Tips for Successful Articles and a Great Blog

Most of us read blog posts regularly. In fact, you are reading one right now. The reason is simple: blogs are a powerful marketing tool. Around the world, thousands of businesses use blogs to promote their products and services and to build relationships with their customers. 7 million blog posts  are published every day because blogs can drive traffic, increase social reach, build user trust and improve search visibility. That only holds true, though, when the content is high-quality and specialised.

Building a blog that is strengthened by SEO techniques is a far more complex and demanding process than it may first appear.

That is why we will break down how you can optimise your blog for both the reader and the search engines.

All in all, you need to take your blog’s SEO seriously if you want more traffic, engagement and growth for your blog.

SEO tips for a blog

Now that you know why SEO matters for blogs, let’s look at the technical and content side of SEO, which is how search engines recognise the value of your blog and show it on their results pages. We will go through all the essential tips you need to follow to secure SEO success for your blog.

A closer look at your blog strategy

1. Understand your audience

Getting to know your audience lets you adapt your content and language to their interests and preferences. This can boost engagement, build a loyal following and ultimately lead to greater success for your blog. Understanding your audience also helps you make important decisions, such as which topics to write about, what tone to use and which type of content to prioritise. If you run a business, the first thing to do is find out what “pain points” your customers face and which burning topics they want to learn more about. Then use that knowledge to give them exactly the content they need through your blog.

Find out what your target audience needs by:

• Talking directly to your customers
• Exploring forums and websites.
• Reading social media and the groups they belong to
• Reading competitors’ blogs.
• Looking at and analysing reviews.
• Studying question-and-answer sites such as Quora.

You can also find out which topics are trending online by using BuzzSumo  , SE Ranking’s Idea Finder, and  Google Trends  .

If you don’t define your target audience, you will end up writing content for everyone and pleasing no one.

2. Create a list of keywords related to your business.

Each of your posts should focus on one specific query and tell a story from one angle. This helps you stay on topic, makes for a good reading experience and solves your audience’s problems (which is why they read your posts in the first place).

Start by making a list of core keywords that describe your overall topic. These are usually short, concise and broad, and they act as the starting point for your keyword research. Then expand your list with more precise keywords for your articles.

This is where keyword suggestion tools come in. They give you a complete list.

The design of your website plays a part too, of course. The homepage is a typical example of modern website design. Clean, bold typography and vivid images grab the user’s attention straight away. The site is easy to navigate, with a simple menu at the top that gives users quick access to its different sections. Generous white space makes the content easy to read and take in. Overall, the WebMate website is an excellent example of modern web design that engages users effectively.

3. Research your competitors to find keyword opportunities.

Once you have a list of keywords, you can apply the same research process to each of your competitors. This will broaden your list of keyword ideas and help you identify your main competitors in the industry. You can do this either manually, by checking the SERPs for each keyword, or with specialised tools. For example, in SE Ranking’s Keyword Research tool you can enter the keyword and go to the Organic SERP History section, which gives you data on your top competitors in the search engine results pages and shows how each of them has performed over time.

Pick the relevant websites from the list that performed well, and you are ready for the next step: collecting your competitors’ keywords for your blog.

Pay particular attention to the keywords that bring your competitors the most traffic. If these topics are missing from your website, covering them can bring you significant benefits.

Another approach is to look manually through the blog posts of your competitors. Look for recurring topics or themes and note the keywords they use to describe them. That way you can add them to your list and get insight into the kinds of content that connect with your target audience.

4. Check how effective your keywords are

Once you have identified your competitors’ keywords and gathered them into a list, it is important to assess how effective they are. First, consider the search volume of each keyword. This makes sure your potential readers are actually interested in these topics.

Focus on keywords with high search volume. The higher the search volume for a keyword, the more people are searching for it, which also means it has more potential to drive traffic to your blog.

But don’t be blinded by the amount of traffic keywords get. If your website is new and you want to avoid being trampled by your competitors, you should also take into account the difficulty. This metric measures how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword in the SERPs. A high difficulty score means it will be a challenge to rank for that keyword, while a low score points to a good opportunity to target it. The key is to find a metric that accurately reflects the level of competition for a specific keyword, so you can make informed decisions about which keywords to target in your SEO strategy.

