Toiling on your blog post every day only to see your hard work, not pay off? Gaining traction for your blog or website is actually easier than you think, provided you are willing to put in adequate time and effort and of course SEO optimization.

What is SEO and why do we need it?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO-friendly content helps your blog and website to rank higher in popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Here are our top 5 tips, to rank higher in search results and to direct more traffic to your website.

Keyword search is your best friend

Keywords are words that searchers enter into search engines and when your blog contains the right keywords, you are bound to attain a high rank. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to find what your target audience wishes to know and how you can cater to their needs. Simply put, know your audience!

Choosing a keyword can be done by:

• Finding the volume of searches for a particular keyword at a time frame. This allows you to understand the frequency of its usage by searchers.
• Using long-tail keywords. These might have low search volumes but they are bound to be high-ranked when searchers want specific information on a particular topic.
• Making use of related searches to know what your audience is looking for.

Comprehensive titles and meta descriptions go a long way

The first thing your audience looks at is the title of your blog. Giving the readers a clear idea on what they will know by reading your blog, entices people to click on your link and read your blog. Meta descriptions are the mini summaries that follow the title of your blog and are equally important.

Titles and meta descriptions can be used to your advantage by:

• Using keywords at the start of your title.
• Using short titles, below 60 characters. Google displays only the first 60 characters of your title.
• Making sure to include keywords in your meta description and taking care to convey the core message of your blog in a concise manner.
• Adding words like “surprising”, “funny” piques the interest of the reader, thereby bringing in more traffic to your blog.
• Adding an H1 tag to your content title. H2 tag to main sections and H3 to subsections of your content.

External sources improve credibility

External sources are links to other websites or blogs that provide relevant information about your topic. Citing external sources not only supports your claim but also adds credibility to your content. Some tips to follow while citing external sources are:

• Cite sources that are believed to be credible and have considerable domain authority. Wikipedia is one such website that is trusted and referred by searchers worldwide, citing such credible sources makes your content more trustworthy.
• Avoid linking to competing SERP pages.
• Programming the links in such a way that it opens as a separate window, helps keep your readers stay on your page and keep reading.
• Contextual anchor texts can be used, which gives the link while simultaneously explaining what that particular link is for.

Image optimization

Images can be optimized by adding Alt texts and appropriate descriptions. This is an underrated technique but is a very crucial process.

Alt texts are not usually visible to searchers but it helps Google understand and process what the image is about. In addition, it also helps the visually impaired and those with learning disabilities gain context on what the picture is about. It is visible to the searchers when that particular image cannot load properly.

Here are some points to keep in mind while writing an alt text:

• Try to include keywords in your alt text
• Using words like “an image of” is unnecessary, rather use the characters wisely to properly portray the image
• Use clear-cut explanations to describe the image.

Develop SEO friendly URLs

URLs are an important part of SEO since it is used for sharing content and according to Backlinko, they are significant ranking factors. While developing a URL, it is important to keep in mind the following factors:

• Use URLs with less than or equal to 60 characters, in other words, three or four words.
• Separate each word with a hyphen.
• Avoid using uppercase letters, since it may result in redirects or errors in some servers.
• Lowercase letters are to be preferred.
• Keep it concise and relevant and avoid using dates and years.
• Try using keywords in URLs.

Some bonus tips to make content more SEO friendly include:

• Optimizing your content to be mobile-friendly. Google tends to avoid giving high rankings to web pages that are not mobile-friendly.
• Adding schema markups help search engines in analyzing the content properly. Schema markups can be easily added to blog posts by using Google’s Structured Data Markup helper.

• Structure your content and deliver them in an understandable manner.
• Use small paragraphs.
• Aim to answer specific questions like, “why”, “how”, “what” and so on. This increases your chances of making it to answer boxes.

• Listicles are a great way of conveying messages because they have a higher chance of making it into answer boxes.
• Enabling comments increases the average time spent by the reader on the blog. Which in turn signals to Google that readers enjoy and find your content valuable. This subsequently affects ranking in a positive manner.

Final Words

The aforementioned tips are sure shot ways of making SEO-friendly content thereby driving more traffic to your blog. Gaining knowledge about creating SEO-friendly content cannot be achieved overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? But making sure to follow these steps will show worthwhile results and put you ten steps ahead of your competing SERPs. What are you waiting for? Let’s make high-ranking content!