Blogging Effectively with SEO in Mind

If you are not an experienced blogger at this point, you may not be aware that effective, successful blogging is about more than good-quality writing. There is definitely more to the formula for success and if you focus on that formula, you will see positive results from your efforts. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of that formula.

The formula for successful blogging

The truth of the matter is that there are many good writers in the world. If all it took were to be a good writer, your competition would be ridiculous. However, there are several different things that go into blogging successfully. Another important element is search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing your content for the search engines is so important because, if you do it right, it will cause you to rank high on the search engine page and people will find you easily. 

There are several different elements that you should keep in mind as you are optimizing your content.

• Decide whether you are going to choose long or short keywords or key phrases:   There are certain factors that should go into your decisions about keywords or key phrases. The first element is the level of competition that you have with your choice of keywords or key phrases. If you choose a keyword or key phrase that a lot of other people are using, it will be harder for people who are searching to find you and your  business/brand. If you use keywords and key phrases that are more focused and more unusual, you have a better chance of being found easily. Of course, you will want to pay attention to the evergreen aspect of your keywords and key phrases as well.

  It is also a good idea to use your keywords and/or key phrases a few times (but not too many times) so that they show up in searches more easily. Overusing keywords and key phrases are not a good idea. Your rule of thumb should be to use them where they seem natural. They shouldn’t seem forced. Your main goal is to contribute value to your readers/target audience members. If you have any question about where you should place your keywords and key phrases, you should put them in your blog title, teaser paragraph, subheads (whenever possible and relevant), blog URL, and meta-tag.

• Ensure that your blog’s images are optimized: Images are important contributors to your blog’s success. That means that they must also be optimized. Your images, if done properly, will be recognized and elevated by the search engines. In order to optimize your images, you should give your images appropriate titles (including a keyword or key phrase). As is the case with the words that you choose to use, you should also be careful not to overuse keywords and key phrases with your images. You should try to limit them to what feels natural. Never force it.

• Ensure that your blog is clear and easy to read: Considering that people nowadays have very little time and very little patience, you should write blogs that are easy for them to read or to scan. You want them to get enough of an idea about what you are communicating as a result of a quick glimpse. The fact is that the easier you make it for your readers to absorb your content quickly, the better your results will be and the better your chances will be of success. Some tips that may prove useful for you are effective use of hashtags, bulleted lists, short paragraphs, quotes (in moderation), and bold and italics (remember not to use them too much).

• Use backlinks effectively: Backlinks are very important for you. You need to make sure that your links are functioning. Broken links frustrate your readers and they damage your business’ reputation. You need to keep in mind that you have control over the links that you choose to use. That means that there is no excuse for their not working properly. If people are interested in what you are saying, they will click on the links that you provide. It is really that simple.

Conclusion 

SEO is an extremely important contributor to your business’ success. Discounting its importance will not help your efforts or your success in any way. You need to embrace the idea that SEO is here to stay and you need to recognize its importance. If you are not comfortable with SEO, you need to learn more about it. It is not tremendously difficult to learn how to optimize your content but doing it will make a tremendous difference to your business. Another thing that you should consider is optimizing your content for mobile devices. With the vast amount of people who view content on their mobile devices nowadays, it is a very intelligent thing to do.

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