A popular tool for measuring keyword difficulty is Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Score, which takes into account factors such as the number and quality of backlinks, how relevant the page content is to the keyword, and the authority of the website. With a reliable keyword difficulty tool, you can improve your content and increase your chances of ranking high in the search results. Balance search volume and difficulty. Competitive keywords with high traffic numbers may look attractive, but you might do better targeting less competitive keywords with lower traffic.

Another metric to consider when analysing and choosing keywords is… Cost per click. This metric measures the cost of each click on an ad for a specific keyword. Even if you don’t run ads, you should know how valuable this keyword is to your competitors, so you can achieve better rankings in organic search results.

A high value here shows that a large group of advertisers are trying to get ahead of the organic results. It will be harder to reach the top of the organic results if the market is heavily influenced by ads.

5. Remove irrelevant keywords

The next step is to remove any terms that won’t help you build an SEO strategy for your blog. Remove the following types of keywords from your list:

• Keywords with very low search volume. These may not be worth targeting, because your target audience may not be interested in such topics.
• Keywords with high competition. These keywords probably already have many web pages optimised for them, which makes it hard to rank high for them on search engine results pages.
• Keywords that don’t fit your content or business: For example, if you run a clothing shop, targeting “home appliances” may not be relevant to your audience.
• Keywords that are too general. For example, if you are a small local bakery, choosing the keyword “pastry production” may not be specific enough to attract your target audience.

6. Group keywords by search intent

It is worth noting that blogs that create content purely to rank for specific queries in the SERPs are often disorganised. This can cause pages on your site with similar topics to start competing with each other in the SERPs, resulting in keyword cannibalisation. To avoid chaos on your blog, group keywords by search intent and apply what is known as clustering or grouping.

Analyse the search intent behind each keyword. You can identify its type (informational, navigational, transactional or commercial) by answering these questions:

• Are people entering this query to find information, products or services?
• What questions are they trying to answer?
• What problems are they trying to solve?

This way you can uncover answers to questions and pin down the search intent behind each keyword.

Leave out keywords with transactional intent. Create guides (e.g. “how to”, “tutorial”, “guide”) to give your audience useful guidance that answers their search queries.

Working manually with thousands of keywords can take hours, if not days. Working with keywords this way is also only partly accurate, because some terms require you to check the SERP.

You can automate this process with a dedicated Keyword Grouper tool. It sorts keywords into groups based on how similar their SERP results are. Keywords are clustered together if they get similar results in the top 10 SERP results of Google.

Once you have groups of related keywords with informational intent, you can create separate blog articles around them. Producing high-quality content also takes organisation, which is why you need a content plan.

7. Create a content plan

Next, set yourself on the right path to consistent, quality content by preparing a content strategy and sticking to it. Here are the steps to follow:

• Define your blog’s core message.
• Decide on post topics (including guest posts).
• Choose the types of content you want to create (text, images, photos, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.).
• Identify the content formats you will publish (customer/product reviews, stories, guides, interviews, etc.)
• Choose the best promotion channels for your brand (social media, email, Quora, competitor blogs, etc.).
• Set your publishing frequency and dates.

Without a well-planned roadmap, you are essentially throwing your whole blogging effort out there and hoping it somehow works out.

Write your articles the way Google likes them

Once you have keyword-based topics and a content plan, you can start creating content for your blog. Writing effective, SEO-driven content is a vital part of your strategy for getting your articles to rank on Google. Let’s look at some tips for creating well-optimised blog articles.

•  Use keywords strategically within your content.  If you use them excessively or unnaturally, this can lead to penalties and problems with search engines. Focus on using relevant keywords and phrases in a natural, organic way that improves the overall quality and relevance of your content. Also consider using variations of your target keywords and phrases to reach a wider audience and improve your chances of ranking well in search results. Include them in your headings, subheadings, title, URL and throughout your content. Avoid using them excessively or carelessly, as this can lead to penalties from search engines. Focus on using relevant keywords and phrases naturally and organically, in a way that improves the overall quality and relevance of your content. Also think about using variations of your main keywords to reach a wider audience and improve your chances of ranking well in search results. So-called keyword stuffing refers to the overuse of keywords, which can hurt the readability and SEO of your content. Add keywords in a clear, natural way that makes sense to users.
• Use a clear and concise writing style and check your text for grammar and punctuation mistakes.
• Make sure your content matches search intent. Search intent is the deciding factor, as it helps you choose the right content format for your users and understand what they expect to get from their queries. Remember to analyse the SERPs (search results) before you write your blog post. If Google’s first page shows lists, use a list. If it shows guides, create a guide; if it leads to a product category, promote the category, and so on.
• Use dedicated SEO writing tools that automate content creation and give you valuable SEO suggestions. These tools help you write text and also put together a comprehensive, clear article. You can use them to review the article against its SEO parameters, compare its ranking potential with your top competitors, fix mistakes, check for plagiarism and even generate text with the help of artificial intelligence. Tools like these, using artificial intelligence, produce high-ranking texts by first analysing the SERP for content that ranks well and then simulating the strategies your top competitors use, so they can create unique, original content. This makes content creation easier, which is why they are far more efficient than writing content manually.

