How to Optimize Blog Posts for SEO – Necessary SEO Tactics

How to optimize blog posts for SEO the right way is something covered a lot on this blog and that’s because your website / blog is basically your homebase, think of it as your online real estate. You need your property to be built the right way if it is to sustain its structure and do it’s intended job.

What are you going to learn by reading this?

  • How to take the best of what type of SEO your competitors are doing on their blog and spin it into something undeniably beneficial for yourself.
  • How to quickly and effectively look for the right keywords and content in the blog you need, taking all the guesswork out of the equation for you.
  • How to better structure your articles to keep them reading longer so your bounce rates stay where they need to be.
  • And we’ll toss in a best blog ideas for sourcing the best content possible which you can simply embed right into your blog posts, saving you the hard work and extra time of doing it all yourself.

Matching The Competition of Blogs To Jump Ahead

Maybe you’ve already got a great blog going and all your SEO is done just right but you’re still not quite getting the results you’ve hoped for, what do you do?

The simple answer to that is you see what everyone at the top of the search results are doing in their blog and you take the best of the best parts & pieces then spin it into something truly awesome and easy to understand SEO friendly blog posts for your own blog.

Let’s break this down into steps, shall we?


Step One: User Intent

Find a topic, an offer you wish to promote, something for your blog article. Take the most basic keyword you can come up with for this keyword and run it through Google to find the top results.

Once you’ve done this you’ll notice that a pattern will emerge within the titles of most search results, this is how we’re going to decode the intention behind this keyword as well as find some of the more popular and related keywords to go along with this initial keyword.

Keyword Research

For this example we’ll go with “how to lose belly fat” because the weight loss niche is a popular one and easy to follow along with. Let’s open up the first five pages of the search results in order to look at the headlines and subheads for each page.

Content Breakdown | Powerhouse Affiliate

A quick snapshot of one page shows you just what to look for. All of the bold, bigger text which breaks the content of the entire article up into pieces are going to contain keywords in many cases. Take note of these keywords in a note document for later use.

As you are scrolling through the different pages for your own search results you want to take mental notes on what each page is trying to offer the reader in terms of information. Do all of these pages follow a central theme? Are there bits of information being repeated and shared across multiple sites? If so then it’s a good idea to note this also so you can follow the leader so to speak. The general idea here is looking at these top pages within Google to see what commonalities they each have so you can take the best elements and put them into your own blog posts.

Finding What They Need

The difference between what a reader wants and what they need is often found in the top results of a Google search.

People will often times search for some general term because they don’t know exactly or specifically what they want but they know they want something in that general direction. It is then up to the top search results to fill in the blanks and show them helpful information to complete the loop.

So, when you are taking these steps to research what you should write about it’s very important to figure out what information is floating to the top of the searched results. This again goes back to noting what common themes are being seen and coming up with your own version of it later.

Once you have figured out the most common ‘stuff’ being offered you can decide if your readers are looking for something to buy or if they just want to find information to satisfy a curiosity. Not all keywords will be well suited for selling something but you don’t have to disregard these types of keywords entirely. They could still be used to write posts which will yield a good amount of traffic for valuable ad revenue on your blog if you happen to monetize your site with ads.


Step Two: Find Useful Information

It’s not only important to find what information is best suited for your intended topics but you also need to know the best way to compose it. There are different ways to present information and in many cases one form will be preferred over another for various markets and keywords.

The easiest way to figure this out is yet again to simply look at the first page results of a Google search and basically copy the style of information you see there. Take these examples into mind…

The cause of belly fat, followed by different causes which are given in numbered fashion.

Find Useful Information

Four steps for beating belly fat, yet another example which provides numbered steps to follow.

Find Useful Information

But here’s what you can do to do SEO as a blogger… Start simple. Yet another numbered breakdown of ‘steps’ one can take to help shed those extra inches around their waist and midsection.

SEO as a blogger

As we can see, there is a common theme forming here and in this particular case it is the numbered snippets of suggestions. It just so happens that this style of writing is very common in most things but it’s always a good idea to look at the top pages first just to be sure of what exactly is most common so you can copy the style for yourself.

