There are a million different strategies to SEO your writing from self-professed experts, so what is the best practice to SEO your blog post?
A minimalist approach to writing may actually work better than the guru plans, where you stick to writing for your reader.
Write so all readers will understand your message, include examples that support your point of view.
Don't use big words to make yourself feel like you are smarter than you are, chances are, using those big words only makes you look like an idiot.
Explain your idea clearly, link to at least one quality external page, and link to several internal posts inside your site. Internal linking keeps readers on your site longer, and provides a pathway for search engines to find more content in your site.
Your title is extremely important. That title will get readers to your site through social media, and may land you links from other blogs and websites.
Some of the top writers are now saying to write over a thousand words in your posts, but I'll stick with around 300 words for balance. Some of my shorter posts have indexed well receiving many visitors from search engines.
The description meta section is critical to attracting readers from search engines. What you write may lead them to click on your post, even though you are not ranked at the top of the search results. On the other hand, you may have a top search ranking, but miss the clicks after your potential reader skips your post due to what you have in your description.
The second step is to include the keywords at or near the beginning of the first paragraph. You want to put emphasis on the words that you are targeting, letting the search engines now that those words are important.
Repeat the keywords as in my example of “how to SEO a blog post” throughout your post, but not more than eight times in a 300 word post while placing them naturally throughout your post.
Notice I’ve suggested 300 words? In order to properly SEO a blog post, the experts almost always suggest a minimum of 300 words which is exactly what I’ve been doing for some time. It seems to work well for me.
The next step is to make sure you are using bold and italicized keywords as well. This puts emphasis on the keywords “how to SEO a blog post” and tells search engines and readers that these are the important words.
Lastly, properly using links inside the post is critical to learning how to SEO a blog post. Spacing links properly, adding both internal and external links as well as using no-follow links will improve your ability to get ranked in the Search Engines.
The tool that use and highly recommend is SEOMOZ to optimize your site. They offer the most immediate value to anyone getting started out.
I’ve also studied many books, both paper and eBooks, purchased programs, subscribed to memberships and listened to webinars. Some have been worthless, others are extremely difficult to follow and many offer a little bit here and there. That’s why, I’m only recommending SEOMOZ at the moment.