When it comes to SEO, writing the main content is only one piece of the puzzle. Optimising the main SEO elements on your website is just as important, if not more so.

Optimise the main SEO elements

Give proper attention to all the SEO elements, including the title, URL, meta description and H tags. Each of these gives Google key pieces of information about your page’s content. They also help Google determine its relevance and quality.

Article title (meta title)

The meta title is an important on-page SEO signal and one of the first things both search engines and people look at to judge how relevant your content is. It gives an initial hint or context about the topic of the page it appears on.

Google tends to display around 55 characters. It is best to put the keyword at the start of the page title, so that users can see straight away what the page is about. You should also include only one main keyword in your page’s title tag, since keyword overuse can hurt your rankings and confuse users. This can make users less likely to click on your page.

A valuable tip is to avoid duplicate title tags. They can confuse both search engines and users. Every page on your site should have a unique, descriptive title.

You should also focus on answering the question, need or wish of the person searching. To do this, choose words that are clearly related to the page topic and the searcher’s intent.

Meta description

Both bots and people rely on the meta description to understand what a post is about, and it can really make or break its  click-through rate  .

Here is a list of tips for writing a good meta description.

• Keep it to 155 characters or fewer.
• Use the active voice and make it actionable.
• Make sure it matches the page content.
• Make it unique.

You don’t need to include your keyword in your meta description. Google doesn’t use descriptions in its algorithm or, to put it more accurately, gives them less weight than the title. Descriptions are there purely to guide users and increase organic CTR on search results pages.

However, there is no guarantee that the meta description you write will appear in the SERPs, as Google may show other parts of the content (those containing the searched keyword) for context.

And since you can’t really control the description that searchers see, the least you can do is keep building a blog optimised with proper SEO, so that Google shows the best possible content in the meta description.

H tags: headings within articles

H tags give pages two important benefits: easy reading and hierarchy. Google’s John Mueller has said (watch the video) that heading tags in HTML help crawlers understand a page’s structure. H tags help search engine bots navigate your content better and work out more accurately which questions the site can answer. So if the content is structured, it is easier for crawlers to navigate. Below are some tips on how to optimise your H heading tags properly.

• Keep the heading hierarchy and don’t skip levels. For example, make sure your h2 isn’t followed directly by an h5
• Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for crawlers to scan the content and work out where one topic ends and another begins. You can use <em>  &  <strong> instead of h tags.
•  Avoid long h tags.  Write them concisely, naturally and organically.
• H1s should include one focus keyword. They should also target the same user intent as the main optimised content. Use the primary keyword once per page and make sure the H1 tag differs from the meta title and is unique across the whole site.

URL

Optimising the URL is another useful SEO tip for blogs. Make sure the URL mentions the keyword as early as possible. The URL also shouldn’t be changed later, so it is best to make it short, descriptive and easy to remember from the start. If you have a long, hard-to-read URL, your visibility in the SERP may suffer.

Structure the URLs on your site so visitors can understand them easily, especially since search engines place more emphasis on easy-to-read websites. And don’t forget that every web address must be unique.

How to set the title, URL and meta description in WordPress.

Working with HTML code can seem complicated for content creators or SEO specialists. To avoid the headache that usually comes with HTML tags, use plugins to set the title, description and URL, or do it in your CMS admin panel. For example, in WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin or our favourite Rankmath lets you do this while you edit your blog post. Just go to the SEO  section.

Image optimisation

Around  1 billion users use Google Images every day. Google search statistics show that 10.1% of Google traffic goes to images.google.com. If you want to rank high in Google Images results, the only way is to optimise your images. The title, alt text, file name, caption and the text surrounding the image matter most.

