How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Post that can Outrank Your Competitors
By: Abhay Tiwari
Tags: Seo Tips, Blogging Tips, Blogposting, Article Writing, SEO

Do you want to write an SEO friendly Blog Post? Then you are in the right place, my friend. Just Read this Article until the End.

You can write an Optimized content based on some SEO techniques but writing a user-friendly Blog Post with proper optimization is an art and it comes with lots of practice.

Google search engine always gives more preference to user-friendly content rather than optimization. But it doesn’t mean that you should ignore the optimization part.

If you want to rank higher and outrank your competitors then SEO optimized content is important. But Never lose your content quality over-optimization.

The Simple logic behind this is, Search Engines are machines and it can only understand machine language. When you optimize your content then you include some keywords throughout your content. Google read those keywords and index your article based on user needs. But it doesn’t mean you can put keywords extensively, otherwise, Google will consider it as keyword stuffing and penalize your website.

So, the whole summary is, write a blog post that looks more natural and user-friendly and put a very small amount of keywords within the content so that the Search Engine also understands your article. And this art only comes after writing a quality Blog Post daily.

Here in this article, I am going to tell you each and everything that is essential for writing an SEO friendly as well as user-friendly Blog Post.

So, read each step carefully.

Let’s dive in.

Important Steps to Write an SEO Friendly Blog Post

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first and most important part of Blogs. Once you nailed down the right keyword then half of the battle you won. A right keyword can drive a maximum of your blog’s organic traffic.

But before that, you should have a clear idea about your user’s need, their pain point, solution for which they are looking.

To perform keyword research, You can use Google keyword planner, Google suggestion, Questions asked by people on Google, related search and so on. It can give you a clear idea of people’s needs and what they are looking for.

For a more in-depth understanding and research you can use any paid tool like Ahref, Semrush, etc. but if you don’t have a budget to buy a paid tool then there are so many free keyword research tools are also available.

Read this Article to learn about keyword research with Free tools.

Content Research and Collect Important Information

Quality content needs well-researched data and facts to support your content and build its authority. That’s why it is the second most important part of my list.

For writing a quality blog you don’t have to be an expert, only you should have more knowledge than your users. And this knowledge comes from research.

To perform content research, you can analyze your competitor’s posts and look for a loophole. Once you find a loophole just research about that on google and collect information and then write an in-depth article including all the facts and data which you have gathered by research.

If you are writing your own experience and story then you can avoid this part.

Type of your Blog Post

Before starting writing, you should always put your keyword in Google and search for types of posts that are currently ranking.

There are so many types of content like a listicle, how-to guides, roundups, and so on. You have to check which type of content suits your keyword.

For example, you can see below:-

Start Writing your Blog Post

Include Your main keyword in Title of Blog Post

When you write your Blog Post title then always use your main keyword in it. And if it is in starting then it could be the best sign of SEO but not recommended.

Blog title always comes under the H1 tag. That’s why you don’t need to include the H1 tag further in headings. You can only use H2, H3, H4 tags for headings and subheadings.

Use the main keyword in the first paragraph and last paragraph

It is best practice for SEO friendly Blog Post if your main keyword is in the first paragraph and in the last paragraph. Or if it is in the first line then it is more beneficial for SEO purposes. At the place of the main keyword, you can also use the LSI keywords.

Don’t know about the LSI keyword? Don’t worry, I am going to explain it in further points.

Use Keywords in Headings and Subheadings

Google gives preference to those contents that have headings and subheadings. Because it makes content easier to read.

That’s why put your secondary keywords or LSI keywords in headings and subheadings. Don’t put your main keyword in all headings and subheadings.

Use LSI keywords throughout the content

Google search engine is smart enough to understand the words and their related words or phrases. If you use your main keyword again and again in Blog Post then it looks like keyword stuffing and Google will penalize you for that. Your user will also get irritated by seeing the same word repeatedly and your content also loses its quality.

That’s why it is the best practice to use secondary keywords or LSI keywords in your content. So that your content looks natural.

LSI Keywords is nothing but related words to your main keyword. To find the LSI keyword you can use the LSIgraph free tool.

Just put your main keyword in the search bar and click search it will give you plenty of related keywords which you can include in your Blog Post. See the Example below.

Blog Post Structure and template

Content Structure is important to improve your Article readability so that users can read it without getting bored.

The first thing, Your sentence, and paragraph should be short. Don’t write long sentences otherwise, the user will feel bored and quickly exit your website and it can increase your bounce rate.

For example, you can see this article, How I have written it in short paragraphs.

Second thing Always split your content by using headings, subheadings, Bullet points and use bold words to indicate important things in your article.

Third thing, Don’t write short articles just for the sake of increasing no. of posts. Write at least 1000 words long and well-researched content. Long content always performs well in the search engine.

If you follow these above steps then your Blog Post would be user-friendly as well as well optimized and Google loves this type of content.

