Do you want to know how to write blog posts with perfect SEO? Then you came to the right place. SEO is crucial for any website owner who wants to have a successful business.
When you write a blog post, you want it to be beautiful, full of information, and helpful. But first, you want people to find your post.
How do people find blog posts? They search.
So, if you want your post to be searchable and be on the first page of the Google search result, then you need a perfect SEO. If your post has perfect SEO, then search engines will rank your post higher.
Table of Contents
What Is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process when you optimize your website and content for Google. This means that it’s easy for Google to crawl and index your website. It understands what your website is about and tries to rank it higher in the SERP.
If you want your website or a blog to be popular and accumulate organic traffic, you must optimize it for SEO. But SEO is a big subject, so I will try to explain the basics.
There are three main parts of SEO. You must understand each of them and optimize websites accordingly.
Technical SEO
The first part is the technical SEO. This includes several aspects and is very important. If your website has a bad technical SEO, it has a very small chance of success. And Google doesn’t like bad SEO optimization.
To optimize a website for technical SEO, you should have a working sitemap, robots must crawl your website, pages must be indexable, and your domain must use HTTPS protocol. You have to install an SSL certificate for HTTPS.
Also, your website must be mobile-friendly and fast. Google really pays attention to it and you should optimize your website for core web vitals.
If you use WordPress, then you should install an SEO plugin and it will help with technical SEO optimization.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is how well-optimized your pages are for SEO. It’s the easiest part to do. It doesn’t require too much work or knowledge.
First, try to have a good title and description meta tags, URL slugs, canonical URLs, etc. So it will be easier for Google to display your pages in the SERP.
Next, structure your pages. Use different H tags such as H1, H2, etc. Divide your content by subheadings. Also, add alt texts to all of your images. And use compressed and small-sized images. You can use WebP format images to reduce page load speed.
And lastly, create internal and external links. Internal linking is when you insert one of your page’s links on another page. And external linking is when you include other websites’ links on your page or post. This is another way to increase your website’s authority.
SEO tools that will help you to optimize websites for on-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
An extremely important thing for perfect SEO is off-page SEO. Perhaps it has the most impact on your ranking and domain authority. Off-page SEO simply means when other blog post includes a link to one of your pages. It’s called backlinks.
If you have good content someone will likely include your page in their post. But the best way to increase your website’s off-page SEO is to write guest posts. You can write a blog post for other websites and in the exchange include a link to one of your posts.
Some people buy backlinks but Google doesn’t like it and may block your website. So, never buy a link. Backlink building must be organic. Also, try to get backlinks from high authority domains and it should be in your niche.
It’s better to have one backlink from high domain authority than ten backlinks from low-level domains. The same goes for niche blogs. Backlinks should be from blogs that are in your niche. If you have a blog about cars, a backlink from an animal blog won have a big impact.
How To Optimize Pages For SEO
Now you have a basic understanding of SEO. It’s time to start this tutorial and learn how to optimize your posts and pages for SEO.
But before you read this, you should know how to write a good, well-structured blog post. You can learn it from this post.
So, if you want your post to be perfect SEO-friendly, then you should follow the steps I’ll show you. It is not hard, but you need to learn and get used to it. After this, you will have no problem, and all your posts will be SEO-friendly and will rank higher.
Let’s get to work and make posts with perfect SEO.
1. Perfect SEO Requires Speed
Before you start writing posts or tweaking SEO settings, you must have a fast website. Speed is crucial for SEO. A slow website means low traffic, high bounce rate, and it is bad for SEO and ranking in general.
So, you must have a fast website and decrease the bounce rate. Because if a website does not load quickly, the visitor will leave before entering the site.
And bounce rate increases. That is not what we want. We want a low bounce rate percentage.
You can check your site speed on different tools and see what slows it down. And then solve the problems. If you do not know how to make your website faster, read this article. It will make your website much faster.
2. Choose Good Keywords
Now let’s start the journey for perfect SEO and how to reach the goal. The first thing to consider is a keyword. Keywords are the most important in SEO. That is what ranks your posts on search engines.
The keyword is a word or a phrase that tells Google or other search engines what your post is about.
For example, if you write a post with the title Best Electric Guitars Under $500, then the main keyword could be electric guitars.
So you want to rank for that keyword. You must include it in different sections of your post. Use the keyword in subheadings, images alt texts, in the content, etc. Posts will naturally rank for other keywords, but you have to choose yours.
You can choose the keyword before starting writing your post, or choose it after and edit the post accordingly. I like to choose keywords before writing. In this way I know where to put them in my content.
But sometimes I don’t know what keyword should I use and choose after writing the post.
Also, you can use other keywords that are related. These types of keywords are LSI keywords. For this example, LSI keywords could be best instruments, the best-stringed instruments, etc.