Some web browsers display the image title text. This refers to the fact that many people use the alt text as the image title, instead of the tooltip that appears when the mouse hovers over the image. This metadata gives the reader an idea of what the image contains. It is known as “alternative text” and it matters for accessibility, as it lets users with visual impairments still understand the content

Something else you should do is take the time to describe your image properly. For example, for Air Max trainers, change the filename from “image1234” to “Nike ISPA Air Max 270 SP SOE”, which could be the name of the trainers in the image.

Captions on images are also vital for image SEO, and readers use them, along with headings, to scan a post visually.

In general, image captions are used in long-form texts to provide extra information that supports a specific point in the text.

Finally, the images in your blog posts should be relevant to the main topic of the post. This matters a lot for SEO, because if an image is not surrounded by text on the same topic, the page will not score higher for the queries it is optimised for.

Internal links wherever you can

Another well-established practice for optimising your blog articles is linking them to each other. External links increase your relevance and authority in the eyes of search engines, and  internal links are no exception (think of the topic cluster model).

If you write a new article that touches on the topic of another of your articles or pages, add a link to that page.

Linking to older posts is naturally part of the content creation process, but you can also link older posts to a new one for the same reasons.

Remember that when you add links to your own posts, you give relevant information in the text. Use the keyword wherever possible, because search engines also read link text to understand what the linked page is about. Read more about how search engines work out what a page is about  .

In the end, keyword research, optimised metadata and internal links are all important steps towards better blog SEO. You should also remember to double-check your blog’s code and make sure your pages load quickly and are mobile-friendly.

Offer an excellent reading experience

Providing an excellent reading experience is crucial to improving your blog’s SEO. By optimising the user experience on a blog, you can attract more visitors, keep them engaged and build a loyal audience. If readers find the content easy to read, informative and enjoyable, they are more likely to stay on your site for longer.

Technical aspects such as site speed, CWV (Core Web Vitals), mobile readability (mobile-friendliness) and broken links are also critical ranking factors. Here we look more closely at each of them:

Speed and Core Web Vitals

Websites with better Core Web Vitals scores tend to rank higher in the SERPs. The PageSpeed test is a set of metrics that measures website performance, including page speed, interactivity and visual stability. To improve site speed and your PageSpeed score, it is important to optimise images, use a reliable hosting provider, minify CSS and JavaScript and reduce the number of HTTP requests. A PageSpeed score of at least 75 is recommended for better SEO. To get data on your site’s Core Web Vitals, use the Chrome user experience report or Search Console’s  Core Web Vitals report  .

Mobile readability

Google gives priority to mobile-friendly websites. In its search results, Google uses the mobile version of a page to assess the quality of the blog page. So if any content is not available on mobile, chances are it won’t be taken into account for ranking. This means it is absolutely essential to optimise your site for mobile devices. Here is how:

•  Responsive Design.  Use media queries to set different CSS styles for different screen sizes. This lets you adjust the layout, font sizes, images and other design elements to the screen size.
• Choose a mobile-friendly font. The font size shouldn’t make the text hard to read. It should be at least 14-16 pixels. Also keep a high colour contrast between the text and the background.
• Optimise images for smaller screens. Compress images and reduce their size to fit the screen (many popular content management systems offer ready-made solutions that automatically resize images to the screen resolution). You can also try lazy loading, which lets the page content load gradually as a visitor scrolls down the page.
• Make sure all types of content are easy to read on mobile devices. Buttons, text fields, checkboxes, links and other interactive elements should be large enough for users to tap easily with their fingers.

Broken links

Broken links indirectly harm your blog post’s SEO by increasing its bounce rate and by affecting the time visitors spend on your site and the way you pass on so-called link “juice”. Broken links also send signals that your blog is old and outdated. Search engines tend to penalise sites with broken links, as they point to poor site maintenance. To deal with this, use a tool such as Google Search Console or a broken link checker plugin to find and fix broken links.

Regularly checking and fixing broken links will help make sure your site stays friendly to both search engines and users.

Work on the technical side

Besides improving the user experience, it is also important to optimise all the technical aspects of your website that can make it faster, easier to discover and better understood by search engines. Let’s look at a few aspects to consider:

Pagination

Pagination is a common feature on blogs that splits content across several pages. It makes it easier for readers to find the articles they are looking for on your blog. You can paginate your blog content in different ways, including infinite scroll, limiting the pages shown in URLs, or making the content widely available to search engines e.g. a View all page only (or all pages).