Find Shareable Content

One of the staples of good content is whether or not it’s “shareable” on social media sites. If you can find great content which is sure to be a hit among your audience to the point some people would even want to share it on their Facebook pages then you just might have a spike in viral traffic.

Things like clever videos, infographics and even amusing images with appropriate text on them related to your niche can do well for social sharing. To be sure you get the traffic back to your page and that you’re not just sending free traffic over to other pages you’ll want to be sure you embed this stuff into your own site and then share your pages which have the shareable content on it.

There are many options available to you for social sharing buttons if you happen to use WordPress for your sites. Here is an excellent FREE option in a plugin you can start with as soon as today:  https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-social-sharing


Step Three: Use Information & Satisfy User Intent

Let’s assume the SEO research is done and now you’re ready to write your own post with all the best of the best content you’ve discovered. Satisfying the two main aspects of user intent and user’s needs will be the focus of this final step.

It’s quite simple to do once you have looked at all the examples, taken note of the common themes amongst them all and discovered what they offer to the reader in order to satisfy a need.

When writing your own articles it’s usually a good idea to keep your introductions as well as your conclusions short and to the point. You can just give a quick rundown of what they can expect to learn from reading your post as well as what they’ve just learned at the end of your conclusion. Doing this in as few words as possible while still conveying the intent is going to help keep confusion and boredom down to a minimum.

Make Your Posts Look Nice

This is quite important because if someone shows up to your page and it’s nothing but a solid wall of text with no spaces in between key points, they’re probably going to go crosseyed and quickly exit your page.

Embed videos and images (and anything else you happen to put into your article body) in the appropriate places, don’t be afraid to break things up with empty spaces where needed and always use your header tags when needed. Not only do headers help SEO but they also make skimming your pages easier for the reader which is something most people do at the very beginning when determining if they will spend the time reading your entire article or not.

Give Plenty of Examples Where Possible

You don’t have to write an entire instructional manual for every blog post you create but it’s always a good idea to use examples where you can to at least illustrate concepts to the reader so that they will better understand what you wish to share.

This can be done with images showing examples of something or videos that explain something in more detail. More simple methods can also be bullet points and short lists that give step by step instructions walking the reader through something specific.


Which Keywords Should You Target?

This is tricky to answer with any certainty because it depends on a number of factors. However, if you think of it in terms of “is my site already an authority” vs. if it’s not then you’ll have an easier time picking the right keywords to aim for.

When performing your keyword research it’s a good idea to take monthly searches into account. For lower authority sites using lower search volume keywords tends to work best. You can of course sprinkle higher volume keywords throughout your blog posts so if your post really takes off it just might rank for those premium terms too.


How Much Should You Write?

The days of 500 word articles aren’t completely gone but you’re probably not going to rank very high in Google if you’re not coming up with stuff that’s at least 1,000 words or more. This can sometimes be offset if you have content on your pages that help keep readers on that page longer as bounce time counts toward your overall ranking score.

The reason content length matters is because the more words you have on a page, the more opportunity there is to place keywords, add media content and of course the longer it takes for someone to read through it all.


Where To Get Extra Content

YouTube is a great place to find an abundance of videos you can embed into your posts. Not only that but it of course will keep people on your page longer and that helps with bounce rates. Aside from videos you can also look for images on sites like

Additionally, you can oftentimes find some very interesting presentations to embed onto your pages from https://www.slideshare.net.

And if you’d like to take some information and create an infographic out of it then you can use the following link to a free tool which allows you to do just that with ease, https://www.canva.com/create/infographics.

The Rest is Up To You

It takes time and effort to create a great article that your readers will want to read but it’s very well worth it in the end to generate more views on your blog post. Not only will your hard work which you only have to do once per article pay off for potentially years to come, but there is also a nice compounding effect which comes with each new post you make on your website.

Traffic is of course extremely important and you’re probably not going to find speedy results with SEO, in fact you may find yourself waiting months to see any stunning results. The good news however is that there’s an alternative in the form of CPC traffic.

If you’re not yet sure how to jump into this form of traffic then let us teach you, give us a look via the banner image just below this text.

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