Related keywords can add a little weight to perfect SEO.
And it is a good idea to use keywords throughout the content. The keyword should be 1 to 3% of the whole text. If your post has 1000 words, you should use the keyword at least 10 times.
For perfect SEO, use keywords in this sections:
- Title
- First Paragraph
- Sub Headings (at least once)
- Image Alt Text
- Conclusion
And you should know that there are thousands of posts with the same or similar keyword. All these posts fight to rank for the same keyword. So, to rank higher, it might be hard, especially for new blogs. Even with a perfect SEO.
The solution is that you can find less competitive keywords. In this case, you will need some keyword tools to help you.
You can try Ubersuggest, which is free, or more advanced KWFinder.
These tools will show how competitive the specific keyword is, what is the search volume, keyword variations, etc.
Nowadays keywords are saturated and it is harder to rank than it was before. Because of that, you should find less competitive keywords with moderate search volume and try to rank for that keyword.
Now let’s discuss where and how to put your keyword. You can put it in many places but you have to avoid keyword saturation. It must be natural. When you use the keyword too much time, it’s called keyword stuffing and Google really doesn’t like it.
3. Use Keyword In The Title
The first section where you want to include the keyword is the title. It is crucial for perfect SEO. So, always include the keyword in the title.
The title must be informative and catchy. But never a clickbait. And headline length is also very important.
Google doesn’t like short titles. So, try to write long titles. Between 40 and 50 characters is a good length. Apart from that, it is a good practice to include numbers in your title.
It is not critical for SEO but good for the human eye. People will likely click posts with a number in their title. Also, a great idea is to use odd numbers.
So, our title can be 10 Best Electric Guitars Under $500. It has a keyword and a number. But it is not long enough.
10 Best Electric Guitars is a generic top 10 list. Also, the study shows that post titles with odd numbers work better than even numbers.
And now our title should be something like this: 7 Best Electric Guitars You Can Buy With $500.
It has an odd number, the keyword, and is long enough.
4. Make Your URL Short
The URL of your post is very important for perfect SEO. By default, your post title is the URL. So, if you have a keyword in the title, then you have it in the URL.
Yes, but there is one problem.
Google loves short URLs. So, your title won’t be good as an URL. You have to make your URL shorter for perfect SEO.
You have to choose a custom slug. A slug is the part of the URL after your domain. For example, in yoursite.com/best-electric-guitars, best-electric-guitars is a slug.
Our post’s title is 7 Best Electric Guitars You Can Buy With $500. That means the URL of that post is yoursite.com/7-best-electric-guitars-you-can-buy-with-500.
That is a long slug, and the search engine won’t like it. You should modify your URLs.
So your URL can be yoursite.com/best-guitars or something similar. Much better and clean, right? Yes. And Google loves short slugs.
Also, the custom slug is better for a different reason.
For example, let’s say you have a post Complete SEO Guide For 2021. Next year you will update that post and title.
The title will be Complete SEO Guide For 2022, but the URL will be complete-SEO-guide-for-2021.
And that’s weird. Confusing.
But if you use a custom URL like seo-guide or complete-seo-guide, you can use any headline you like.
URL will always be the same. This means that the URL will work always. No matter what the title is. And remember that you should never change the slug. It’s bad for SEO.
Remember, the post URL must include the keyword and must be short.
5. Include Small Introduction
Now that we have a good title, it is time for an introduction (the first paragraph). You may say why I include the introduction.
The reason is that it’s the beginning of the blog post, and for SEO, it’s recommended to use keywords in the introduction. At least, in the first 10-15% of your content.
Introductions can be 150-200 words. And you should insert your keyword there. So you will have keywords in the URL, title, and beginning of the post. And that is very good for perfect SEO.
Make your introduction small, talk about what your post is about, how it will help the reader, etc.
6. Meta Description
When you search for something on Google, you see results and there are titles, URLs, and little text. That is a meta description. That is taken from your post’s first paragraph. But sometimes Google may choose a different section for the description.
If you have a keyword in your first paragraph this means that you have it in the meta description.
But if you have an SEO plugin installed, then you can change and make your title and meta custom. You can have different titles and descriptions on SERP and the actual posts.
So, what we have learned so far is that keywords must be in the title, URL, intro, and meta description.
You should have long titles and short URLs. Also, it is a good practice to have numbers in your title.
7. Use Keywords In Headings
Another place where you must include keywords is headings. And a heading is important not for just SEO but for blog post structure too.
A good blog post must have an introduction, main content, and conclusion. Also, the main content should be divided by subheadings. It makes posts more professional and easy to read for humans and Google.
You should use a couple of H2 and H3 headings.
