Blogging and content writing are major industries in 2022. With a vast amount of people spending time on the internet, it is only natural that online mediums would become popular for gaining knowledge and doing research.
However, as is the norm in all big industries, the competition is quite tough. Anyone who fails to adapt and improve constantly gets left behind.
Bloggers have various purposes when writing blog posts. The posts could be for either creating awareness and increasing exposure or it could be for pitching a product and enticing interested parties in buying.
However, in order for blog posts to actually reach their targeted readers, they have to be properly optimized using various techniques and methods.
In this post, we will look at some tips (consider it a guide though) to optimize blog content.
Quick Guide to Optimizing Blog Content
When we say “optimize blog content”, we refer to a couple of different things.
In a few words, the content should be optimized for both SEO and the readers. The two are not mutually exclusive. Content optimized for readers is already (mostly) optimized for SEO. With that said, here are the actual tips that you can follow to optimize the content.
1. Research Your Topic and Relevant Keywords
As we all know, blogs belong to a particular niche. In that niche, there can be a multitude of different topics.
The first step in optimizing blog content is to decide on what topic your blog is going to focus on. Once that is determined, you need to find out which keywords are related to that topic.
Here you need to use SEO tools for conducting keyword research. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs can be very useful for this purpose.
Using such tools, you have to find out:
- The primary keywords
- Secondary keywords
- Long-tailed keywords
- Difficulty and volume of the keywords
Your aim is essentially to target keywords that have high search volume but have relatively low difficulty. Optimizing your content to target these keywords will drastically increase its chances of ranking high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). And high-ranking content will reach its targeted audience easily.
2. Write for Your Audience
Once you have determined the niche and topic (as well as found out the best keywords to target), you need to get started with the actual writing. But keep in mind that you have to write for your audience.
You could say, “Well, duh, I am going to write for my audience. Who else?” So, why stress on it particularly?
Here’s why.
Basically, when people start writing a blog post, they can lose focus of the fact that their content is going to be read by actual people. In the bid to make it as SEO-friendly as possible, a lot of bloggers can end up ruining the quality of their content.
So, to make sure that you don’t end up doing the same thing, you can ask yourself these questions:
- Why are people reading my blog?
- What do they hope to get from my blog?
- What is it that they want?
By getting the answers to these questions, you will be able to create content that is properly centered on the needs and expectations of your readers.
However, to get these answers, you have to do some hands-on research. You can use the SEO tools that we previously mentioned for this. These tools allow you to search which content is ranking the highest for a keyword and topic. That type of content is what people want.
Another way you can gather such information is to have comments and suggestions sections. This way, you can encourage your readers to leave comments about what more would they like to read about. When you do get some feedback, you can simply incorporate it in your blog content.
3. Write in an Easy-to-Understand Manner
Blogs are not like books. Books are a very highly structured and incredibly targeted medium. People buy books related to themselves and their interests, and that automatically solves the issue of readability.
For example, only a highly literate person would buy a book geared at academic research. In the same way, children would only buy books that were created keeping their age and mentality in mind.
However, this is not the case with blogs. Blogs are open to everyone who can access the internet. People of different literacy levels will also come to read blogs. Hence, your writing should be easy enough to be understood by people of low literacy or those who know English as a second language.
To write an easy-to-read post, you can take care of the following:
- Do not use difficult words.
- Avoid technical jargon where possible. Where unavoidable, use simple terms to explain it.
- Keep paragraphs short and concise.
- Avoid rambling sentences (long sentences)
If you feel like doing all the above while writing is a bit too tedious, you can take help from dedicated tools
For example, you can use a competent paraphrasing tool to make your write-up easier to read. Many such tools come with specific modes that rewrite content using simpler words and phrases to increase readability.
4. Create a Properly Structured Post
Writing a blog without any headings, subheadings, bullets, and tags is bad for not only readers but also for SEO.
Structuring your post by breaking it down into smaller sections makes it more readable, understandable, and most importantly crawlable. Search engines employ crawlers whose task is to index websites and determine what content they have and what keywords they are ranking for.
Adding headings to segregate different sub-topics and using the relevant keywords (at least once) in the headings allows crawlers to determine which keywords and what search intent the content has to be matched with.
Sections and bullets make the content more scannable. Readers do not typically start reading a post from the first line. They usually quickly scroll through and read the names of all the headings and try to determine if what they want is there or not.
Speaking of which, adding a table of contents is also a good idea. It saves the visitor the trouble of scrolling through the post.
5. Proofread and Edit
No content is written perfectly the first time around, hence editing and proofreading is an essential task that needs to be done after writing each draft. Proofreading is required because some small mistakes that are made during writing can be caught. Another thing that you can do during the proofreading process is to check for plagiarism.
Plagiarized content is very harmful to SEO and engagement with the content. People do not like to read old stuff they might have read before. Search engines on the other hand penalize sites that have plagiarized content. The penalties include lowering of SERPs rank and/or de-listing.
Plagiarism can also accidentally occur in a work, but it has the same repercussions. Hence, using an accurate plagiarism checker to detect any copied content is essential. Once it has been detected, it can be removed or edited out.
Conclusion
These were a few tips on how to optimize blog content. As is the norm in writing, everything starts with research.
Writing in a simple style without any unnecessary flair is important to increase the accessibility of the content. It should be easy enough to be understood by people of different literacy levels. Proper structuring also contributes to that as well as to SEO.
Finally, proofreading and editing the draft is also very important. During proofreading, plagiarism can be detected with the help of online tools and can be edited to make the post safe from getting penalized.