How to Optimize Your Blog Posts For SEO [5 Tips for Beginners]

If you have a blog, you need to provide posts that can address your readers' interests. Optimizing the web content with SEO is a great practice to inform the search engines about your content's existence.

It is a good idea to optimize the content for SEO when creating it, but in the future, you can update the old articles as well. This post reveals five tips you can follow to optimize your blog posts for SEO and generate traffic.

1. Include Videos and Images in Your Blog Posts -

One of the most effective social media tricks is to grab the audience's attention by using videos and images. Images and videos are more engaging than text. Add quality and relevant videos and visuals between paragraphs.

When adding images, pay attention to copyrights to avoid legal issues due to using images without permission. There are many places to find free photos for your blog posts. You can also use original photographs or specific websites to create graphics. 

According to an SEO expert ensure that your selected image is relevant to the blog content. You can place the picture next to the text and add a caption. Image captions can guide your reader and help the search engine bot to understand the image better. 

Videos can engage your audience more than images. Converting blog posts into powerful videos can help you reach a wider audience. Always avoid downloading videos directly to your blog posts. Shared hosting cannot handle videos on WordPress. It is better to upload videos to YouTube. 

2. Create a Compelling Title for Your Blog -

A blog title helps address your blog theme's question and a compelling description of your industry. A clear title enhances the relevance of your article to search queries. It also motivates users to click on the piece when they come across it in search results.

A focus keyword title is an excellent way of making your title SEO-friendly. In addition to focus keywords, you can make your headline eye-catching and clock-worth. Remember that SEO ranking is influenced by click-through rate (CTR).

One of the formulas you can use to create compelling headlines is the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV). This requires you to use powerful words that provoke your audiences' emotional responses. 

Some plugins have built-in headline analyzer tools that can simplify your efforts. Others have real-time tips that can help you improve your title to improve the click-through rates. Coming up with a compelling blog title can increase organic traffic.

3. Use Internal Linking Consistently -

After blogging for some time, you will gather enough content for your readers. Internal linking can enable you to refer readers to your older but relevant content. Internal linking is a way to develop meaningful contextual relationships between the old and new posts.

Internal linking also allows you to send relevant links to older articles. WordPress can simplify the search for past posts in the post editor. 

All you need to do is select the text you intend to link and press "link." A text will then appear below the selected text. You can then start searching for the older posts you want to connect with. 

Cultivating a habit of internal linking makes your on-page SEO look good. It also makes your older articles relevant to your audience. 

For maximum benefits, edit older posts consistently and link your new pieces. You can also mention other authors in your post and include the link to your referring information. 

4. Use Keywords in the Entire Post -

After targeting relevant and valuable keywords, you need to place them where they have the most significant impact. Include the keywords in the following positions:

• Title 
• Headings
• Introductory part
• The final paragraph
• Meta descriptions and title tags

Avoid filling your blog content with many keywords, as these can be hard to read. In addition, keyword stuffing can irritate your followers, and you can be penalized by Google. 

Blog posts developed based on keyword research differ from others because they answer an existing question. They are likely to get more traffic because people will be searching for them. 

Get it from Google instead of other channels like Twitter and Facebook if you want long-term web traffic. You can get Google to send traffic to your website by building your blogs based on keyword research. 

Knowing your audience can also help you in your keyword research. For example, it can help you filter keywords that don't match your audience, even if they are related to your topic. 

5. Include Meta Description -

A meta description is a meta tag based on HTML that can be added to any page. It provides a brief description of your blog post for search engines. An excellent meta description can allow readers to have an idea about your article. 

In addition, social media websites can display the article description every time your article is shared on social media platforms.

After knowing that people will be interested in your meta description, your other task will be to ensure that it is functional. 

In that description, mention the focus keywords for search purposes. The meta description should not exceed 150 characters; otherwise, it can be truncated if it exceeds the limit.

Ensure that you mention the focus keyword as early as possible in the meta description. Adding a meta description requires a simple scroll down to the meta box and editing the screen. 

The meta title appears in the search engine result pages (SERPs) as "clickable." Therefore, you need to make it compelling to allow the users to understand what they expect to see after clicking.

Conclusion

Optimizing old blog posts regularly can help to improve SEO rankings. Taking note of the above simple tips and implementing them can dramatically help you optimize blog posts and draw traffic to your site. 

Businesses that have optimized their blog posts for SEO have reported excellent results through improved conversions. 

Written by Rosa Hemming