Another important SEO technique to apply to your blog is dividing articles into categories and tags. This is a classic feature of the WebMate blog. When a user clicks on a category, they get a list of articles related to that category.

The same goes for tags, which can be added to every blog post.

Indexing problems

Indexing problems happen when search engines cannot crawl and index all the pages of your blog. This can be caused by various factors, such as:

•  Duplicate content.  Every post on your blog should be unique. Otherwise, search engines will struggle to decide which page to index. To avoid duplicate content problems, you can also use canonical tags.
•  Robots.txt issues.  The robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages to crawl and which to ignore. If your robots.txt file is misconfigured or blocks important pages, search engines may not be able to crawl and index your content properly.
•  Server errors.  If your server runs into errors such as 500 Internal Server Error, Google may not be able to crawl your blog content. Try to pinpoint the error with tools such as GSC (Google Search Console), or check for incorrect server settings (e.g. wrong permissions or wrong file locations). You can also check for plugins that may conflict with each other. Contact your website’s hosting provider if the server problems are not resolved or keep coming back.
•  Blog navigation issues.  Search engines use your internal links to discover and index new pages. Links help search engines understand the content and context of the target page, as well as the relationships between pages. So if Google doesn’t understand your internal link structure, it won’t explore your blog properly. Work on categories, subcategories and content tags. You can also use links within your content for better cohesion.

Sitemap

In addition to the tips above, it is important to have a separate sitemap for your blog that is properly optimised for SEO. The sitemap helps search engines understand which blog posts you want indexed. By adding a URL to the file, you signal to Google that the page is high quality. The sitemap also helps crawlers find pages they might otherwise miss (e.g. URLs buried deep in the site with few inbound links).

Update your sitemap regularly. Include all new posts, make sure all URLs are formatted correctly and submit your sitemap to search engines for indexing.

As a general rule, every page you add to the sitemap should return 200 OK and be full of quality content that serves users well. .

Check your sitemap often for possible issues, such as size or compression errors, URL redirect problems, indexing errors and more.

Google’s E-E-A-T

Optimising for the  E-E-A-T  score is another vital step in optimising your articles. E-E-A-T is a framework Google uses to assess content quality. It is based on four key factors:

1.  Experience.  This refers to someone’s personal experience of the topic, such as actually using a product, visiting a place or sharing what they have lived through.
2.  Expertise.  This refers to the level of knowledge the content creator has on the subject. The author should have the necessary credentials, education and experience to speak knowledgeably about the topic in question.
3.  Authoritativeness.  This refers to the standing and authority of the website publishing the content.
4.  Trustworthiness.  This refers to the reliability and credibility of the content itself. Users are more likely to trust content that is accurate, unbiased and free of errors.

If you want to improve your website’s E-E-A-T score, follow the steps below:

• Focus on creating high-quality content for your blog. This means content that is accurate, informative and well researched before it is published. Make sure your articles are written by experts in their field.
•  Get reputable links.  Trustworthy links from reputable websites in your industry establish your website as a reliable source of information.
•  Use your own experience.  Give your own personal advice or describe products and services from your own point of view.
• Make sure your blog is secure and trustworthy. Use HTTPS, provide clear contact details in the footer and let your readers comment on posts.

Another important tip for improving your website’s E-E-A-T score is to build a strong author profile that establishes you as an expert in your field:

•  Add a bio  : Add a short summary of who you are and what you do, with your name, your job title and any relevant experience or qualifications.
•  Establish your authorship: Use the same name across all your blog posts. .
• Include links to your social media profiles in your bio: This will help readers connect with you and increase your social reach.
• Link a portfolio of your written work in your author bio: This will help you establish your authority as a writer.

E-E-A-T quality is crucial for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites, which are resources that significantly affect the wellbeing, health, financial stability and safety of their visitors. Health and finance websites are often considered YMYL resources, and Google has strict requirements for them. For example, medical advice should only be written or produced by people or organisations with appropriate medical expertise or accreditation.

Run regular, effective blog content audits

As your blog keeps growing, it is essential to assess how your content performs on a regular basis. This makes sure your blog as a whole meets your goals and gives value to your audience. Consider carrying out an audit to find opportunities to improve your blog and further optimise your content strategy.

Follow these steps when you review your content.

Step 1. Analyse your blog pages.

Identify which pages perform well or badly, have high or low traffic potential, or bring many or few conversions. To do this, use dedicated tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics or SE Ranking.

