How to rank your site using SEO
In this post, we’ll share our blog post SEO checklist to help you optimize your blog posts for SEO like a pro. Doing so will help you consistently get more traffic to your site.
Ready to get started with the blog post SEO checklist that will help you get results from your content marketing?
1. Plan Your Content with Keyword Research
Before you start writing your blog post, you have to do keyword research. If you want to dominate the search results, you’ll have to make sure you write about topics that people are looking for. This is also a great way to find new blog post ideas.
Many bloggers just use their best guesses to write about topics they feel their users would be interested in. But you don’t need to rely on blind guesses, especially when you can do keyword research to find out exactly what your users are looking for.
Keyword Research Helps You Discover Data-Based Topics
Keyword research is a technique used by content creators and SEO experts. It helps you discover topics your users are interested in based on data from search engines. You can then use these keywords to plan your content strategy.
We recommend using keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, or Ahrefs to check the search volume and get examples of related keywords.
For more details, please visit WPBeginner’s post on how to do keyword research for your blog posts.
Now that you know how to find keywords to plan your content strategy, let’s move on to deciding your focus keyphrase.
Decide Your Focus Keyphrase
After you’ve done your keyword research and discovered keyword ideas, it’s time to pick a phrase that has the highest search volume, as well as low competition.
This will be your focus keyphrase. It’s the search phrase that your users are most likely to look for.
Let’s show you how to add your focus keyphrase using the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market, All in One SEO (AIOSEO). AIOSEO is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins on the market. The over 100 million downloads are a perfect testament to that. That’s why smart website owners use the plugin to help them boost their rankings and drive qualified traffic to their sites.
Once you’ve installed and activated AIOSEO on your site, you have access to all the best SEO tools and features. Examples include Link Assistant for building strategic links and IndexNow for immediate indexing of your new and edited content. These and other AIOSEO features will make your blog post SEO an easy and quick process.
FYI, AIOSEO has a free version, as well as Pro and Elite versions with more advanced features.
Find Related Keywords
The next thing you need to do is find your related keywords. Needless to mention, these are the searches related to your focus keyphrase.
The easiest way to find them is to simply enter your focus keyphrase in Google Search and scroll down to the bottom of the results. There you’ll find them listed as ‘related searches’.
These are related keywords for the keyphrase blog post SEO checklist:
Optimize the Length of Your Blog Post
When optimizing the length of your blog post, you need to make sure it has a minimum of 300 words. However, keep the length of your post balanced. You don’t want it too long and you don’t want it too short.
Google likes long blog posts, but if they are too long, it can scare users away and they easily lose interest.
For blog SEO purposes, the ideal length is 2,100-2,400 words, according to HubSpot data.
However, we would recommend you only write long blog posts when you know you’re a skilled writer. Also, make sure every word adds value to your post, don’t add words just to increase the word count. Doing that will make your post less engaging and authoritative, resulting in higher bounce rates.
Statistics have shown that web pages that link out to high-DR (Domain Rating) resources rank higher than those that don’t. Domain Rating measures the strength of a site’s backlink profile, meaning how many pages link to that site.
It’s therefore good to link out to other sites. Just make sure you link to relevant, high-quality content.
Tips on How to Write the Best Content on a Topic
Here are some tips on how to write the best content on a topic:
- Create original content, not just copy other people’s content
- Write strong headlines that trigger specific emotional responses
- Make your content actionable, and give visitors a sense of how to apply the information
- Provide answers to questions
- Write engaging content and make readers want to reflect on your content
- Include videos and images to better illustrate your point and improve the overall user experience
Rank Your Content With This Blog Post SEO Checklist
To summarize this complete blog post SEO checklist, we want to share our final thoughts and remind you about a few things.
