As a matter of fact, marketers who invest their time in creating good quality posts acquire 125% more leads than those who don’t bother to blog. But successful blogging doesn’t just mean writing articles that will satisfy the form Google expects from you. Neither is it about interesting stories that will quench your readers’ desires and leave you empty-handed. Among millions of posts that get published on a daily basis, you need to make yours stand out and rank well. But how?
Gather the right crowd
If you want your blog posts to be noticed, you have to carve them according to the needs of your target audience. So, your starting point should be identifying the group of people who would be interested in what you are trying to say and eventually buy your product. It is that simple. Spend some time getting to know them. Find out more about the problems and research the FAQs they have. Also, it is very important to nail the best format of your posts. Why is all of that important? – you might wonder. When you address the right audience, your chances of conversion are much higher. Google recognizes websites with a high conversion rate and it ranks them well.
There is a shortcut that you can use when looking for the target audience and it is called spying on competitors. Of course, we don’t encourage you to do anything illegal. Keeping an eye on their blogging activities will be enough. Research the topics that they cover, the posting frequency, and the actions they take to keep in touch with their (and your) target audience.
Put quality before quantity – always!
Posting on a daily basis is rarely a good idea. You don’t want to appear too desperate, do you? Readers appreciate blog posts that give them value. And, when they find some in your posts, they will be ready to share it with their friends. Google rewards such behavior by ranking your posts better. Sharing in such a way is actually creating organic traffic, and search engines love the organic. You see, when you make an effort to create quality content, you increase your online traffic and you improve your ranking!
If you want your blog posts to stand out and rank well, you need to optimize them
Don’t count on your online presence unless you are ready to play by Google’s rules. Also, be prepared that the rules are changing constantly and you need to go with the flow.
A successful SEO strategy starts with selecting the right keywords
Ask yourself what your target audience is looking for and find out more about their intentions. Are they just window shopping, comparing, or they are ready to buy the product? Your keywords will not only depend on their interests but their intentions as well.
Once you choose your keywords, you need to position them properly:
- Include your keywords in the title – the closer to the beginning of the title, the better;
- Don’t forget to mention them in some of your headings (H2 and H3);
- Repeat the selected keywords throughout your post, but do it naturally. Over-optimizing is one of the outdated SEO techniques you should avoid. You don’t want your content to be stuffed, do you?
- Incorporate your key phrase in the URL for the blog post – this action can literally be done in seconds and it can make your post stand out and rank better;
- The meta description shows your readers what your blog post is about – include your keywords to attract their attention right away;
- Image alt. tags are there to make your content more accessible – search engines like it when you are considerate.
Improve the layout for better user experience
If you want your blog post to rank well, you need to make it visually appealing and easy to consume. The average attention span of a reader is getting shorter every day, so your content has to be eye-catching. Here are some of the main elements of formatting your WordPress posts:
- Subheadings – properly distributed subheadings guarantee a well-structured text; while at it, make sure that none of your paragraphs are too long. Divide them at least visually and your ranking will be better.
- Bulleted lists – they always attract readers’ attention and search engines love them too;
- Font – needs to be readable, but also beautiful and eye-catching;
- Bold and italic – this sort of formating proved to be a simple, yet effective way to break up larger chunks of text; We also use bold and italic letters to emphasize our message.
Links are valuable for SEO
It is not what you know, but who you know – that rings true in the digital world too. Well, the quality of your content is still imperative, but search engines like to see that you have some influential friends too. That is why guest posting should be on top of your list of priorities if you want to stand out. Internal links matter too and the great thing about them is that you are not limited by the number of them. The more – the merrier!
Make sure that you don’t have any dead or broken links lying around. There are simple tools you can use once in a while to check the status of your links. Do it on a regular basis if you don’t want Google to rank your posts worse than before.
Make your content mobile-friendly
The mobile experience has to be of equally good, if not even better quality than the desktop version. More and more people use their smartphones for reading the content of all kinds and that is why mobile responsiveness is a must.
Be prepared for constant changes
These were just some of the practices that will make your blog posts stand out and rank better. Search engines constantly change their algorithms, and you need to adapt so that your blog posts can lead to conversion. What are your best practices for improving conversion?
BY TECHIE MAMMA