A blog optimised for search engines is a goldmine: if you take the time to set up SEO for your blog, you’ll find that it proves itself to be a gift that will keep on giving. Increased traffic, greater reach, even increased retention of users! Sounds too good to be true? Keep reading!
Here’s the caveat: SEO is tricky to get right. Use keywords with a heavy hand, and you’ll turn off your users, which will directly impact your ranking. This is where SEO companies in India can come in – like heroes to save the day.
They can help you hit that sweet spot between SEO and well-written, user-friendly content. If you want to go the DIY route, here’s what you should know about getting your blog SEO ready!
Keyword Research Is Your Best Friend
When it comes to blogging, creators are often tempted to wing it and create content on what they think their users want to read. While it’s not impossible to eventually figure out what your readers want through trial and error, there is a faster and much easier way.
Keyword research lets you find what your users want from you – no mindreading required! All keyword research insights are based on data sourced directly from search engines. The process is simple: you find yourself a keyword research tool, enter a keyword or two from your niche, and presto! You’re offered a host of keywords that users are searching for in your niche.
Once you know what your target audience is looking for, it becomes much easier to create an effective and compelling content strategy.
Choose The Right Keywords
Once you’ve done your research and come up with a list of keywords you want to employ on your blog, start shortening that list! Once upon a time, all it took to rank well on search engines was to fill your content to the brim with popular keywords. Now, though, you’ll need to get your pruning shears and start making some choices.
Find a keyword that has a good, high search volume but low competition. (Keyword research will have this information for you!) Once you make this choice, you’ll also have a handful of related keywords in your arsenal.
Write An Excellent Title for Your Post
SEO is big on titles: they act like signposts and tell the search engine what exactly is in the post.
A well-written title for your blog post will ideally make use of your focus keyword while also being a compelling headline that a user will want to click on. (This means no string of nonsensical keywords, and no clickbait either!)
Internal Linking Is A Good Practice
Once your blog has been around for a while, you’ll have a neat little collection of posts to draw from. Every time you create a new post, make it a point to link to previously written related content on your blog. This way, you can send readers to older posts while also building a kind of corpus of content over a period of time.
A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words
Images of all kinds – representative stock images, photography, infographics, even cartoons! – add variety to your posts and make them more fun to engage with. They also help visually structure your blog by offering breaks between paragraphs and other blocks of text.
Get creative, take some pictures, make an infographic summarising the information on your post. Let the pictures do some of the talking too!
The Upshot
Once you get into the habit of these SEO practices, as advised by a professional SEO company in India, you’ll find that it’s a lot like learning a new language. Once you learn, you don’t forget! However, the SEO landscape is also built on shifting sands, and what works keeps changing. An experienced agency like AdLift can do the heavy lifting for you when it comes to SEO so you can focus on creating great content.
