6 Things Your Blog Post Absolutely Needs to Improve

Have you been blogging for a while with almost no one seeing or reacting to your posts? That can be frustrating and discouraging, but we have the remedy. If you want to get more people to see and engage with your blog posts, you’ll need to learn a little bit about search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, means to work with how search engines’ algorithms operate so your blog can land higher up on their search results.

There are a ton of things you can learn about to improve your blog posts! Keep reading to see the top 6 ways to turn your blog from a lonely webpage into a bustling hub of current, relevant information.

1.  Create a Trustworthy Blog

This first tip is multi-faceted. You should do everything in your power to make your blog a safe place to visit for your readers. You should also make sure the information you convey is original, factual, and clear.

Site Security

According to internet security leaders, hackers or scammers attempt to attack a website every 39 seconds. Fortunately, there are some simple steps to take to make your website and blog less susceptible to being breached.  If your blog site doesn’t already do this automatically, you should install a secure sockets layer. SSLs encrypt the information being transferred from one computer to another when readers visit a website.

Having an SSL on your website or blog has become so standard and desired that search engines will actually place your site lower in search results if you don’t have this security layer.

Another step bloggers should take is to update their sites regularly. You should ensure that you are promptly installing all updates to your blog and any widgets, as being lax about this leaves your website vulnerable to attacks from scammers.

Fact-Checking

Unless you’re a thought leader or expert in the topic you’re writing about, chances are you don’t know all of the facts and figures off the top of your head. When you are writing about a nonfiction topic, especially if you are presenting it as an educational article or story, you should find reputable websites and sources to use in your writing.

Keeping Your Content Original

In a world where there are more than 600 million blogs, it can be challenging to provide original information. Search engines like Google automatically scan your contents and will ding you for what they perceive as plagiarism, even if your words aren’t actually cribbed from another site. This will place your site lower in search results.

There are lots of things you can do to make sure you avoid this. First, cite your sources. This can include putting any direct quotes in quotation marks and linking back to the source of that information. You can also use such acknowledgements as “according to (source),” or “(a government agency) says.”

You can also use various free online tools to check your content for clarity and possible plagiarism.

2.  Define Your Target Audience

No matter what you’re writing, it’s important to decide who you are writing for. If your blog is a supplement to your online business, you have an audience built in: your prospective customers.

However, if you’re not sure who you are writing to, you can use your existing social circles online and off to help. Look at your friends on social media and see what they’re talking about. What are the problems they – and you – face? What products are they using?

You can use lists, hashtags, trending topics, and keywords on social media sites to see what related topics or trends are associated with your blog’s niche. They can help you find who is talking about that topic. This will give you more demographic information.

3.  Learn to Use Keywords

Steps 2 and 3 go hand in hand. Once you’ve defined your audience, you can choose keywords that are going to attract them. You’ll want to pick keywords that are relevant to the people you want to bring to your website. You’ll want to choose keywords that have less competition than other keywords, meaning you may want to narrow the search by geographic region or otherwise be more specific. You must also decide how much site traffic you want to attract. You can pick high-traffic keywords, but they might bring lots of people who don’t turn into customers.

There are dozens of online tools to help you pick keywords for your blog, including one by Google.

4.  Use Metadata

Metadata is the information that goes along with your blog when you post, that isn’t the blog post itself. For example, when you make a post on a site like WordPress, you will be prompted to provide a meta description of about 150 characters that sums up your post. You will also have the opportunity to provide some keywords or meta tags in this spot before you hit publish as well.

These steps might be easy to overlook, but they can help search engines understand what you are writing about and where to put it in search results.

5.  Blog Often

If you want your blog to show up in search results, you will need to post regularly. Ideally, you should be blogging daily to keep reminding search engines about your blog, while following all the other guidelines to provide quality content.

Once you have been blogging for a good while, you can go back and update old posts with new information you have learned since then. This will help move your posts back up in the search engine’s memory and help you place higher.

6.  Take advantage of analytics

Google offers free analytics for websites and learning how to understand this information can be extremely helpful. Analytics can help you understand who is looking at your blog, where they came from, what devices they are on, and lots more. It can help you see who is looking and who isn’t, so you can adjust your keywords and other SEO techniques accordingly.

These six tips will help you get your blog higher in search engine results, leading to more people seeing your blog.

For more helpful information about small businesses then keep an eye out for regular blog posts at Clyde Offices.