10 Ways to Incorporate Best Practices in SEO for Blog Content Success

Do you realize how much we rely on Google? There are over 99,000 searches on Google every second. Every. Second. Holy cow. That adds up to 8.5 billion searches every day – 2 trillion every year. (Thanks for the numbers, Search.AI.) So, if you’re one of the websites floating out there in cyberspace, you need to be found, right?

If your blog isn’t optimized for SEO, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity. If you could be connected with a slice of that traffic, you’d be growing your blog in no time at all.

So let’s talk about the world of SEO best practices that will transform your blog content strategy from ho-hum to wow. Let’s get your search engine ranking growing and make you the go-to expert in your nice.

Understanding the SEO Landscape in 2024

SEO is a continuously evolving aspect of the blogging world. What you learn today, may not work tomorrow. There are a lot of “rules” out there, but more than anything, be authentic. If you follow every piece of advice out there, but you’re just pumping out garbage, you will fail at SEO. You have to write engaging content in order to succeed.

Google Knows All

In the early days of search engine optimization, the only goal was to get the keyword into the article as many times as humanly possible. Article reads terribly, but they had a clear objective: be found for a specific keyword.

But much like computing itself, search has come a long way over the years. Google spends a lot of time tweaking, correcting, and perfecting its search algorithm. The good news is that although the exact algorithm is like Colonel Sanders’ blend of 11 secret herbs and spices, there is a lot of information out there that will help you understand what works, what doesn’t, and what you need to do.

First, if you’re a new site, be patient. Even if you massage Google and submit every link on Google Search Console, Google wants to be sure it’s serving up quality pages, not fly-by-night websites looking to make a quick buck.

It’s going to take time. And some hard work. But it will pay off in time.

The trick?

Think about the people you’re writing for. Who are they? What are the looking for? What will solve their problems? What do they want to read?

The more natural your writing and the more you give the people what you want, the more you will be rewarded.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can throw keywords out the window and just write whatever. You still need to think about that stuff, but the less you “think” about it and the more you allow it to happen, the better.

Keywords will naturally occur if you focus on your readers. And semantic keywords will appear without you having to look up a list of them.

Google is great and giving you the knowledge and tools to rank better.

E-E-A-T

Take for instance E-E-A-T.

You may have heard this four letter acronym and wondered what it was all about, but much like only focusing on keywords, focusing on jamming each of these four items into your writing can result in poor writing that confuses your readers…and Google.

If you’re writing to answer questions and genuinely help your readers, E-E-A-T will happen.

If you don’t know it yet, E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

These have become the 4 pillars of Google’s search algorithm and how they judge what’s good and what’s not.

By writing with these in mind and keeping it natural and about the reader, you’ll find that your content will rank higher. (Again, it won’t happen immediately, but follow the plan and have faith in the system.)

By showing your expertise and sharing your experiences, you will create authority, leading to trustworthiness. E-E-A-T.

Never Stop Learning

Today’s lessons on SEO are tomorrow’s old news. Mastery of SEO develops over time, because SEO evolves constantly. Keep up to date by reading SEO blogs and articles like this (of course, you want to read all of my content – duh!).

Keyword Research: The Foundation of Your SEO Strategy

But wait Matt, you just told us to ignore keywords…didn’t you?

No. You don’t want to ignore them. In fact, you want to learn as much as you can from them.

Keywords are an essential part of the foundation of your blog post. The key is to use them properly within the confines of a quality article that follows the E-E-A-T model.

I used to think (and I admit, I sometimes still think) that I could write whatever was on my mind, and the internet would swoon over my words and make me famous.

While I have been lucky with what I’ve written on the internet, everyone is not hanging on every word I write.

That’s where keywords come in. Keywords allow you to subtly direct traffic to what you want to talk about. Take this post for instance. It’s clearly about SEO for blog content, but I don’t need to title every headline that and squeeze the phrase into every paragraph.

Instead, the words around it point to its meaning and help Google and readers understand the broader topic.