Step 2. Decide what to do with each piece of content and which pages to focus on.

After your analysis, you may decide to update a blog post with new information or delete a post that is no longer relevant to your audience. Alternatively, you can merge several related posts into one comprehensive guide, or promote a high-performing post through social media or email marketing. Now let’s look at the pages you should focus on first.

• Pages with low organic traffic but high traffic potential. Optimising the content on these pages lets you reach a wider audience with less effort.
• Pages with high rankings but low click-through rates. These pages may have low-quality meta tags that you can optimise.
• Pages with high traffic but low conversion rates. Low conversion rates point to problems with how your content performs in terms of headlines, calls to action or page load times.
• Pages with a low or high number of impressions but few clicks. These pages may need more keyword optimisation and fixes for page loading issues.
• Pages last updated more than a year ago. Google likes  fresh, up-to-date content and gives it priority when ranking web pages.

Step 3. Find ways to improve your pages.

Once you know which pages need improving, you can analyse their individual elements.

• Keep checking your headings, title tags, alt text and other HTML elements.
• Update outdated or underperforming CTAs. Make sure your new CTAs increase conversion rates.
• Optimise internal linking.
• Expand your content with new, relevant information.
• Refresh your content by adding new elements, such as expert quotes or new statistics. This will make your content more credible.
• Use 301 redirects to send readers to new and improved blog posts and stop them from landing on 404 pages.

Step 4. Delete unnecessary pages.

In some cases, it makes no sense to improve blog pages. Consider deleting:

• Pages that have had no visits in the past year.
• Pages that don’t focus on specific keywords or offer little value to your audience.
• Pages that are duplicates or were created for the same keyword / user intent.

Step 5: Monitor the impact of your changes.

Finally, adjust your blog’s SEO strategy according to the negative or positive changes you notice. Track measurable metrics such as traffic, engagement and conversions to see whether your changes are improving your blog’s performance. If you notice a drop in performance, go back to your content audit and make further adjustments if needed.

Track your keywords and SEO health

Once your articles are published online, give them some time to find their place on the search engine results pages. Then start tracking each one to see how well it ranks for the search queries you chose.

With the help of SE Ranking’s  Keyword Rank Tracker you can set a target URL for any keyword and easily track how your pages rank for each keyword.

A powerful tool that lets you examine the technical side of your blog’s SEO in depth is the  Website Audit . With this tool you can quickly find out whether there are any problems with your website’s performance, and it advises you on the steps to take to improve your blog for search engines.

And when you want to analyse a specific article from top to bottom, the On-Page SEO Checker  is fantastic. This tool checks all the technical details of the page, shows how well it is optimised for a search query, assesses how unique the content is and points out any improvements that can be made. At WebMate we use both of these tools through our favourite, SE Ranking.

You can also track your keywords and check your SEO health with Google’s own tools.

Google Search Console  provides some key features you should pay attention to if you want to improve your blog’s SEO. The Performance Report, for example, shows all the keywords you currently rank for on Google, as well as how many users click through to your page.

You should also pay particular attention to this: CTR (click-through rate). CTR measures the percentage of clicks your content gets relative to the number of times it appears in search results for a specific keyword. A high CTR suggests your content is relevant and appealing to searchers, while a low CTR may indicate that your content needs improving or that you need to adjust your targeting strategies.

To monitor your blog’s SEO health, go to  Pages . This section shows how many of your pages are currently indexed by Google. It also shows any pages with indexing problems and gives you a full list of errors.

To assess your blog’s performance, open the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. It shows which pages have good, poor or need-improvement scores for LCP, INP and CLS, separately for mobile and desktop. The old Page Experience and Mobile Usability reports have been retired from Search Console, so use Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights to check how your pages work on mobile.

Google Analytics  is another useful tool for assessing website performance. Google analytics provides page view statistics, data on average engagement time, bounce rate and other engagement metrics to help you understand how effective your blog optimisation efforts have been.

The conversion rate report in Google Analytics lets you analyse the percentage of visitors to your website who take a desired action, such as following a link or filling in a form. Tracking your conversion rate can help you see whether your content is effectively targeting the right keywords and engaging your audience.

So if you notice that something isn’t going to plan, you can go back to the starting point and keep optimising your content. And remember, always optimise for people & not just for search engines !

