You have created your blog, and have your blogging strategy in place. But are you doing all you can to SEO?
SEO is not just “happening.” It’s important to have a content marketing plan in place. This will help you rank higher for keywords related to your industry. As long as your posting strategy remains consistent.
Table of Contents
Basic Strategy
Before I can start to look at the technical aspects and individual content that make a piece of content optimized, it is important to understand what we are optimizing for. While there are a few optimization factors that can be applied to all posts in the same way as before, most of them will depend on your specific goals. Before you can start working towards achieving your goals, it’s important to clearly define what you want.
- Select the best keywords. Targeting the right keywords is your first task. Keyword strategy has changed dramatically over the years. Don’t rush to adopt an old-school SEO approach. The goal is not to pick a keyword target and stuff it into your articles with reckless abandon. You should keep at it until you rank for the keyword. You’ll need to use semantic search and Hummingbird to evaluate your keyword targets. Hummingbird interprets the intent behind a user query rather than searching for a specific match keyword. This means that you cannot rely on repetition and one-to-one matches to get a keyword rank. You’ll instead use keyword research to find high-search volume areas and low competition that offer valuable ranking opportunities. Next, you will integrate these keywords along with synonyms and related words into your articles. I’ll be more detailed later. Google’s Keyword Planner makes this easy.
- Select the right topic. You’ll need to think about what topics you would like to write, as semantic search places emphasis on long-tail keyword phrases and user interest than individual keyword mapping. Look at the newsfeeds of your industry publications and competitors. What are people talking about in the news? What are people not talking about? Is there a topic that seems particularly popular or ripe to be covered? Is there any other angles or data that you could present? You should ask yourself the main question: “What would I search for if in their situation?” Original topics are those that have low competition, are valuable/practical (so they appeal to a broad audience), and are topical (so many people are searching for it or something similar).
- Write for your audience. Remember that search engines are not the only thing you should be writing about. It’s important to identify keywords and topics that have high potential returns and frame your posts so they are visible in search engines. However, users must be your top priority or you will lose them and turn them away from your brand. Keep this in mind when you are creating your topics and keyword lists. Make sure to adjust as necessary. You’ll need to balance writing, editing, and publishing. Don’t let search optimization get in the way of your creativity.
You should now have an idea of the keywords, topics, and demographics that you are trying to target. Then we can begin to look at optimizing for them.
This post was written by Kristian D’An. Kristian is the owner and SEO Specialist at Lux Digital Marketing, an SEO St Pete company. Kristian has been optimizing websites successfully for over 7 years. He has helped his clients achieve the #1 position on Google in several different industries.
