Photo Credit: Christian Schnettelker/Flickr
If you want your blog posts to be read by anybody other than you and your mom, it's incumbent upon you to do some optimization to make sure you give your content the best chance possible at getting ranked in the search engines, or better yet, be shared by people far and wide.
Many are confused however at just how they should accomplish optimizing their blog posts for SEO. To be honest, basic optimization is quite easy, and you'll be far ahead of your competition by the time you finish reading this post! Take a look at these 5 tips that will help you optimize your blog posts quickly and easily.
5 Blog post optimization tips
1. Target specific keywords – Primary among your tasks is to know what keywords you are targeting. Like it or not, writing to be found in the search engines mandates that you give them a clear road map to where you'd like to be found. Pick one primary keyword plus several secondary for each post, and be sure they are in the title, first sentence or two, and then when needed throughout your post. DO NOT overload and stuff your post; it won't help and WILL hurt!
2. Shorter, more visual content – People skim web pages and in spite of the fact that this is your baby, they will skim here too. Help make your content more readable by breaking up any long blocks of text into shorter paragraphs, and adding interesting visuals.
3. Entice with compelling headlines – Remember that people love to skim? A great way to slow them down a bit is by inserting a headline that either raises a question or makes a claim that they need to find out about.
4. Enable social sharing – Be sure your blog is linked up to your social media channels, and that your buttons are conspicuously displayed on each post. These days it is a social world, and you want to extend your reach as far as possible.
5. Are you using responsive design? – Since over half of all blog posts are now first read on a mobile device, you must be sure yours are displaying properly. Responsive design will make sure that you will be seen clearly across any platform.