Blog Writing Tips For Search Engine Optimization

Published on 2 Feb 2012 at 6:32 pm. 1 Comment.
Filed under Google,Search Engine Optimization,writing.

Effective blog writing can be a tricky, time consuming thing to master. Some people think that you can just write a short response to an article and call it a day. Does this work?That depends on the goals of your blog. If you’re trying to grow your audience through search engines than the short response thing isn’t going to work.

Snapshot of the current blog post from my ASUS Transformer Prime

Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever do those types of posts (and if you do you should remember to cite your sources). But you need to remember that  search engines want content. If you’re just going to write short replies than you need to do it frequently. And by frequently I mean 10-15 times a day.

Blogging is about content

The best strategy is to create lengthy content. This doesn’t mean you should write a thesis for every post, but 300 words should be the minimum. Pick a keyword and generate your content around that keyword. The optimum keyword density for the blog post should be 1-3%.

Make sure that it appears in the following areas:

• The HTML <title> tag.
• The URL for the current page.
• The main page header (h1) tag, preferably in the very beginning.
• Other header tags (h2, h3, etc.) are not required, but really helpful. Try and use at least one.
• The opening paragraph, again preferably in the very beginning of the first sentence.
• In the URL for at least one of the images in the blog post.
• In the alt text for said image.
• The meta description for the blog post.

Your blog post needs to be easy to read. The Flesch Reading Ease test is an algorithm that can be used to approximate how your writing may be interpreted by others. The higher the score the easier it is others to understand what you’re writing about. I personally try to score at least a 60 on my blog posts. I am not a terse person by nature, so this algorithm reminds me to cut out unnecessary words and to break things into simpler sentences. This blog post is unusual in that it’s has a score of 82.1.

For anyone curious, the keyword for this post was “blog”. Did it seem obvious to you while reading? How did it read? The current keyword density is 4.76%, which is higher than the recommended 1-3%. Did it make the make the post seem forced? Consider this when writing your own blog posts.

This post was originally published as Blog Writing Tips For Search Engine Optimization for The BrandBuilder Company.