How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts – My Step by Step Process

Writing optimized blog posts for both search engines and users, is a skill. And like any other skill, it can be improved by practice.

Despite what many people think, it’s not a difficult process. There are some simple steps to follow to ensure that everything you publish on your website or blog is SEO friendly.

Things like the title of the post, the blog structure, the formatting, headings and paragraphs, are easy to fix and yet play a very important role in rankings.

First, an SEO friendly blog post is also a user-friendly blog post. Many people believe that if a blog post is optimized for search engines, it is somehow less friendly for the users. This is not true.

The true meaning of SEO is to publish content that both search engines and users can understand.

If both of these conditions are not met, then you have limited chances of achieving high rankings and your readers are more likely to ‘ignore’ your post.

If on the other hand, you manage to meet both criteria, then your blog posts will rank higher in the SERPS, users will spend more time reading and engaging with your content (adding comments, sharing to social media or converting).

Second, a post that is SEO optimized does not necessarily have great content. This many sound like a contradicting statement but it’s not. Let me explain.

The quality of the content is one of the most important factors when evaluating a blog post but it’s not the only one.

A well optimized blog post with great quality content has more chances of ranking higher in search while a well optimized blog post with not so good content, has limited chances of achieving high Google rankings.

In other words, you shouldn’t expect a blog post to rank high just because you followed the steps to make it SEO friendly.

It’s the combination of good content and good SEO (including Off Page SEO), that will push a blog post in the first pages of Google.

10 Tips for Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts

So, now that you have a better understanding of what is an optimized blog post and what is not, let’s see how to ensure (before you hit the publish button), that your blog will be SEO friendly.

1. Think before you start writing

Any time you spend in the beginning thinking about what to write in your blog post, it’s time that you will save later in the process.

This is what I do:

On a daily basis, I read a number of articles related to SEO and Digital marketing from various blogs.

When I find a title or topic that is interesting and a candidate for one of my blogs, I copy the URL and title to my notes.

At the beginning of each month I create my publishing schedule. Among other sources, I also look into my notes and review all saved articles.

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After I decide which topics to cover, I set a publishing date for each topic in a Google calendar.

When it’s time to actually write the post, I take the topic and do a more detailed analysis (including keyword research) to answer these questions:

• What specific topics to cover in the blog post?
• What is the goal of the post (to get better rankings for a keyword, to get more subscribers, to promote my SEO ebook, etc.)
• How will the new post benefit my readers?

Answering these questions in advance, makes it easier to move on to the next steps.