Easy and Actionable SEO Tips for Blogging: Amplify Shares, Links, and Engagement

Regular blogging can bring in amazing results even for highly competitive keywords. In this blog post, I will share some of the actionable SEO tips and content writing tips that are easy to apply. Applying these tips and best practices will help you produce blogs that are more engaging and increase shares and link backs to your content.

Blogging is one of the most amazing SEO marketing activities. If carried out correctly, you can bring in many advantages, from backlinks and engagement to lead generation and sales.

Some of my clients do not want to invest much in website SEO services, I recommend regular blogging services to them. Along with content writing, we offer them on-page SEO optimization and some more activities as part of this service. This helps them get amazing returns and enjoy many benefits even with a low budget. If you have an in-house team or you want to try it on your own, here is the secret of my success. SEO and SEO content writing best practices, which I follow that bring in outstanding advantages.

Read a complete blog on Regular blogging to understand its importance and benefits.

Before we delve deeper into the SEO tips for content marketing, you must define the goal of blogging. Yes, these tips can also be applied in content writing and marketing; subject to controls you have on hand. Generally and ideally, the goal of blogging is to reach and attract more audiences and build authority as an expert in your domain. This further brings in many advantages such as engagement, backlinks, leads, sales, etc.

Let’s delve deeper into stepwise actionable SEO tips for blogging to increase engagement, sales, and other advantages:

1. Define keywords

I remember losing a big project because I didn’t agree with a head who insisted, “Keywords are no longer effective”. Well, exact match keyword stuffing everywhere is definitely obsolete, but keywords are still important otherwise why does Google Adwords would ask PPC managers to add keywords in the campaigns.

Coming back to the main topic, targeting keywords is essential in any digital marketing campaign. The game of finalizing keywords is changed due to voice search, search intent, and other factors. However, by using a reliable keyword tool such as Keyword Planner, SEMRush, etc., you can select the right keywords.

For blogging, you can select the following types of keywords:

• Very high competition keywords
• Long-tail keywords and
• Keywords with synonyms

Remember, even highly competitive keywords can secure top positions in search engine result pages (SERP) if you have an excellent blog on that.

2. Research for topics

This is another easy yet time-demanding task. Do not just choose the very first topic that comes into your mind or just select what you think is best for others. To research an appropriate topic, follow these tips:

• Search with the keyword you are targeting and see the top blog topics
• Research the latest trends. For example, COVID 19 is trending in real-time
• Research your competitors and what they are writing about
• Analyze question sites such as Quora to learn about questions people are asking

Based on the results extracted from research and analysis, choose the blog topic for blog content writing.

3. Focus on educating your audience

Many people only write content on why they are best and why you must buy from them?

Do not prove how good you are by your words, prove it by actions.

For example, if I have written this blog post on the topic, the top reasons we are the best SEO agency, would you have been reading it?

No for sure.

Always focus on educating the audience and try to teach beginners. Choose topics that share information and do not promote your business all the time.

This will help you build a loyal audience base and gain real advantages of SEO blogging.

Now, you must have a thought that every effort you invest in SEO content writing or digital marketing is for bringing business and this approach might not get that. Do not worry about it. If you are an expert in your domain, you will anyways get business as not everyone is free to try the top tips. They just give the work to the expert. For example, after reading this blog, professionals would think of giving SEO blogging projects to Digital Marketers India because of the expertise it has than spending time in trial and error, Right?

4. Use mixed keywords in writing

Gone are the days, when SEO experts enforce writers to write the whole blog on a single keyword. The blog is a masterpiece (Of course if written correctly). This masterpiece can include multiple keywords. Thus, do not think of using just one keyword, use all relevant keywords sparingly. Furthermore, also add long-tail keywords and other target phrases in the content intelligently.

5. Do not stuff keywords

No need to run behind some keywords. Thus, you do not need to stuff them forcefully. Also, the quality guidelines of Google are changed, plus, Google algorithms and bots are more intelligent to understand the intent of words and also synonyms.

In a nutshell, focus on writing a quality blog that can add value to the reader than stuffing keywords. Of course, you should naturally insert keywords in the blog content.

Read to know how to use keywords in the content

6. SEO content writing standards have to be applied

As mentioned earlier, there is a predefined goal of SEO blogging and thus, you better follow the same. Writing quality content of 5000 words might not give the required SEO benefits if you have not followed the guidelines of SEO content writing. You must keep the following major tips in mind:

• Content must not be plagiarized
• Content must be unique
• Content must have clear and complete information
• Content must give credit if quotes, images, etc. are used by someone else
• Keyword density, proximity, and prominence must follow the standards

Read complete article on how to write content with SEO best practices

7. Don’t be stiff about the number of words

There are no guidelines given by Google on the number of words to be included. Thus, do not be crazy about it. Some people choose an amazing topic and ask the writer to write 250 words of content. That will be of no use indeed. Also, no need to write 5000 words just for the sake of it while content gives no real information.