Now the Writing process is over. It’s time to optimize your Blog Post. In technical terms, we call it On-Page SEO.

Use Internal and External Linking

Internal linking helps Google to understand your website structure and help them to find important pages of your website and index it. It also passes the page authority to the important pages if you use it strategically.

So use internal linking in your article by using anchor text and Google also suggests that to use keywords in your anchor text so that it can help Google to understand your page. It will also be helpful for the user to find relevant content.

See this example of interlinking.

External Linking plays an important role in SEO and ranking. It is the link that points out some other domains from your domain. An outbound link that you have included in your article helps google to understand your niche and also build trust and authority in that niche.

To include an external link in your article you can put links of those websites from where you have researched your data, statistics and other related stuff.

For example, You want to write about SEO but you can’t write it as in-dept as MOZ has already written. In such a situation you can give the link of the Moz website for a related topic where you feel it needed.

Use Relevant Images or Infographics and Optimize it

Humans are visual creatures and they consume more content in the form of images, videos, and audio forms.

That’s why it is a more important practice to make your Blog Post Visually rich by including relevant images, infographics, videos in between your paragraph where it needed.

These images and videos make your content more user-friendly and meaningful. But google search engines never understand an image or video unless you will not optimize it.

To make your images and videos SEO friendly and searchable in the search engine you must include an ALT tag in all your images.

To include an ALT tag to your image you only have to put your main keyword or LSI keyword in the ALT tag box. After including it, your image will be fully SEO Optimized.

Main keyword in Slug/URL without using Stop Words

Google suggests keeping your post URL short and clean so that it will look professional and users will also trust it.

Using your main keyword in URL is the best practice in SEO for ranking higher. Because when a user performs a search then only 3 things appear in front of them.

Your Blog Post title

Blog Post URL

Blog Post Meta Description

Based upon these 3 things he is going to read your article. That’s why it is best practice to keep your URL short and include your main keyword in URL.

Another SEO practice is to not use stop words in your URL. For example:- “/how-to-write-a-seo-friendly-article/”, just avoid “how-to” or “a” these are stop words, “/write-seo-friendly-article/”. And search engines don’t like them in URL.

Keywords in the meta description

As I said in the above point, Meta description is the third thing which appears in front of the user. So this is the chance to attract your user by writing keyword rich descriptions so that after reading the user cannot resist reading your blog.

It is totally for users Google search engine not gives much preference to this. But users always read meta description and then decide to click on your post or not.

It is just like a small piece of information about your Article so that users can know that they will get a solution to their queries or not. And it can happen when you include your keyword naturally in description. Just see the below example.

After optimizing your Blog Post, It’s time to Publish but there are few things you should double check before Publishing.

Featured Image

Your Article must have a Featured image so that users can get the first impression about your post and click on it without thinking much.

Featured images work like a movie poster or trailer. After seeing it you decide whether you will watch this movie or not. That’s why it should be attractive, engaging, and creative so that it can create a first impression on users. And you know this quote very well,”First impression is the last impression.”

It is also helpful for SEO perspective.

Categories & Tags

Before publishing your post, make sure you have assigned it into relevant categories and used proper tags. Otherwise it will be very difficult for users to reach that particular post.

Proofreading your Blog Post twice or thrice

So many bloggers skip this part. After writing their post, they rush to publish it. Because of this they left so many grammatical mistakes or spelling mistakes in post.

If your content has grammatical or spelling mistakes then it creates a bad impression about you. People think that you are a novice and don’t have proper knowledge of english. That’s why they don’t prefer to read your next blogs.

Search engines also don’t like this type of content. Therefore always give twice or thrice full loud reading to your content after writing or before publishing. So that you can identify your mistakes.

To make this process simple you can use Grammarly. It is the best tool that can help you to write error free content.

Verify your inbound and outbound links

Before publishing once check your all links. Maybe by mistake you have included the wrong link. A wrong link can create a negative effect on your SEO.

After Checking all these steps Just take a deep breath and hit the Publish Button. Now your Blog is live.

After Publishing, you should always promote your latest content to all your social media channels so that your content can drive traffic to your blog instantly. Because SEO always takes time to rank.

Other than posting on social media, You should focus on link building of your blog. At the end of the day authority matters for ranking. And authority only comes by building high quality backlinks on your website.

Final Thoughts

Always keep one thing in mind, write a post only for users not for google. For google only you have to optimize it. So if you want to write an User friendly as well as SEO friendly Blog Post then make a checklist of all points which I have explained in this article and keep in front of you when you start optimizing.

It will help you to rank higher on Google first page. Always try to produce a high quality of content so that users can get some value from it.

That’s all from my side. If you also know some tips about SEO friendly Article then share with us in comment box we would love to read your points and learn something new which I forgot to include here or maybe I don’t have knowledge about that.

Thanks for staying with me till the End.

If you like this Blog Post then Share it on social media by giving an icon from the left side or just below the content.

Sharing is the best caring in this world.

This article originally published on Olivemine.com.