Does blog writing help with SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is crucial for any successful online business.  When you ensure your web pages are optimised, you will be increasing your online presence to people who search relevant keywords into search engines such as Google.

So, we already understand that content, in general, is key when it comes to SEO, but what about blog writing?  Can they help your business rank high?

Regularly updating your site with blogs will increase SEO quality.

When people use Google to find answers to their questions, if you have written a blog on that topic, and including sufficient keywords, it is an excellent way to get customers to visit your site.

Although blog content contributes to SEO, Google’s algorithm updates can make it difficult.  With this in mind, you must have an understanding of what makes a blog good.  In this article, we are going to offer you some tips on how to enhance your content’s search-ability.

Concentrate on 1-2 relevant keywords

Don’t overload your content with too many keywords, as this could be harmful to your SEO.  Choose 1-2 long-tail keywords that are relevant to your blog.

The mistake some businesses make is forcing keywords into the content.  Again, this is unhelpful.  It won’t make for a good reader experience, and the visitor on your site is likely to switch off before they reach the end.

Include the keywords into specific parts of your blog

Once you have researched the keywords to use, you are ready to place them into your content.  There are four specific places where you should include your keywords.  Add them to the title tag, headers and body, URL and meta description. 

Make your blog mobile-friendly

The majority of people use their mobile phones or iPads to search the internet, as appose to a PC. Google will display the mobile-friendly results before the PC version.

To make your blog mobile-friendly, use a responsive design.

The websites that are responsive to mobiles will allow blogs to have one URL instead of two. One for desktop and the other for mobile.

Optimise your meta description 

A meta description is a text that appears in SERPs. It will help the reader have an understanding of what the link and content are about.

The maximum length of a meta description is approximately 300 characters. Make sure you include your keywords within this description.

Add Alt Text to your images

You should try to add some good-quality images to your blog posts.  They can be used as a way to show potential customers what a product looks like, but they will also help with SEO.  Search engines won’t just look for images, but they search for those with alt text.

When you add an image, you will see an option to add the alt text.  This should be a brief description of what the image is.  For example, if you are adding an image of kittens playing, you should add something descriptive such as ‘kittens playing together’.  Here are some tips for choosing what alt text to use:

  • Be descriptive
  • Don’t include ‘image of …’
  • Be specific
  • Try to keep it under 125 characters
  • Include your keywords where you can

Use the correct URL structure

The URL structure for web pages is important. These are different from the URLs of your posts. They are designed to make it simple for visitors to understand the structure of your website and what your content is about. An example of a well-structured URL is https://essexseo.co.uk/what-we-do/local-seo/. In this case, the URL will help the visitor understand they are looking at our business’s ‘what we do’ page and our ‘local SEO’ page.

Add internal links where possible

By adding internal links to your content, they will help the user navigate your website.  Anchor texts should point to relevant content that you believe will be of interest to your readers. Here are the benefits of adding internal links:

  • You will be improving usability through anchor texts
  • Spread your link juice to other sites
  • Boosts your page views
  • Improves your page rank
  • They can increase the time spent on your site
  • Helps with indexing and crawling

Update your blogs regularly

It is important to keep your content up-to-date, relevant and consistent. By doing this, you will be making your content valuable for a longer period. You should also aim to remove outdated content as and when it becomes too old. Some benefits of updating blogs often are:

  • They will help you rank over time.
  • You will notice an increase in traffic for longer.
  • They will generate leads as a result of increased traffic.

Conclusion

Blog posts with great content will help with your SEO.  You can’t expect it to happen overnight, as it will take time and consistency.  If you would like further information on how we can help you produce top-quality blog posts, please don’t hesitate to contact us.