 

Everybody uses paragraphs but not everybody uses them well. Don’t start each new sentence on a new line, and don’t use large paragraphs on a page and hit the publish button.

There is a good possibility that the majority of your readers are on a mobile device, therefore it makes it easy for them to read the content.

We recommend using small paragraphs (2-3 sentences) and take advantage of the various formatting options i.e. bold, italic, underline in order to make the text less boring.

Add links, but only when it makes sense.

Add internal links whenever you write a new blog post, but only when it makes sense. If you have an already published blog post that you can associate with your new blog post, it is appropriate to use.

Internal linking can be very effective and is an easy to follow SEO technique that has numerous benefits:

• It can help search engines discover new pages on your website.
• It gives search engines a big hint on what a page is about.
• And it is a great way to give users an option to click a link and read more about a topic.
• It is one of the techniques you can use to reduce the bounce rate and keep users on your website for an extended amount of time.
• We added links to other blog posts within this blog post. Take a closer look and check them out!

DO NOT be afraid to use keywords in the anchor text. There is no penalty for doing so.

Add Video Content: How To Write Ranking Blog 

Consider adding at least one relevant video to your blog post. Some people like watching videos, and that will help you keep them on your page.

If you can create the video yourself, that’s even better.

You will benefit both ways: if someone finds and reads your article, it might also add a view on your video.

If someone finds and watches the video instead, you can mention the article in the video. Maybe they will give it a read.

Make use of keywords, without keyword stuffing

You will not get in trouble to have your target keywords (and variations) in your blog posts. In fact, we recommend it.

However, we do not recommend keyword stuffing. In other words, do not add keywords in the text for the sake of doing so. Instead, do it only when it is natural to read.

If you are not sure where to add keywords, this should help:

• Add in the title of the post
• Add in the main headings of your post
• Fix it within the content of the post
• Add in the conclusion of the post

Optimize The Length Of Your Blog Post: How To Write Ranking Blog 

Studies have shown that longer posts perform better in search and they tend to receive more likes and mentions in social media.

While this is true, it does not mean that shorter posts will not rank well. What is more important is the quality of the content and not the quantity.

You should understand that when writing a blog post for a particular topic, you are in essence competing with hundreds of other posts that are already published about the same topic.

Your goal is to make your blog posts better so that when promoted correctly, it will attract the attention of users and possibly natural links so that eventually they can outrank the existing posts.

When Google is evaluating the ranking of a page, it does not take into account the number of words, but the number of links pointing to that page.

Promoting an in-depth post that covers both sides of a story, with nice images, references to studies and useful information is much more likely to get links compared to a post that is short and not so interesting.

The best way to find out how long to make your blog posts is to open Google, search for your target keywords and examine the results.

Open all ten entries that appear on the first page and take note of the number of words and types of content they provide.

Aim to publish a piece that is better in all aspects (word length, formatting, quality of information). Hit the publish button and then use all available white hat methods to drive traffic to your new blog post.

Maximize/Repurpose Your Content: How To Write Ranking Blog 

You can turn your blog post into an infographic, video, slide presentation or e-book / PDF. This way you can maximize the exposure of your content.

Remember to link back to your blog post, and vice-versa. This way you can cover as many channels as you want by spending the least amount of time.

Optimize your meta description

The description tag is a summary of the blog post that is less than 200 characters. It is important to optimize your meta description length, because Google may choose to show your description in the results.

The description should be informative and interesting in order to encourage users to click your link and visit your blog.

Create the Meta Description: How To Write Ranking Blog 

Meta descriptions are the texts below the headlines that show in search engines. They should describe what the post is about, and should grab the reader’s attention.

a) Between 150 and 160 characters:

Meta descriptions that are too short might be ignored completely and replaced by Google with other sections from your website. Too long meta descriptions won’t show completely in the search results, as they will be cut out.

b) Insert keyword:

Although they don’t directly impact search rankings, you can also include keywords in it. Your readers see that before they click your link, so use it to convince them to click your link instead of stuffing it with keywords.

c) Captivating:

Try to implement a sense of urgency in the reader to click the link. Words like Find out, Click to find more can help.

Let other people read your post before it goes live

Before you publish your blog post, it is important to let someone else read it first. Ask them whether they understand the main concept of the blog post, and invite them to correct any typos and grammatical errors.

Optimize your images and other media elements

Images, graphs, infographics, videos, statistics, and other media elements, make a blog post more interesting to read and enhance the quality of the content.

Although Google has made it clear that they cannot yet understand the context of an image or video (while crawling a page), yet many webmasters fail to follow the rules of making their images SEO optimized.

For example, if you are publishing an image that shows the SEO statistics for 2020 don’t name the image as img001.jpg but rename it to something more meaningful i.e. seo-statistics-2020.jpg.

For the ALT TEXT, don’t leave it blank but write a few words that describe the image i.e. SEO Statistics 2020.

Add a Featured Image: How To Write Ranking Blog 

Featured images have a very big impact on your audience and your click through rate. They can make the difference between 4% CTR and 40% CTR. Also, they will impact social sharing and engagement.

• Custom vs. stock: Creating an in-house featured image is far better, since you can craft it specifically for your target audience.
• Add descriptive alt tag with keyword: Create an alt tag that describes what the image is about. Search engines can’t view images as we do, but it can read the keywords in the alt tags to know what the image is about.
• Landscape preferred: Since responsive reacts to screen width, landscape images fit screens better than portrait images do. We recommend that the featured image is rather wider than higher.

Keep Your Content Up-To-Date

It would be great if someone told you that you don’t have to update your blog regularly, that would make things a lot easier for all of us but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

You need to have fresh content on your blog for a number of reasons.

• It will increase the number of pages you have in the Google index. This makes your website and domain stronger.
• It’s another incentive for users to come back to your blog.
• And It’s a great ‘excuse’ to get in touch with your subscribers.
• It’s one of the ways to stay in synch or bypass your competitors.
• It will help you improve your writing skills
• leads to more page views.

Read Comments and Reply to Them

Find out your readers’ opinions. Try to build relationships, and fill in the gaps in your article by answering to the questions in your comments section.

This is a very good way to keep your content fresh! Comment text is considered content as well. Bloggers that engage in commenting can get thousands of extra words to their blog posts.

Upgrade Your Article

One of the secrets to blogging SEO success is to be consistent. Google likes it when content is frequently updated, aka freshness.

Instead of writing about the same things over and over again, try to improve some of your old content. You can use what you have learned from your readers to improve your content.

Conclusion: How To Write Ranking Blog 

The lesson from this blog post is the following:

Before starting a new post, spend some time doing your research and have clear in your mind what to write about and what you want to achieve.

Follow the guidelines explained above to write SEO friendly blog posts and if you have existing blog posts that are not optimized, allocate some time to go back and make the necessary changes.

Come up with a publishing schedule that you can follow and stick to it for a long time

I know… there’s a lot to it!

I’ve tried to cover everything, from OnPage SEO and writing tips, to OffPage SEO and promotion. Writing SEO friendly usually resumes to giving useful information.

Don’t just write for the numbers, write to cover a topic very well. Go in-depth. Bring something new to the table.

Keep using this step-by-step checklist until you feel that you’ve mastered the steps and don’t need it anymore. After some time, you’ll also figure out what works better for you. Read More HERE