Imperfect Marketing

Episode 93: Brief on Blogging for SEO

May 02, 2023 Kendra Corman Episode 93
Imperfect Marketing
Episode 93: Brief on Blogging for SEO
Show Notes Transcript

Before I became a podcaster, I was a blogger. I genuinely enjoy writing and have been really good at it for a long time, but blogging for SEO can be a bit different.

Search Engine Optimization is all about improving your site's ranking in the organic or non-paid section of search results. It's important to focus on if you want to be discovered by your prospects and customers.

So how do you create content that works for Google and people?

Start with your target audience! What are they searching for?

If you don’t know, find out; none of this other information can help if you can't answer your questions.

Okay, so you know what your audience is looking for. What’s next?

Focusing on blogging for SEO!

The number one rule of on-page SEO is to include your keyword in your title tag. When it comes to on-page optimization, your title tag is the most important part of your page. This is the first thing that Google sees that tells it what your page is about.

Don't forget to put your keyword in the meta description as well. When someone searches for that term, Google will bold your keyword, which helps your site stand out even more in the search engine result pages or SERPs.

At the end of the day, it's important to remember that you are writing content for people first. Google can tell if users only spend a few seconds on your page before clicking off, so make sure your blogs add value!


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Before I started my podcast, I was a blogger.

Still am a blogger for a lot of my clients. 

I enjoy writing and have been really good at it for a long time, but blogging for SEO can be a bit different. 

First, don’t think about the bots. When you are writing, don’t think about ranking. Think about your target audience and what they want. 

Now, let’s get into a few tips and insights into blogging for SEO.

SEO or search engine optimization is all about improving your site's ranking in the organic or non-paid section of search results. You must focus on this to try and be found by your prospects and customers. 

The main benefit of ranking for a specific keyword is that you get free traffic to your site month, after month, after month, and who doesn't want free traffic. 

Understanding how Google finds your results is important and can help you write better for SEO. We know that websites and web pages are ranked on three main things, relevancy, authority, and usefulness. 

If you search for chocolate chip cookie recipes, you don't want to see web pages about truck tires or email marketing. That's why Google looks first and foremost at pages that are closely related to the keyword that's typed in. However, Google does not simply rank the most relevant pages at the top. 

That's because there are thousands, sometimes millions of relevant pages for every search term. 

One SEO expert once said that the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search results. 

being on the first page of Google search results is important. You need to have authority. Authority is just like it sounds. It's Google's way of determining if the content is accurate and trustworthy. How does Google know if your content is accurate and trustworthy or has authority? Well, they look at the number of pages that link to that page. Links from other pages are known as backlinks. In general, the more links that your page has, the higher it's going to rank. That is what's always differentiated Google. Their ability to measure authority via links. That's what made it better than search engines like Yahoo and Ask Jeeves that came before it. 

They also factor in usefulness. Content can be relevant and authoritative, but if it's not useful, Google doesn't want it in a position where it's at the top of search results. Google has said, there's a distinction between higher quality content and useful content. Your job is to make sure their search engine sees your site as the overall best result for a person's search. Be sure to write for people, not bots. 

So how do you create content that works for Google and people?

First, start with your target audience. This is really important here. What are they searching for? 

If you don’t know, find out.

If you don’t know what your customers are searching for, then none of this other stuff will work. I promise you that.

Okay, so you know what your audience is looking for, what’s next?

Let's talk about optimizing your blog posts. 

Well, there are three main types of SEO to consider for your blog post. There's on-page SEO, technical SEO. And then finally there's off-page SEO, which we'll talk about briefly. 

If you have a WordPress site, you need to install the Yoast SEO Plugin. It makes it easy to create your title tag and meta description for Google. 

The number one rule of on-page SEO is your keyword must be in your title tag. When it comes to on-page optimization, your title tag is the most important part of your page. This is the first thing that Google sees that tells it what your page is about.

 Then you need to make sure that you're optimizing your meta description for clicks. According to Google, they say they don't pay much attention to your description or the meta keywords and supposedly they're supposed to be rewording it at times, but people use your meta description to determine if they're going to click on it. 

