How to Write SEO-friendly Blogs

You may not realise this but writing blog posts is a skill in itself. There are also many factors that can affect how your content ranks in Google, so the way you write a blog won’t necessarily be similar to how you would write printed copy.  

If you want to improve your writing skills and your rankings too, then this blog post will help you to discover how to write SEO-friendly blogs.  

How to Write SEO-friendly Blogs

E-A-T 

No, this isn’t us telling you to take a break and go get a snack! It’s actually one of Google’s principles that influences how it ranks content. (You didn’t think where you appeared in a search result was entirely random, did you?)  

There are many algorithms Google uses when determining how to rank webpages, but E-A-T is an important principle to consider for content. So, we’ll briefly explain this, before going into our top tips for writing SEO-friendly blogs. 

E-A-T stands for Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness. It’s a factor that’s used to determine page quality for web content.  

Expertise – do you have the credentials to back up what you’re saying on the given topic? For example, a food critic or someone who regularly attends restaurants would probably have the necessary expertise to write a restaurant review.  

Authoritativeness – do people accept you as a good source for this type of content? This includes not just the creator of the content, but also the overall website and the quality of the content itself. 

Trustworthiness – this also refers to the content itself, the content creator and the overall website. Can people trust you to provide honest, accurate information? 

Other page quality factors 

Another part of the assessment of page quality is the principle that web pages should be created with the purpose of helping users (rather than harming them). So, if Google detects that a page is part of a scam or harming people in other ways, it will ensure it ranks lower than those that are helpful. You therefore need to create content with a purpose.  

Whether that purpose is to teach something, sell something, to entertain, or to share a viewpoint doesn’t really matter – as long as it’s a legitimate and clear purpose. Examples include an about us page that tells the reader about your business, a product page that aims to sell the reader something, and a blog post that shares your perspective on something in your industry. 

5 Tops tips for writing SEO-friendly blogs 

Regardless of whether you’re writing a listicle, such as a 5 common business mistakes, or a blog post about your business, the key is to still follow the same principles. 

Post Regularly  

When it comes to writing blogs, consistency is key. Posting regularly also helps with E-A-T, as it means you can start to build a reputation for posting about a specific topic or industry. 

The frequency with which you post is important as well as what you post, so be careful not to leave massive time gaps between posts.  

Adopt a Clear Structure 

For every blog post you write, you should ensure it follows a clear structure. Include an introduction, main body and conclusion. Introduce your topic in the introduction, include the main information in the main body, and summarise your key points in the conclusion. Avoid introducing new information or concepts in the conclusion.  

Adopting a clear structure for SEO-friendly blogs isn’t just about having clearly defined sections though. It also requires the use of paragraphs and sub-headings. Paragraphs make the content more digestible for the reader, as do sub-headings. However, using sub-headings also serves the purpose of allowing you to use keywords for some of your sub-headings, which helps you optimise your blog (make it more SEO-friendly).  

Do Your Keyword Research  

Keyword research is used to determine which terms your website could be ranking for, and in some cases, how well your business is currently ranking for them. If you opt to have a digital marketing agency conduct keyword research on your behalf, they will use industry tools to determine how you compare to your competitors and help you spot opportunities to improve your rankings for key search terms. 

For example, say you run a local plumbing and heating business. Keywords you’ll want to rank for may include ‘plumber’, ‘local plumber’ and ‘heating installation’. You’ll also want to know how you’re ranking compared to other local businesses (and perhaps some of the larger companies you compete with too).  

It’s natural that some industries will have more potential keywords to target than others. When it comes to writing blogs, the keywords you’d like to target should be included in them (where relevant). 

Avoid Keyword Stuffing 

Keyword stuffing occurs when you include the keywords you’re trying to rank for too often in your blog posts. There’s a fine line between signalling to Google that you specialise in a skill, and over-signalling to the point where you use the keywords with too high frequency, which can seem spammy. If Google considers the use of keywords to be overdone, this can hurt your rankings.  

There’s no absolute rule for how often to include keywords and it can depend on what you’re hoping to rank for. However, you should always ensure keywords are included in an organic way. In other words, the text needs to naturally flow rather than looking like it’s been written purely to mention another keyword. Relevance is therefore important, and this is the part that can be quite tricky. 

Link to Existing Content 

If you’ve already got some blogs on your website, then as long as they’re relevant to what you’re writing about, you should include a link to them within your blog post. For example, if you’re a hairdressing business and you’re writing a blog about trends in 2022, you could link to a previous blog you wrote about the trends of 2021. Or if one of the trends in the blog is beehives and you’ve written a previous piece about this hairstyle, you could include a link to that.  

This is known as internal linking and helps readers to navigate your site better than they may otherwise be able to. It can also help improve your rankings and shows Google that you have other blogs on this same topic.  

Linking to relevant external sources when stating facts in your blogs can also be beneficial too. In fact, if they have a high domain authority (a conversation for another day!), this can also be beneficial from an SEO perspective.   

When it comes to SEO, it’s also worth bearing in mind that results aren’t immediate. It can take at least a few months before you start to see any major differences in rankings. Like with many things, the rankings are also subject to change, which is another reason why it’s best to post regularly and keep your content optimised. 

As you can see, there are many factors that go into creating SEO-friendly blogs (and we’ve only covered some of them!). If you’d like to have SEO-optimised blogs written for your business, then get in touch with us today and we’d be happy to help.  

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