And these subheadings should include the main keyword. This way, your post will have more keywords you want to rank for, and the search engine crawler will see that.
But don’t fill your post with many subheadings. Use as many as is required by the content.
And not all headings should have the keyword. Do not oversaturate your content with keywords. It is bad for perfect SEO. Two or three headings with the keyword are enough.
8. Keywords In Alt Text
For perfect SEO, your post must have images. You may ask what do images have to do with SEO. Search engines love posts with images and videos. Visuals are important.
But where do you put the keyword in images? The answer is in the alt text attribute. When you upload an image in WordPress, it has an alt text input.
Alt-text is for search engines. This way it knows what this image represents.
So, you definitely need to add alt text to your images with the keyword. You can include it in a couple of images. All images don’t require the keyword in the alt text.
So, if the image has an alt text attribute, Google will define what that photo is about by the alt text. Not only do you want to have optimized images on your post, but also, you want to have alt text.
So, our keyword is the best guitars. Some alt text variations could be Ibanez best guitars, 7-string best guitars, Fender best guitars, etc.
Images are very, very important. Fill your posts with images. Use compressed images and for a better page load time, use WebP format.
Visualization makes a blog post more beautiful, more engaging, and easier to understand the subject you are talking about. And also, it’s very good for perfect SEO.
9. Link Building
One of the most important aspects of perfect SEO is links. A blog post with quality links will rank faster and higher.
There are three types of links:
- Internal Links
- External Links
- Backlinks
Internal links are the links that take the visitor to other pages or posts of your website.
For example, if your post is about SEO, you can insert an SEO plugin review link in your text. Visitors will click it and read your other posts. This is great for pageviews and SEO. Also, reduces the bounce rate.
External links are the type of links when it takes the visitor to another website or blog. It really helps your ranking, because it is important for Google if your website has some external links.
But never link to bad or shady websites. That can hurt your ranking and perfect SEO. Instead, link to popular, well-established, and relevant websites to your content.
So, your post should include a couple of internal and external links.
But the most important types of links for perfect SEO are backlinks. When other websites link to your site, that is a backlink. And that is a major factor in ranking, domain authority, and SEO in general.
Google loves when other popular websites and blogs link to your site. It knows that your content is worth checking out and ranks it higher.
And when you building backlinks, consider two things: Domain Authority and Relevancy.
Every website has a domain authority (DA). The higher it is, the more popular a website is. So, try to get backlinks from websites with high DA.
And also, pay attention to relevancy. Your backlinks should be from relevant websites. If your blog is about cars, a link from the plumbing blog won’t help you much.
The website must be relevant. It’s better to link from a low DA but the relevant website, then vice versa.
When you have a good amount of external, internal, and backlinks, Google will see it and rank you higher and higher. Your DA will increase as well.
So, links are crucial for perfect SEO.
10. Long Content Is Better
And the last factor for perfect SEO is the length of your content. You should write long blog posts because Google pays attention to that. And scatter the content with keywords. But do not use it too many times.
Of course, you can’t always write long posts but try to write a couple of big posts. For example, the list can be short, reviews medium, and guides like this post should be longer.
But there are no rules. The longer the content is, the better it is for perfect SEO. The minimum length of a post should be 600 words. 1000-1500 words are medium size posts.
And if you write 2000+ words, that is awesome. That is a great length for a post. But try to write at least 1000 words. It will really help your website to rank.
And you can say that who wants to read 2000+ words. You can be right. Actually, very few posts are read from start to finish.
But when you have a long post, you have more information, and it could rank for different keywords. And Google really likes long content.
Also, you can fill it with images or infographics to make it more interesting and engaging. Splitting your content with sections also makes the reading process easier.
Also, you can use the Slim Paragraph method.
It means that you write 2 or 3 sentences in one paragraph. Or just a single line. It is easy to read and also makes the reading experience fast.
But it is not always the best option. For example, if you write a movie review or biography, then you should write standard paragraphs with 5 to 6 sentences.
The Slim Paragraph method works great with long posts. Like this one.
Also, a great helper for fast reading is the narrow text area for your post. So your post page should be narrow.
Look at my post page. It is narrow and it makes reading fast and comfortable. Not only the content and keywords are important, but layout too.
Conclusion
This is what you should do to reach the perfect SEO goal. Write good, informative, long content. Choose a good title, make an awesome introduction, short URL. Try these recommendations and you will see the results soon.
Insert images, different links, divide content by sections, and use your keyword in the title, intro, alt texts, and in the content. Well-optimized websites rank faster and higher. But remember. that you must never do keyword stuffing. It must be natural and organic.
To make SEO optimization easier with WordPress, install and use SEO plugins. They are great helper tools.
