How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
As a business owner, you know the value of a slick website. It’s your full armory: it’s your portfolio, it’s the heartbeat for all of your communication, your chief marketing engine, and your booking portal. This is why it is so important to learn how to write SEO friendly blog posts - after all, if your website is going to make an impact, it needs to be searchable!
Running a website takes time, attention, and maintenance. If you’re a wedding photographer, this means regularly updating your online portfolio with your latest images and blogs to extend your reach to a wider audience.
Learning How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts Will Transform Your Business
Unless you are blogging with SEO in mind, you might be putting hours and time and effort into a blog that is ultimately ineffective. When you blog for SEO, you create a webpage that is intentionally designed to perform well within Google’s algorithm - meaning that your blog is more likely to be found by potential clients.
When you start to understand the basics of SEO, you can make simple adjustments to your writing that have the potential to increase the number of hits to your website. More so, you’ll be specifically using keywords specific to your industry, in order to directly target future clients who are looking for your services.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. If you are familiar with a search engine, such as Google, you’ll be aware that there is an internal ranking system that chooses which websites rank or score higher in the listing for any given search.
The process of search engine optimization is a process of ensuring that all of the copy and formatting on your webpage is strategically and specifically modified to suit Google’s algorithm. When you implement SEO best practices on your website, you’ll rank higher on Google’s search listings and therefore are more likely to generate traffic to your site.
If you’d like to go more in depth and learn about SEO you can check out our blog that answers the question: What is SEO?
How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
Following these simple SEO guidelines is a sure-fire way to learn how to write SEO friendly blog posts. These guidelines will also teach you how to get noticed by clients when writing new blogs and can be used to revamp your old blogs to make them SEO friendly.
Start With Keyword Research
Search engines such as Google, understand and categorize web content through specific keywords. The result is that when you Google a question, the search engine answers by pulling content from around the web that has keywords that specifically pertain to your search query.
If you're a wedding photographer, your keywords are likely to be specific marketing words for photography, for weddings, and for your geographical location. This way, your blogs can ranks well for brides and grooms who are using Google to research those same wedding related keywords.
When figuring out how to write SEO friendly blog posts it’s important to take some time to do keyword research before starting to write a blog. There are plenty of online tools and applications that can help pull all the data that you need to find appropriate keywords. Check out Ubersuggest, which is a free resource if you are looking to get started, or Keywords Everywhere and Moz if you are willing to pay for a more advanced search. You should establish 1 target keyword per article and be sure to include it in each of the following places within your blog.
Where to Use the Target Keyword
Within the bulk of your blog copy, try to incorporate your target keyword at a 2% density to maximize its impact, but don’t go over that. For example, if you have 100 words 2 of them should be your target keyword. That means that your article will be peppered with your target keyword in order to help Google grasp what your blog is about.
Along with the 2% keyword density, you’ll also want to be sure to include your keyword in the following areas of your blog:
Meta description
URL
First paragraph
Blog copy (2% keyword density is ideal)
At least one sub-header (H2)
Image file names
Image Alt Text
Include Internal and External Links
As you’re learning how to write SEO friendly blog posts, figuring out how to implement internal and external links is key!
First off, what is the difference between an internal link and an external link?
An internal link directs your reader to another page on your website, whether that’s another blog post, contact page or your portfolio. Internal links are a great opportunity to be a resource by pointing your readers to other content they might find helpful and set yourself up as an expert to build trust with them. It also helps Google understand what the page you’re linking to is about.
An external link is simply a hyperlink that links out to any webpages that are outside of your website. So where an internal link is designed to keep your viewer within your website, simply moving them around so that they can explore more of your information, an external link actually links out to a different website. A good external link will always direct your readers to information that supports the content of your article and is relevant to it.
Throughout your blog post, try to link to at least 2 external websites. The trick is to try to integrate an external link into your text subtly. You don’t want to force it and have a weblink standing out like a sore thumb. However, it is equally crucial that you don’t link out to a direct competitor or a website that offers the same services as you do.
4 Tips When Choosing An External Link:
Try to link out to an ‘official’ or published website such as the following:
Government Websites (.gov)
Official organizations (.org)
School / Published educational document or paper (.edu)
Statistics, facts or any research data sources.