Prioritise earning backlinks

Creating high-quality content should be only one part of your SEO and marketing strategy. If you want to win the optimisation race and take the top spot in the SERP, it is crucial to pay close attention to your content. Your SEO and marketing strategy should also cover keyword research, technical optimisation, link building and a social media presence. A comprehensive approach to SEO and marketing will give the best results and bring organic traffic and conversions to your website. It is also a non-negotiable requirement. Even so, creating high-quality content is the best way to attract backlinks.

Fortunately, as a blog owner, your website is already set up to earn links. In fact, businesses with an active blog often earn more links. 97% more links, to be precise  according to a HubSpot study. Keep the following tips in mind to create blog content that attracts high-quality backlinks:

• Create original, informative and valuable content. Your content should solve a problem or answer a question your audience has.
• Include data and statistics. This will make your content more credible and trustworthy. People are more likely to link to content backed by data and research.
• Build contacts with potential partners in your industry. Identify relevant websites that are likely to link to your content, get in touch with them and ask whether they would be interested in sharing your content with their audience.
• Add graphics and visual content. These should complement your content. People are more likely to link to content that is visually appealing.
•  Share your content.  Whether through social media, email marketing or other relevant channels, the more people see your content, the more likely they are to give you a link.

Extra tips

We have covered the top tips for building a strong blog and articles that achieve good SEO results, but there is always room for improvement, especially when it comes to content. Here are a few more tips to help you improve the SEO of your blog posts.

Write striking headlines

Grab readers from the moment they see your article’s headline. A great headline will make them want to keep reading and learn more. Use powerful words and phrases that spark their curiosity and make them feel they will miss something important if they don’t read your article. Remember, the headline is the first impression you give your readers, so make it stand out! But be careful not to mislead your users. Make a promise in your headline that shows them why they should read your post, and make sure you keep it.

In the end, the headline can make or break your blog post. If it is catchy enough, people will spend more time taking in your content and may even share it without reading it! If it isn’t catchy, expect your post to gather “digital dust”.

If you see no high-quality organic traffic to your post at all, try changing its headline to persuade readers to engage with it.

Follow the KISS principle

The KISS principle, which stands for “Keep it simple, stupid”, stresses the importance of simplicity and clarity in creating effective, memorable content. With voice search growing in popularity, Google now selects the most relevant, informative, concise and voice-friendly content to give searchers instant answers.

Keep your sentences simple, so they don’t confuse or tire your readers. Plain, clear language that is easy to understand works best. The KISS principle also applies to your blog’s visual design. Avoid cluttered layouts and lots of distracting elements, and aim for a simple, clean design that helps readers concentrate on your content.

To help your readers understand your content better, use specific examples that illustrate your points. This can make your content more enjoyable and memorable.

Build relationships through article comments

Among other things, both people and search engines get a sense of a post’s level of engagement from its comments section. It is a great place to exchange ideas and views on a specific topic. It also works as a tool for driving engagement and traffic, and it gives you content to share on social media.

So, if you want to start a lively discussion to boost engagement and your SEO efforts, let your readers leave comments if they wish! Keep spam out, though: turn on comment moderation to hold back any comments you haven’t approved yet.

Also, if you use WordPress, you can easily add star rating plugins to collect ratings on your blog, which will appear as rich snippets in the search results.

Search engines often change what they consider important, so it is a good idea to check Google’s up-to-date SEO Starter Guide to stay informed about SEO best practice for blogs.

Make your content stand out

When you come across a topic that has been covered a million times before, think of a fresh, entertaining way to make it stand out from the competition.

Add podcasts, infographics, statistics, charts, polls, memes, GIFs, expert quotes, videos and data comparisons. Experiment with different options to make your posts valuable, interesting and easy to read.

For example, ask an expert on your post’s topic for their view and include it in your content to raise the level of expertise and your readers’ trust.

Now it’s your turn!

In this post, we have looked closely at why the articles and the blog on your website matter for SEO and how to get them right.

Running a successful blog can be demanding. It takes careful planning, a well-structured approach and authentic, interesting, high-quality content. What you write should always answer specific questions or solve your readers’ problems. Of course, there are technical elements that can help your blog get recognised by Google and attract more visitors, but remember that if the content isn’t up to the same standard, your efforts and all that time-consuming work will be wasted.

Ultimately, your articles and blog are more than a way to reach the top of the search engine results; they are also an excellent and often underrated marketing tool that can attract a larger target audience.