So how do we conduct keyword research?

Oh man, that’s a loaded question.

There are entire sites dedicated to this. It’s not a simple “click here” and you’ll get what you need. So let’s break it down into some of its components. This is by no means the only methodology, but it should get you started in the world of keyword research.

Ahrefs

You’ve probably seen Ahrefs mentioned a few times in your travels. That’s because they’re that good at what they do.

Ahrefs does a lot, but we will concentrate on their Keywords Explorer for this post. Keywords Explorer itself is a multi-faceted tool, but essentially, it allows you to research keywords by giving you detailed information about them – from keyword difficulty to Google search volume to cost per click to similar keywords to help you build topical clusters.

I am not an expert on Ahrefs, and I find myself learning more every time I use it. If you want to use this tool, check out their starter plan to get your feet wet without spending a fortune.

The best use of Keywords Explorer is to use it to analyze a large set of keywords, filter them by keyword difficulty, and find opportunities you may not have covered. That’s an oversimplification of it, but it will get you started.

Using AI to Find Keywords

AI is everywhere and is now taking those tedious jobs and making them as simple as asking a question.

Keyword research with AI just keeps getting easier and more powerful with models connected to the internet. And everyone wants a piece of it – even Ahrefs has introduced AI features to their keyword tools.

I find that AI is good for generating keywords, but you won’t always know if they’re keywords worth chasing, unless you dig further.

(By the time I post this, there will probably be 30 new AI keyword research tools that do it all for you without lifting a finger.)

I like the promise of AI for keywords. Because it’s based on past data and is sort of predicting the most likely outcome based on trends and things it has “read,” it is going to find commonalities between thousands and thousands of documents and give you keywords based on its findings. Even though that is a basic understanding of how it does what it does, it is still powerful stuff.

Just remember, while keywords are important if you just slap a bunch of them in your article, you’ll find your rankings failing. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get a page to the Top 10, but like anything weak on content, it will be discovered and de-ranked.

Write authentic articles from your experiences and expertise. Be human. Talk to people and solve their problems. This is the way to win Google’s hearts and readers’ minds. Or is that the other way around?

On-Page SEO Techniques to Boost Your Blog Posts

There is more to SEO than just a bunch of words. The technique matters, too. How you structure your posts and connect the dots will help Google understand your site, which leads to better rankings.

Using Headers for Structure

If you scroll back through many of the posts here, you’ll see that we have touched on the topic of crafting compelling headers and using logical structure and flow to your site. H1 should be your post title, H2 covers your broad topic headers, H3 gives you the opportunity to define sub-topics with that, and it goes on and on. You probably shouldn’t go too much deeper than H3 or H4, but there are always logical exceptions to every rule.

Make your headers interesting, but keep them informative. They should act as signposts for those scanning through your article and they will give Google the keys to understanding what your article is about and help it determine how to rank you.

Link From Within

Linking from post to post will help your users find other content and show Google the path to index more pages.

There are a lot of theories on the best linking strategies, but I have found a few simple things to work well:

• Don’t just link because you feel the need, use it to provide more context or a deeper discussion of something you’re mentioning.
• Utilize the “pillar post” and “supporting article” method to build a good portion of your content. You can go astray occasionally, but this method will help you build more content faster.
• Use technology to help you. I use the Link Whisper plugin for WordPress, and I love it. It suggests links, reports on inbound and outbound links, and even helps me locate older, dead links.

You Have to See It to Believe It

If your site is 100% words and 0% visual content, you will lose. We’re visual creatures and need to see it to believe it. Our eyes process more information than any other sense, and visual content is key to good on-page SEO.

Not only does visual content break up the wall of words, but it can also be used to convey complex ideas in quick and easy-to-understand bursts.

Don’t forget to properly name your files (they should be sensible and relate back to the topic), optimize your images (making them smaller and quicker to load), and use alt text to guide search engines and those who can’t see and use tech like a screen reader to help them enjoy the web.

