Last updated on November 24th, 2022
You write, you blog and you want an audience for your content. Sometimes finding an audience for your content is the first step towards finding customers for your product. Whatever, be the case you need to educate people, teach them about what you do and make them believe in what you do. But first, you need to reach out to them. Search engines are doing a superb job providing an audience for your content and the content, for which people are looking for.
Search engines manage the content in a form of depository and make them available whenever people go looking for them. However, Search engines have to follow some algorithms, some rules, in order to provide the exact content, the user is looking for. Search engines are making themselves better with every single day, however, you as a blogger have to comply with some rules to make a better content accessible to the users.
Writing well is the essential skill for writing a great post, however writing an SEO friendly and at the same time, user-friendly post/blog is altogether a different skill. Having said that, Writing SEO friendly and writing gracefully does not mean two completely unrelated things. Former is a little modification of the later one. Here are few SEO optimization tips which can help in writing an SEO friendly content:-
1. SEO friendly content does not contradict with user-friendly content
An SEO friendly doesn’t have to be written in a completely mechanical way taking the soul away from the writing. The search engines are making themselves smart with much improved ‘ranking algorithms’ which try to identify a great and useful content for the reader from a mediocre one. In the older days of search engines, the whole process of the search was designed around ‘keywords’. The search engine would take a keyword as a string and try to match the similar string with the content on existing web pages and throw the relevant sources to the reader. However, at present search engines are trying to understand the keyword, as a ‘thing’ rather than a ‘string’, and trying to provide the real genuine information about a topic. That is why, the writer still needs to create a beautiful piece for readers to enjoy, however with minding the basic regulations, the writer can reach out to a greater number of people.
2. Key words at Key positions
Key words help the search engines to filter the content and provide the most suitable option to the users. As a blogger, take some time out, find the relevant keywords for your blog subject. Find the targeted keyword and the frequency at which they are targeted. Since the high targeted keywords are already targeted by a bunch of people and organizations, try to target the keyword with medium and low-frequency keywords. It is always a great strategy to put the key words in the title, headings, sub-headings, image alt source and also in meta-description.
3. Provide links
Providing links to the relevant web pages shows that enough research has been put in to ensure the good content. By doing that, you may also end up providing some additional and useful information to the reader. You can also link to any other blog of yours if it is relevant to the topic. The recent SEO strategy revolves around, providing a topic oriented content. What you can do is to make a web-page work as a cluster for the entire topic and provide links to the sub-topics which would in return provide a plethora of resources for the reader to get the information from. It will increase the navigation and crawlability. Not minding that can create some serious issues for your blog post accessibility.
4. Use heading and sub-headings
Writers understand their style of writing, the flow and the structure of their pieces; but sometimes they find it difficult to translate their structure and flow in headings and sub-heading. Headings and subheadings break the entire content into pieces and make it scannable and readable. It is crucially important not only because it increases the readability of the post, but at the same time it makes it easier for the search engines to follow.
5. Use paragraphs and use lists
It is again important from the point of view of readability and being scannable. It also leaves the reader satisfied at the end of the blog satisfied with a clearly distinguished information. Also, Search engines find it easy to index the lists from the text, so make sure that you have used them in your text. But don’t overdo it, just for the sake of search engines.
6. Use Signal words
The readers find it great if the writer is writing with a clear conclusion and emphasizing on the crucial point by using the signal words, such as ‘first of all’, most importantly’, ‘finally’. It increases the readability for the readers as well.
7. Image alt text and audio video transcript
If you decide to attach an image or an audio/video file, and it contributes to the content of the post, do not forget to provide the genuine image alt text and video transcripts. Search engines do not scan the images and video, hence they do not understand the content of the images and videos. It is a way of making sure that search engines understand the content of such files.
8. Meta Description
Meta-description is the description of the website, which search engines use to provide details to the users. It should be around 160 characters long, as precise and accurate as it gets and if naturally possible include the keyword.
9. Detailed
Because it takes research, ample data and deep understanding of a particular subject, it is understood that it should take enough words to explain it. On the first search page of Google, the difference between the number of words of the first one and the last one can be as big as 400 words. Make sure that you have explained your topic well, with ample examples, data, and study.
10. Readability
Writers often end up writing too complex articles for the readers, as sometimes it can boost their ego of being highly intellectual and smart. However, it’s not about the complexity involved in a blog that makes the readers fall for it, in fact, it is the opposite. Keep it simple and keep it stylish. Edit your blog and don’t do silly mistakes.
11. Mind the SEO strategy changes
As it has been mentioned earlier, the search engines are making themselves smarter day by day and trying to be as helpful as they can in providing the best results to the user. That is the sole reason, their algorithms of ranking the webpages changes rapidly. There is no specific strategy which would be relevant for the eternal time. As a blogger, you need to smart to understand and update yourself with the current changes.
Finally, we can make a quick list to produce an SEO friendly and a user-friendly post, both at the same time:-
- Use headings, sub-headings, image alt text, audio/video transcript
- Clear, concise and accurate meta-description
- Key words at key positions
These were some great organic SEO tips for you to enhance your content.Here are some rules for effective content writing to improve your SEO even further.
And one final tip, which is bonus for reading the whole article
Use the keywords and proper functions to name a link, i.e., don’t just name a link-“click me”; instead write- “enter WittyPen.”