As per some statistics, the majority of sites ranking in the top 10 positions have 2000 words at the minimum. However, that is not the final word. That is just an observation.

The best practice covers the whole topic instead of looking at the word count. If you have a budget issue, a minimum of 500-700 words per blog has to be allowed to give justice to the selected topic.

8. On-page SEO optimization is inevitable

Writing an amazing blog and not performing on-page optimization would be your biggest mistake. There are many on-page factors, but the major ones for the blog with tips are as below:

• Title tag: You must add the keyword in it. It is not necessary that you keep the title the same as the blog title. You can make changes to it. Keep it less than 60 characters and use power words.
• Meta description tag: You must optimize the Meta description. You should make it informative and click-worthy. It has to be up to 140 characters. Use keywords in it, but do not stuff it with only keywords.
• URL: Do not leave it on the system. Make it short and informative. URL has to be SEO-friendly. It means do not add parameters in it. You can check the URL of this blog post, which is generated by our SEO expert instead of letting it be system-generated.
• Links: You may have internal and outbound links. Give no-follow if you are giving an outbound link and you do not know the site. Use naked links means links with no hyperlinks. Use the brand name in the anchor tag when needed. There is no compulsion of adding a link to the keyword tag. Give the link as per the content nature.
• Canonical tag: Add the right canonical tag in the blog post.

9. Apply outreach strategies

You must have read, “Write great content and get backlinks and mentions:

This is not the complete truth. Even if you write excellent content if your audiences do not know about it, how would they give a link back to you? You need to have an outreach strategy, which means a marketing strategy to let audiences know there is a blog of their interest.

Some of the blog outreach strategies are as below:

• Social media marketing of the blog
• Email marketing
• Direct messaging or link sharing with targeted audiences
• Social bookmarking

There are some more as well, but these are easy and quick to apply.

10. User experience has to be a prime focus

Even if you have excellent blog content and you also run a paid advertising campaign, but if you are not delivering a great user experience, it will not reap the expected results. You must use the required tools, plug-ins, etc. to make sure the user experience is exceptional. Some of the tips to keep in mind are:

• Page must load quickly
• Optimize images
• Blog design must be responsive
• Give same experience on desktop and mobile devices

11. Do not forget to add share buttons

You must have seen share buttons on the blog posts. These buttons let readers quickly share the blog post on different social networking platforms. Adding these buttons is very easy. All you need to do is just add a plug-in. You must add share buttons to your blog posts to make sure readers have a hassle-free way of sharing the post if they like it.

12. Refer blog posts in the future for re-engagement

It is obvious that to gain SEO benefits, you will write multiple blog posts on the targeted keywords. Thus, as and when possible add references to earlier blog posts to give more details on that topic or a relevant one. This will help you increase pages/visits, average time spent on site, and other performance KPIs. Moreover, it will help you increase the engagement of earlier written blog posts. It also makes sure that old blog posts do not get buried as they are written to benefit readers and your business, both.

13. Call to action is a must

You must have read about this, Call to Action, also referred to as the CTA is a must. It means giving a hint of the next step to the reader. Everyone might know the next step, but they skip and leave the site. To make sure you convert your website visitors to leads or convert some other goals, you have to give some call to action at the end of the blog.

14. Call to action has to be wise

Generally, when someone asks to use the CTA, the only CTA thought of or pushed forward is pushing sales, i.e., contact us for this or that. However, you must keep in mind that CTA is subjective. It depends on the nature of the blog and closing notes. If you have written a blog on beginners’ topics, an appropriate CTA would be giving a blog link or e-book on the same topic with advanced information. If it is an explanatory blog, adding a call to action to take your service can be the right one.

Make sure the call to action is easy to understand and without too many steps they can take the required action from any device.

15. Frequency of the blog needs to be defined

This might be a question worth $100,000, still, ignored by almost all. As and when they get time or content, they just post the blog. However, this is not the right approach. You need to focus on scheduled SEO blogging. There has to be a specific interval at which you post the blog and that must not be once or twice a week. At a minimum, you must post a blog once a week. If you are working in a competitive industry, it is recommended to post two to three blog posts per week. You might have noticed leading companies post the blog one or more times in a single day. You should at least post once or twice a week to leverage benefits from SEO blogging.

Conclusion

SEO blogging also known as blogging and regular blogging can give maximum benefits in minimum investment. Thus, it is necessary to invest resources in it. Regardless of the fact, whether you want leads from the digital landscape or not, if you have a website, you must blog regularly.

To leverage the full advantage of SEO blogging, you must use these easy, actionable, and result-oriented blogging tips.

If you do not have time or in-house expertise, we are here to help you with our expertise. Contact us.