Creating High-Quality, Engaging Content

As we mentioned earlier, Google’s E-E-A-T formula needs to be part of your content creation process. The better you adhere to it, the higher your rankings. But it doesn’t benefit just where you sit in the search engine results, it affects who you are as a writer.

When visitors are searching, they found something about your title and meta description to click on your post. They were looking for something. They think they may have found it.

If you fail to deliver in this moment, your bounce rate will soar sky high and you’ll never get very far.

You have to deliver engaging, interesting, and accurate content.

Without it, you are nothing.

With some of the writing techniques we’ve talked about, a good post structure, quality visuals, and a focus on giving the reader what they’re looking for, you can create killer content.

Just remember, be yourself. I can’t stress it enough. Google loves authenticity.

Technical SEO: Ensuring Your Blog is Search Engine Friendly

You may need to get a bit nerdy to tackle some of the technical SEO on your site or perhaps hire someone to do it for you, but a slow site that isn’t mobile friendly can be a deal killer.

Site speed is very important. Just think back…have you ever visited a site that took too long to load, so you bailed on it? Of course you have. We all have. No one likes waiting. Some of us more hate it even more than others, but I’ve never met anyone that said, “Gee, I really enjoy sitting on this page waiting for the images to load.”

(Well, I guess we said that in the dial-up days, but that’s another story for another day. Waiting for images back then was still painful.)

According to MobiLoud, mobile devices account for 58.21% of internet traffic. That’s over half of the traffic on the internet, so if you’re website looks like garbage on a mobile device, you’re going to miss out.

Fortunately, most developers got hip to responsive web design years ago, so most of your WordPress themes are going to look decent on a mobile phone. The question is, do they look good enough?

If you’re seeing a high bounce rate from mobile devices, take a look at your site on a phone and see why.

There are lots of different plugins and tweaks you can make to a website to make it speedier, and we’ll probably get into these technical aspects in a future series.

Building a Strong Backlink Profile

Backlinks used to be all the rage. If you had enough links from other sites back to your site, Google loved you. But then the dark times came…

Once people learned that backlinks matter, site owners started finding ways to build backlinks at any cost. From buying links to building link farms, backlinking became the simplest way to get ranked well.

But, Google is, as always, smarter than we are.

Once they realized what was happening, they began punishing sites for bad links, shady sites that seemed to exist for only one purpose (backlinks), and just generally demoting the value of backlinks.

They never went away, and they’re still important, but there are many who argue that they are not your ticket to the big leagues and not even something to concern yourself with.

I still think backlinks are important enough to warrant a discussion. While they aren’t your ticket to stardom, they will certainly improve your credibility and authority – and what did we learn about Google?

Many bloggers obtain backlinks through guest posting on other sites. It’s a practice that goes back to the early days of blogging, but as links became more important, more bloggers started working on guest posts and offering up their work to other sites. This means that it’s a crowded marketplace and if you’re going to get noticed, you’re going to need high quality content.

Speaking of which, high quality content is one of the best methods to build links. If you’re writing good stuff and ranking well for it, people will inevitably link to you (because linking to other authoritative sites shows you have knowledge in the niche and recognize/read other blogs). If you build it, they will come kind of stuff.

I guess I could say it about any aspect of SEO, really – don’t over-focus on any of it. A little bit of this and a little bit of that will add up and give you what you’re looking for. The main thing is to focus on producing content that people want to read. If no one wants to read it, all the SEO in the world won’t help you.

User Experience (UX) and Its Impact on SEO

I used to want to be a UX Designer so bad. I love trying out sites (or apps) and seeing if I can break them. Looking for flaws and places where the flow isn’t right or something doesn’t work. I like to click on things and see what happens.

Your site structure should be straightforward and easy to understand, particularly if you have a niche that would attract people who may not speak your language. Menus shouldn’t be overly complicated, and the names of menu items should be clear.

There is a lot you can do with visuals to lead the eyes to where you want visitors to go (there’s a whole psychology to good UX).

