Do you want to improve your ranking in Google using your writing skills?
If you want to create a good blogpost that scores highly in terms of search engine optimisation or SEO, the words or phrases you would like your website to rank for should be in very strategic places. Using keywords repeatedly can damage the readability of the text, so our advice to you is to not do this at all.
To capture the interest of your readers, you must focus on the structure of your copy, and think about how you can make your text more appealing. To present the main idea in a way that readers will readily understand, the headings and subheadings should be highlighted, and paragraphs need to be laid out and organised clearly.
If your blog makes a good impression on your readers, and they like it well enough, they are led to like, share, tweet and link to your post.
Writing tips for a good blog post
Good bloggers don’t just write anything that comes to mind when creating a blog post. Even “naturally talented” writers have the aim of creating good content. Here are some guidelines to help you come up with an awesome, SEO-friendly blog post.
- You have to think about what exactly you want to tell your readers. What is the one, catch-all message you want your readers to take away with them at the end? If you can answer this question, you can start writing now!
- Create a clear structure for your blog post. It should always have an introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction is where you present your topic. The body is where your main messages appear. The conclusion is where you summarise all your messages, and reiterate the most important ones. Once you know what goes into each of these sections, and have your concept down pat, you can start writing in earnest.
- Make sure your paragraphs make sense. Each paragraph should have a specific idea or topic. Cut up your text into individual paragraphs wisely—don’t just keep starting new paragraphs without a clear purpose in mind.
- Use headings. This is important for SEO and readability. Headings help Google to identify main topics, especially if you are writing a long post. This in turn can help boost your search rankings. Use subheadings to help people locate your articles. These will guide your readers and help them scan your page. You must use keywords in your subheadings, but not necessarily all of them as this may make the text difficult or awkward to read.
- Signal keywords are important. They help people to scan your text and make it easy for them to pick up the main idea of your post. Signal keywords such as “first of all”, “finally”, “nevertheless” and “indeed” act as beacons for readers, and are important for helping them understand the structure or flow of your article.
- Let someone else read your post before publishing it. This is a good way to find out whether a reader can extract your main idea. You can also have this person check for typos and grammar.
- Have minimum word count of around 300-700 per article. Long articles are good and Google likes them. However, if an article is very, very long, its length might turn readers off and drive them away. Always put your search terms into 1-2 percent of your articles.
- Always link to previous content. This is important for Google ranking. It also helps readers catch up on any previous posts you have made. Such links also make the post more “substantial”, in that they show the author’s authority on the subject.
- Add content on a regular basis. Posting regularly gives Google the idea that your site is active. Google’s search bots may crawl through your site only rarely, if they see that your site is not active.
- Choose a plugin that checks how SEO-friendly your post is. One such plugin is Yoast SEO, which is an all-in-one SEO pack. Yoast can check whether you are using the right keywords to optimise your post, and assesses the readability of your text. The snippets for the title and meta description are also available and editable.
Good content can make your site soar in Google rankings. This can lead to more Facebook exposure for your brand, for instance, and provide opportunities to your readers for interacting with you. Don’t forget to make sure that you choose the right keyword to optimise, and that your content is relevant to your brand. Get in the game and start writing a good post now.
We have a long track record of creating and optimising content that gets clients found on Google. Check out how NEO360 can help you with your SEO efforts today.
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Fiona has a degree in Organisational Communication from the University of the Philippines, and more than five years of experience in digital marketing, social media management and search engine optimisation. She also has a knack for cooking and baking goodies as well as research and project management.