While it's not as important as your title tag, your meta description is really important. You want to make sure that your main keyword is in your description. When someone searches for that term, Google will bold your keyword, which helps your site stand out even more in the search engine result pages or SERPs. 

Be sure that you use your keyword and related keywords in your body copy too, because Google is scanning the whole page. 

Think about it this way. Use your keyword in the first 150 words, but don't overstuff it, because that can get you penalized by Google. You want to use it about five to six times in a longer article, three to four times maximum in a shorter article and you want to use synonyms and variations. 

That's one of the benefits of the paid-for Yoast SEO Plugin. It'll give you related keywords that you can work in as potential synonyms to what you're looking to get covered. 

It allows you to write for people, not the bot, but the bot understands synonyms and variations of keywords. You can also look at that Google autocompletes list that you came up with and see what Google's other suggestions are. 

This is a great source for this data. 

Google can't see images. 

It relies on the title and alt text of your image. When you upload an image, img0412.jpg to your website, it doesn't tell Google anything. Make sure that the titles of your images and then your alt text is descriptive and can let Google know again more about what that page is about. 

These are important. 

Let's talk a little bit about some technical SEO. 

This can get a little complex and this is just one short podcast, but I think that this is important to note and to take a look at. 

First, is your site set up with a Google search console? If someone else is managing your site, ask them. They'll let you know. You can also verify you're the owner of your site and set it up in Google search console. Just Google, Google search console. It'll give you a place to log in or create an account. 

Then you want to make sure that your URLs are consistent. If it's kendracorman.com/content/applesios15update, that's one way of structuring your content. It could also be kendracorman.com/applesios15update. 

However, you structure your content, just make sure that you do it consistently so that Google can navigate and track where all your content is. 

Page speed is another important thing. You can test your page speed at Google's page speed tool. I think it was Amazon that improved the site speed by like one 10th of a second or one 100th of a second. It increased their sales by hundreds of millions of dollars. 

You may not see that drastic of a change, but that Page 2 of 6 tells you something about how important page speed is, not just a search but also for your visitors. 

Then you want to make sure that you have an SSL. That's what your website says, HTTPS, not just HTTP. Google prioritizes and gives preference to secure sites, which are the ones with the SSLs. Usually, your provider can put this on there. 

Usually, an SSL is at most 50 to 60 bucks a year. Once it's installed that can help you. A lot of sites keep it there for free. Then make sure you use internal links and leverage anchor text. You want to link to other important pages on your site and you want to do that using descriptive keywords. If I have a page that's about email marketing, I would want to highlight the words, email marketing, and embed the link there. 

Whereas if it was more about subject lines, then I would want to use the term subject lines somewhere in the words that I'm linking to. When you're creating those hyperlinks, that's important to do. Then of course you need to optimize for mobile. Google says design for mobile-first. 

Mobile has gotten so important over the years and you need to take a look at it. Then finally make sure you're tracking your results in Google analytics. See where your traffic is coming from. What are your most popular pages? Why are they popular? Then see how you can improve from there. 

Finally, we have off-page SEO. We all know the backlinks are super important, right? 

Backlinks are ways for other sites to say that they recommend you. You want to get links from high-authority pages. Domain Authority is something that a company Moz created and defined. 

The higher the score on a ranking of 0 to 100, the more authority a page has. I think Wikipedia has a 99 domain authority. Most of your competitors are probably in the 16 to 20s on average for small businesses. 

The higher an authority page can link to your content the better off you are. You also want to make sure that the site is relevant and that the content that you are sharing is related. Once you start moving away from a related site, we'll go back to our other example of cookie recipes. If a tire supply store links to your cookie recipe, it's not relevant. If too many of those irrelevant sites link back to you, then Google could potentially consider you working through black hat SEO and exclude you from search results. Then I would recommend also trying to guest post unrelated websites. If you have somebody that's on a related website, related to your business, you could guest post for them and then link back to your content. It's a great way to help get backlinks to your content and recommendations from other sites.

Phew! That’s a lot of stuff, if you want to dig into this, be sure to check out the show notes to get all the details and enjoy.

If you enjoyed the episode and learned anything, I would love it if you would help me out by rating and subscribing wherever you are listening. Thanks and have a great rest of your day.