You’ve done the hard work, put in the hours of research to ensure your content is the best it can be and your blog post is now ready to go live. Or is it?
You know SEO is important but what does it actually mean? SEO can get very complicated as you dive further into the technical complications of crawlers and site architecture but, fear not, there are also some crucial, simple considerations that can have a valuable impact on your content’s potential ranking.
1. Platform
If you’ve not yet launched your blog, you’re in the enviable position of being able to make life as easy for yourself as possible. A number of popular blogging platforms, such as Wordpress, take the hard work out of SEO for you. There are a whole host of plugins available that can help your optimise your content and even highlight how optimised your post is. Yoast SEO is one of the most popular. If you’re not lucky enough to have a good platform to work with, make sure you speak to your developers. Ask them if SEO has been considered when choosing the platform. Here’s a useful guide to the most popular blogging platforms currently available.
Frequent posts encourage search engines to return and crawl your site regularly while planning and building out related posts helps to cement your ongoing content strategy
2. Headings and Title
Consider your content’s headings, you will have seen the H1/H2/H3 headings in your blog editor. These are more than just style guides, they actually suggest a level of importance to search engines. So if H1 is just the word ‘read’ while H6 is a keyword-rich relevant phrase, you’re doing yourself a disservice. The same is true for your article title. Keep it short, to the point and relevant.
3. Cross-link
Links are the backbone of the internet. They are how search engines navigate pages and websites, discovering content and learning how popular it is. Ensure you’re actively cross-promoting your content by linking between articles. Use tags where appropriate and don’t forget the all important anchor text!
4. Build on your content
Directly related to cross-linking, try to ensure you are always thinking one step ahead. If you’re writing a post about puppies this week, can you follow it up with a related post about kittens next week? Frequent posts encourage search engines to return and crawl your site regularly while planning and building out related posts helps to cement your ongoing content strategy.
5. Remember your image files
A simple fix that often gets forgotten is ensuring your images are as meticulously crafted as your text. Make sure that your filename, image title and your alt text are taken into consideration. This can mean additional traffic from Google images as well as ensuring user friendliness.
6. Encourage back linking and social media sharing
Social media signals are taken into account by Google’s algorithm, as well as the ever-important backlinks. Your own social media platforms must be strong in order to help promote your content both socially and for search engines so spend time building your profiles. This won’t happen overnight. Be patient.
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