Ensuring that your blog post is both useful and attractive is crucial. However, the ultimate validation of your efforts comes from search engines, particularly when your site is featured on the main page of Google.
So, how can you write a blog that rises to the top of Google? What strategic modifications are essential for achieving this goal? These and other pertinent questions are addressed in our post below. Use the Blog SEO Checklist below for quick access to any section within this blog. Be sure to grab a pen and paper to jot down these valuable tips as you continue reading!
Blog SEO Checklist:
What is SEO?
- Search engine optimization explained
- The importance of Google first page placement
- What Google search is looking for to place you on the first page
How to make your blog post appear on the first pages of Google
- Competition research
- Creating engaging blog title
- Meta Description
- Keyword research
- Content Relevance
- Internal and external links
- Scalability
- Responsive website
- Page load speed
- Domain and page authority
JoseOne can help reach the first page of Google!
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization explained
Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility in Google and other search engines whenever people search for products you sell and/or services you provide.
SEO is an extremely competitive market that changes at a relentless pace. Google alone changes its own algorithm on a daily basis so keeping up with these changes is extremely difficult but necessary if you want your organic traffic to be consistent and continue to improve.
With SEO changes coming daily and significant updates always in the works, SEO is, has and will keep changing as the market and consumer behavior changes. Google’s search engine results are designed to maximize the user’s experience, while minimizing the marketer’s ability to manipulate those results and because of this our SEO experts must continue to improve their SEO strategies.
The importance of Google first page placement
Research indicates that only 10% of users search past the first page in Google search results. Consequently, 90% of traffic is concentrated on the first page results, which is why it is so important that you blog content be listed within Google’s first page results.
What Google search is looking for to place you on the first page
Before expecting your blog posts to appear on the first page of Google, it is essential to understand what Google is looking for when it decides what blog posts will rank the highest.
Once we understand what Google is looking for, we can adjust our blog content to meet Google’s expectations. Most SEO experts will tell you that Google expects to find quality content on your website or blog and ranks you pages accordingly, but that is actually not true. What Google is looking for is user interaction and maximum session time.
Google does not set out to decide the quality of your content, instead it measures how much time users spend enjoying your content, and this is referred to as session time. The more session time your blog post(s) receive, the higher Google will rank your content.
With successful implementation of quality content, a company is more likely to achieve better search engine results, leading to greater financial returns.
How to make your blog post appear on the first pages of Google
Competition research
Before you start writing your next blog page, you are encouraged to visit Google and search for existing articles similar to what you want to write about that are already on the first page of Google results. Review these articles for ideas on how to approach writing your next blog as there is a reason why they are on the first page of Google. You will find that most if not all of the tips that follow were used to get the existing article to page one of Google.
Creating engaging blog title
When assessing the quality and content of a blog, similar to judging a book by its cover, the title plays a crucial role. For instance, when searching for products and services, users are more likely to choose a link that concisely offers the sought information without unnecessary details.
This highlights the importance of an attractive title, which should also include relevant keywords to optimize search engine visibility. Additionally, it is advised to keep titles under 60 characters to ensure readability and avoid truncation on search result pages. This approach not only enhances readability but also maintains the effectiveness of the message being conveyed.
Meta Description
The meta description serves as a concise preview of the content available in your blog post. Since it is displayed in search results, it is crucial to accurately convey whether the content meets the user’s needs. With a 160-character limit, the description should include the keyword and compelling language to capture attention.
Keyword research
For individuals seeking to understand how to rank in the top Google search results, one key factor stands out: the importance of Keywords, also known as key terms in English. They are named as such because they direct not only the development and setup of the content but also guide the reader on the topic being discussed. Due to their critical role in driving SEO, keywords should be strategically placed in:
- Beginning of the title tag (H1 tag)
- Meta description
- H2 anf H3 subtitles
- Beginning of the text (first 100 words)
- Blog page URL
- Image alt tags
- Main content
Content Relevance
The term “relevance” pertains to the degree to which the information on a website, or in this case blog page, aligns with a search query. Factors that determine relevance include visible text, images, videos, and meta elements such as title, meta description, and alt tags.