Avoid linking to other people’s blogs, rather, try and find the original source link or study for the information they are referencing.
If you are linking to a product, service or vendor, try and link to one that is geographically local to you, but not in competition with you.
Optimize Your Blog With this SEO Checklist
Now that you understand the basics of how to write SEO friendly blog posts it’s time to learn all the tips and tricks you need to ensure that your blog set-up is as watertight as possible when it comes to SEO.
There are key techniques to implement into your blog set up that will add even more fuel to your blog. If your website is hosted through Squarespace, Wordpress, or another mainstream host, you’ll discover that there are easy ways to improve your SEO ranking through some slight adjustments to your blog set up.
We recommend reviewing the following checklist before you publish a blog post:
Ensure that your Images are sized correctly
When figuring out how to write SEO friendly blog posts, optimizing your images is vital as it ensures a fast load time for anyone browsing your site. This is important because Google is known to penalize content that has a slow load time, thus hurting its chances of ranking well in search results.
Aim for images with a 1500 pixel count, and try to use JPEG or PDFs only.
BlogStomp3 is a great tool we use to resize AND rename the image file names all at once!
Add alt text to every image
Alt Text (alternative text) is an undisplayed text description for each image on your webpage. These are short, functional, literal descriptions of the image. They are crucial because Google bots can’t see images, so it relies on alt text to understand what your pictures are about.
Your alt text will also show up on your website if your images aren’t loading for some reason, and they also provide a description to those who are visually impaired.
Be sure to include your target keyword in about 2/3 - 3/4 of your image’s alt text.
Optimize your SLUG text (a.k.a. URL)
Your SLUG/URL is the text that makes up the web address for your blog or webpage. Since your blog title should contain your target keyword, your SLUG text should as well. This is another factor for Google’s algorithmic rank system.
In order to optimize your SLUG remove any unnecessary words, but make sure your target keyword remains fully intact. Here’s an example.
Blog Title: 10 Tips to Optimize Your Wedding Photography Blog
Original SLUG: 10-tips-to-optimize-your-wedding-photography-blog
Optimized SLUG: tips-optimize-wedding-photography-blog
Use headers such as H2 + H3
Google recognizes the use of H2 and H3 headers. This helps Google better understand how your blog is outlined and can really help your blog rank better in search results. Break up your content with H2 headers, and build out any sub-headers in H3, H4 etc, if you wish to expand on these points.
Remember: stay clear of H1!
Headings convert to HTML code that search engine’s read. Google understands that H1 correlates to a Title, and H2 to a heading - so this allows Google to ‘read’ and understand your article, therefore ensuring a better ranking on the search engine. You only want one title per blog so you’ll only want H1 to be used for the title of the blog.
Determine your word count
You can’t figure out how to write SEO friendly blog posts and neglect word count. There are SEO sweet spots for both long and short-form online content. Our best recommendation for a wedding photography blog would be to aim for a 1,000 - 2,000-word piece.
Now You Know How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
While these changes might seem complex at first, you’ll notice that the more you write, the more natural this checklist becomes. While subtle to the eye of the reader (if you’re doing it right), these small changes will have a huge impact on teaching you how to write SEO friendly blog posts and on the reach of your blog post.
Try to remember the following:
Research a ‘Key Word’ for each blog
Implement your Key Word into the following areas:
Title
Meta description
URL
First paragraph
Blog copy (2% keyword density is ideal)
At least one sub-header
Image file names
Image Alt Text
Include Internal and External Links
Format your Blog with these final optimizations:
Ensure that your Images are Optimized
Add alt text to every image
Optimize your SLUG text (a.k.a. URL)
Use headers such as H2 + H3
Ensure your word count stays between 1000-2000
As you’re becoming an expert on how to write SEO friendly blog posts, keep this simple list at hand and use it as a checklist to make sure that you are following SEO best practice - that way, you’ll never miss a step!
Here at Second Fiddle we use these methods to write SEO friendly blog posts for all of our clients. If you love the idea of producing high-quality, SEO friendly, blogs, but you don’t have the time to invest, that’s what we’re here for!
This post includes affiliate links to external platforms that we love and truly believe in. If you choose to make a purchasing decision using the links provided on this post, we make a small commission at no cost to you.
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