How To Write A Blog For SEO: The Ultimate Guide For Beginners

How To Write A Blog For SEO: Writing blog posts needs more than just writing skills. You might be great writer, with a strong vocabulary and knowledge of grammar, but when it comes to blogging, these things alone are not enough, especially if you want thousands and thousands of people reading your blog.

People should be able to discover you and your blog, which means your blog should show up in search engine result page (SERP).

For this reason, in addition to having the necessary skills of a writer, you need to be good at skills required to optimize your blog so that they appear in SERP. That is, you need to be good at Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

This article is about how to write a blog for SEO. Read on to find out.

How To Write A Blog For SEO?

Before getting into how to write a blog for SEO, one thing must be said.

The language and structure of content depends a lot on the medium for which you are writing.

The way newspaper articles are written is not same as the way a book is written – language and structure-wise. Blogging too requires one to follow a certain language and structure for the blog to rank and succeed.

Now, these rules, structure and language might seem unusual to you at the beginning, especially when you write a blog for SEO. In fact, at times you might feel that following these rules and showcasing your writing skills cannot go side-by-side.

Trust me, it can and it will go side-by-side. As you write more and more for your blog, you will learn to maintain and improve the quality of your writing without having to compromise with the rules of this platform.

Just don’t give up.

Let us now see how to write a blog for SEO.

1. Have A Clear Structure Of Your Message In Mind

No matter what the topic of your blog post is and how knowledgeable you are in that topic, you need to think about the exact message that you want to convey to your readers. And you need to structure the message in a way that is readable and understandable. You need to have a clear idea about how you will start your article, what should be there in the introduction, how you will move on to the main message, and how you are going to conclude it.

2. Do Keyword Research

The next thing to do is Keyword Research. If you are writing about something that people want to know, you must know what search terms or phrases they are typing in Google (or any other search engines). There are many free and paid tools to do Keyword Research. But tools alone cannot help you to find the right keyword for your blog post. You need to have analytical skills as well.

To begin with, you can type in the topic of your blog post in Google and see what it is recommending. You can scroll down to the end of the SERP and check the related searches to get an idea.

Once you select a bunch of search terms people are using, you have to select the right one to use in your article. Learning Keyword Research takes time but you can start off like this.

3. Write The Introduction With The Primary Keyword Included In It

Now you have the main or primary keyword for your blog post and a proper structure in mind to convey your message. Start writing. Include the primary keyword at the very beginning of your introduction. In fact, use it one or two times more in the introduction.

4. Write Short Sentences And Short Paragraphs

Write short paragraphs and convey one single message in one paragraph. People have very low attention span when they are online. So, text-heavy pages usually repel them.

If the introduction or, as a matter of fact, any other paragraph is too long, break it into two paragraphs. Also, the sentences should be short and crisp. Basically, the content should be such that it is pleasing to the eyes and easy to understand.

Find Out How To Improve Readability Of Your Blog Here

5. Use Headings And Subheadings

Use headings (at least one H2 tag with the primary keyword included in it) and subheadings (H3, H4…tags). This not only breaks the monotony of having just paragraphs but is also helpful from SEO point of view.

6. Use Transition Word

Use transition words to show the relationship between two sentences whenever possible. This helps people to understand the connection better.

7. Maintain An Optimum Word Count

Make sure your blog post is at least 700-800 words long. Google usually prefers longer article.

8. Use Optimized Images Especially For Long Form Articles

Images are easier to process. So, use relevant images wherever possible. Especially, for articles that are too long, try to add relevant images, GIFs or videos in between to break the monotony and bring in some color in the content.

Also, if you use images, make sure you save the image file with a keyword-rich filename and add the same keyword-rich name in the Alt Tag of the image. At least one image should have the primary keyword as the Alt Tag. Add featured image no matter how long or short your post is.

9. Use Simple Words

Do not use words that are difficult to understand or are not commonly used. Not only is it annoying to people but also it is not a good practice from SEO point of view.

10. Add LSI Keywords

Sprinkle a few LSI keywords all over the content. LSI keywords are, basically, keywords that are synonymous to the primary keyword. They are variations of the same search term. You can use LSIGraph to find them. Also, you can use the related searches for your primary keyword that appear at the bottom of Google result page.

Needless to say that you should include your primary keyword as well in the content. But do not overuse them. The ratio of the number of times the primary keyword appears in the content to the total number of words in the article multiplied by 100 should be between 1.8 to 2. This is called Keyword Density. Be it the primary keyword or LSI keywords, their placement in the content should look natural.

11. Add Proper Title And Meta Description

Add title and meta description, both including the primary keyword right at the beginning. Meta description, which is basically the snippet that shows up under the clickable title in SERP, should also include LSI keywords.

12. Have SEO-Friendly URL

Make sure the URL of the page is short and keyword-rich

13. Do Not Forget To Interlink

Link to relevant pages in your site. Use keyword-rich anchor texts for this purpose. Also, add at least one outbound link (link to another site) that is relevant.

14. Update Regularly

Keep the content up-to-date. Also, add relevant content on a regular basis.

If you are using a self-hosted WordPress blog, I would suggest you install Yoast SEO Plugin. This will make all the above tasks easier. It will tell you  if you are overdoing anything or have missed anything.

I hope I have been able to explain how to write a blog for SEO. If you have any confusion regarding how to write a blog for SEO, feel free to drop your questions below and I will respond.