Keeping your posts visually interesting and allowing them to be scannable can increase on-page time, which Google loves to see. Bounce rate, bad; page time, good. I’m reminded of Animal Farm – it’s a good way to remember that (yes, it’s an affiliate link – if you haven’t read Animal Farm for some strange reason, you need to change that immediately).

Anything you can do to keep people on a page longer is going to help your site. If you can do that and get them to click through to other pages and repeat the process a few times, even better.

Bounce rate is the thing to avoid. And it’s exactly what it sounds like – people hit your page, bounce right off it, and go somewhere else. If your bounce rate is high, that means people aren’t reading your content and Google is not going to reward you for that.

Google also measures what they call “Core Web Vitals,” which can be a bit trickier. I have struggled with it on different sites, and some of the information out there about them is either unhelpful or confusing.

Core Web Vitals essentially boil down to whether your page loads fast enough or are we all getting bored waiting for it. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, but as I said, I’ve had some issues with it on different sites and found it to be a little too techy for me.

Just know that there are plenty of places to get help with these stats (including direct from Google), but also be aware that you’re heading down a rabbit hole of geekery that may be more than you’re prepared for.

Content Promotion and Distribution

Once you have killer content, you must let the world know you have it. Otherwise, you’re just a pinprick of light in the infinite black space of the internet.

So how do you do that?

These days, social media offers an excellent opportunity for bloggers to cross-promote their work. There are so many platforms and there are strategies for all of them. My advice? Find the ones you enjoy using and focus there. No one has time to be on every platform all at once. Don’t try. Focus and deliver quality on a handful of platforms and you’ll find you get much better results.

Even though we all hate the constant spam we seem to be receiving, there has never been a better marketing tool than email. Building an email list and developing a newsletter around your blog will put you in front of people where they spend a lot of time – their inboxes.

And don’t skip online communities and forums. From Reddit and Quora to Facebook groups and other communities in your niche, there is a lot of opportunity if you spend the time to get to know people in the forum. Don’t be pushy, don’t jam your content down anyone’s throat, and follow the group’s rules. You will succeed in these groups most when you listen first.

Measuring and Analyzing Your SEO Success

Between Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you should be able to identify what’s working and what’s not. Of course, if your site is new, you need to give it time – numbers won’t look awesome to start.

Google Analytics measures traffic and engagement, while Search Console focuses on search traffic. It allows you to see what keywords people are using to find you and how effective those keywords are.

Using both in tandem gives you an excellent picture of your blog’s performance and overall stature in the online community.

You can also use tools like Ahrefs to dig deeper into your site and get more analysis. Once you start using it, you’ll see you become hooked on the data and insights it provides.

Staying Ahead: Future-Proofing Your SEO Strategy

SEO is a changing game, and if you want to be visible in the search engines, you need to pay attention to the industry.

Watch SEO blogs like the ones at Ahrefs or SurferSEO. While both will obviously focus on solutions offered by their respective products, they are also a fountain of SEO knowledge and insight.

Ask lots of questions in SEO communities and try new things (but don’t fully invest in any one thing unless you know it’s absolutely going somewhere).

With the rise of AI, many searches are changing. AI can provide quick answers, and that has scared many bloggers and site owners. However, AI needs source material to answer questions, and while it can lead to a reduction in search traffic, it could also lead to an increase if you produce solid, engaging content that does what? That’s right…provides the answers to search users’ questions.

That’s a Wrap

Incorporating these SEO best practices into your blog content strategy isn’t just about climbing the search rankings – it’s about creating a better experience for your readers and establishing your brand as an authority in your niche. Remember, SEO is a long game and you need to be in it to win it. Stay consistent, keep learning, and watch your blog transform into a traffic-generating powerhouse. There is a lot to learn, but much of it will come through interaction with other bloggers and good, old fashioned trial and error. Ready to take your blog to new heights? Start implementing these strategies today and see the results for yourself. Your future readers will thank you…they just have to find you first.