Write Blog Post That are SEO Friendly Without Sounding Awful
Content is king. Even if you have what you think is the “best website mega radical” ever, if you aren’t keeping it fresh with new content, it’s basically just a directionless and confused giant that no one can find. Gone are the days of the “easy fix,” stocking pages with keywords and anchor text so Google can read it and help you rank higher. You have to show the search engine powers that you care about your site in a down-to-earth way. Here are a few tips on how to write SEO blog posts without sounding like a complete tool.
Choose Appropriate Content
Remember the mission of your brand / company / business. If you manage a bakery’s website, for example, avoid writing about heavy military artillery use and philosophizing about Kant. Stick to what you know. I was looking for something about cakes shaped like the Millennium Falcon, if your bakery is suddenly giving me advice on tuning my monster truck, I’m out. With appropriate content, you’ll retain readers, increase visits, and, overtime, become an authority on your speciality. The every-now-and-again mixed bag posts are okay, but stay focused.
Use Your Keywords When Appropriate
Of course you will still want to use keywords throughout your article, but be sure it makes sense to do so. If you’re on a roll, writing about a topic on which you know a lot about and then, BAM!, you throw in an errant link and keyword phrase that throws off the rhythm, your readers, and the search engine crawlers, will notice.
And this leads to the next point…
Write Like You’d Want to Read It
Say you searched, “Top Places to Get Your Dog Washed, Los Angeles,” and click through to one of the many results yielded. The information provided starts okay enough, but you start to notice sentence fragments, disjointed thoughts, and links to who knows where. Knowing that the search result page had more links, chances are you’ll click away from your current read and visit another page. And search engines HATE high bounce rates.
The same can be true if you write for a robot and not you and your audience. Write like you’d be interested in reading what you wrote… Or if you were showing your content to an old college English professor or your even your mom and pops.
Hire (or Employ the Help of) an Editor
Never has anyone said, “I’m so glad I never had this proofed.” Ever.
Two sets of eyes, and perhaps a third set if possible, is a good idea to avoid misspellings, grammar mistakes, and breaks in continuity of flow throughout the article.
IMPORTANT: If you’re worried about “too many chefs in the kitchen,” don’t be. If you are happy with what you’ve written, but it seems to only make sense to you, it probably won’t make sense to anyone else. Be receptive to constructive criticism, and come to terms with the fact that you don’t always spell and phrase everything correctly 100% of the time.
Update Often
To revisit an earlier sentiment: Content is King. It is very important to keep your site updated often. Building an editorial calendar is a great way to keep track of what you’ve written, what you are going to write, and the direction in which you are going to proceed.
An editorial calendar isn’t as foreboding as you may think. Start small, a month out, and resolve to post once or twice a week initially. That’s only 4-8 posts in the span of four weeks. Once you get in the rhythm of writing and updating your site, it will get easier.
These reminders can be applied to on-site content as well. But we’ll get into the nitty gritty of that in a future post.
