Access a free SEO Checklist for blog posts.
It can be extremely frustrating to balance writing with SEO. Many people write a blog that beautifully communicates their point, only to go back and add in keywords and optimizations.
The problems with optimizing after a blog is written are:
It’s frustrating.
It can ruin the flow of your blog and seem unnatural to readers.
It tends to cause the need to rewrite sections.
For these reasons, it’s essential to start planning for SEO in the outline phase of your blogs.
The SEO planning phase is super simple - keyword research and planned word count.
How long should my blog posts be for SEO?
As a rule of thumb, and SEO blog needs to have a minimum of 800 words.
And the higher the word count, the better. Mostly. Google takes engagement into consideration when ranking.
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As long as your lengthy blogs are engaging, you are in the clear. If writing 1000-word blog posts causes your engagement to suffer, you are risk to lose both rankings and conversions.
It’s important to break up your content with headings, bullet points, and numbered lists to keep reader’s full attention and help direct them to needed information.
How do I conduct keyword research for my blog?
Use Google’s keyword planner or Neil Patel’s tool called Ubersuggest.
Simply type in keywords that you think people will search related to your blog, and see what is recommended.
Ubersuggest also includes a “Content Ideas” tool that will help you come up with titles and focus points.
Choose 1-3 keywords with medium-low competition and high search volume of at least 30 queries per month on average.
Implement this SEO Checklist to maximize results.
Now that you have planned out which keywords you will incorporate into your blog, you are ready to start writing keeping these in mind!
Use H1, H2, H3, etc. that matches an outline format.
Customize the URL to include a keyword and describe the blog in as few words as possible (like this post - /seo-checklist-blog ).
Complete meta description and title tags. Incorporate your keywords, and make sure the text invites readers to click through!
Categorize your blog according to its related topics.
Add useful images with alt tags.
Check page speed and work with a developer to optimize what you can.
And there you have it! The basics are complete. The most important elements of your blog will be length, usefulness, and keyword use.