Relevant content is of paramount importance to search engines like Google because their aim is to present search results that closely match users’ various search queries. Ultimately, the goal is to provide a satisfactory user experience. However, this is not purely altruistic, as search providers are also commercial entities seeking to generate revenue through paid advertisements on search results pages. The closer the search results align with a user’s query, the greater the trust users will have in the results and, by extension, in the search engine itself.
Internal and external links
It is crucial to consider the use of links within the file. When using external links, you are essentially providing additional sources of information for the content being created. However, it is imperative to ensure reliability when including external links, as it not only impacts SEO but also reflects on the credibility of your blog.
If your content is comprehensive and valuable but directs the reader to an unreliable source with false information, it can lead to a lack of trust in your page’s links. Using internal links within your website indicates to the platform that your content is cohesive and interconnected, ultimately contributing to the creation of a network of valuable content. This strategy also encourages users to explore more of your site’s offerings, thereby nurturing their engagement and progress through the funnel.
Probably the most important advice relating to internal and external links, is to check all the links in your new blog page before taking it live. I had 3 broken links in this blog page before I completed my final test run.
Scalability
SEO scalability involves a forward-thinking approach to optimization that focuses on achieving exponential growth in search engine results. This is accomplished by strategically implementing both technical SEO and on-page SEO techniques on a large scale to expand your online presence over time.
One of the primary challenges companies encounter when striving to enhance their SEO strategy is a lack of efficiency. Producing content in large quantities is a significant undertaking, and without a clear framework to support the increased volume, things can quickly unravel.
Proactively planning for SEO scalability can be a game-changer in this scenario. You can select the scaling SEO strategies that best align with your future goals, and then establish foundational processes to generate content while minimizing the additional time, energy, or resources required.
Be sure to visit my blog page dedicated to SEO scalability (Coming Soon!)
Responsive website
Have you ever visited a blog on your mobile device and noticed that the layout, images, and text were all out of place, creating an uncomfortable design? This could be a website that isn’t following the guidelines for a responsive blog.
Responsive design is a technique that allows users to navigate a website regardless of the device they are using. Since it directly impacts user experience, Google prioritizes sites that invest in this kind of adaptation through HTML, CSS, or Javascript to provide better user experiences to diverse audiences.
Page load speed
One thing is for sure: with the advancement of technology and internet usage, more and more users show impatience and little tolerance for websites and blogs that take time to open. We have left a generation of dial-up internet for a faster habit. Thus, it is even understandable that this is an interesting criterion when analyzing SEO.
According to an experiment carried out by Forbes, users are less and less likely to read articles that have a “slow” (about 3 seconds or more for the page to load). So, this should be a point of attention so as not to alienate readers from your blog!
But how do you make your blog pages load as fast as possible? One of our partners WebYoda created a Need For Speed video that shows you how to optimize your website and blog page load times to meet or exceed the 3 second goal. You can view the video here.
Domain and page authority
All the previous advice is referred to as on-site SEO Solutions, things you can do to improve your SEO by improving your website. But there is another side to SEO referred to as off-site SEO Solutions, things you can do to improve your SEO via backlinks.
If you are familiar with SEO, you have probably come across the terms Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA). Both these metrics offer insights into your site’s SEO strength and its potential ranking on search engines such as Google. The most crucial element influencing a DA score is backlinking.
A backlink is a link from any other website that links to your website. Backlinks are the nucleus of every successful SEO campaign as they are essential for a search engine to determine the popularity (or importance) of your website. Most search engines, specifically Google, will consider websites with the most high-quality backlinks as more relevant websites in search result pages.
The quality of a backlink can be measured by determining the website score. The more high-quality backlinks your website has the more search engines will like your website and the more high-quality backlinks the sites linking to you have the better search engines will like those websites, which further improves how much search engines like your website.
To significantly raise your DA, it’s essential to have reputable sites with a high number of backlinks linking back to your site. You can achieve this by creating guest posts and running backlinking campaigns. Another approach is to produce high-quality content and hope that other sites will eventually notice and link back to you. However, this passive method is less likely to yield the desired results.
Creating backlinks yourself is doable, and we have a DIY guide to do just that, but it is a very time consuming and potentially a very expensive approach making backlinks in house. The whole reason JoseOne exists, is to provide quality backlinks for websites at an affordable rate and will most likely cost far less than doing them yourself.
JoseOne can help reach the first page of Google!
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