The general goal of creating SEO-friendly content is to make sure that both the audience and search engines can understand it easily. Unless you manage to achieve this with your content, it is most likely going to end up being ignored by both of these parties.

However, if you do manage to create content that’s appealing to both search engines and the audience, not only will it rank higher on search engines, but it will manage to bring more customers your way.

That being said, it’s also important to mention that just because a piece of content is SEO-friendly, that doesn’t necessarily have to mean that it’s good.

Although content quality is one of the ranking factors, it is not the only thing search engines, such as Google, will pay attention to. On the other hand, if your content is not high quality, you can’t really expect it to resonate well with your audience.

So, how does one tackle the complicated task of ensuring that their content is both interesting to the audience and SEO-friendly? Here are some useful tips.

Think before you start writing

The first and arguably the most important tip is to actually think about the topic before you get to writing it.

Some people consider this thinking process to be a waste of time, so this part of creating a blog post is commonly overlooked. However, all the time you spend on analyzing your subject will be the time you save later, once you actually get to the writing part. Try to answer questions like:

• Which topics to cover in your blog post?
• What is the goal of your blog post?
• How will your audience benefit from your new blog post?

By answering these questions, you’ll be able to come up with a general outline and flow of your blog post more easily, as you will have these key points to guide you.

Create the structure of the blog post

Now that you know which topic you want to explore in your blog post, it’s time to pay attention to the structure. Here, you will need to determine various points you wish to make throughout your post and see how you can organize them to have the most natural flow.

Aside from the introduction and the conclusion, you also need to think about the main body of your blog post. You can – and actually should – break down this part into different sections to make your blog post easier to skim through, but more on that later.

Craft the title and URL

After structuring your blog post, you will need to come up with a title and a URL.

Contrary to popular belief, your title shouldn’t be your starting point. Instead, it will be far easier to come up with a title once you know exactly what you wish to cover in your blog post.

The title will need to be interesting and engaging so that it can both cater to SEO needs and tickle your readership’s interest.

Additionally, make sure your title is no longer than 60 characters so that it can be fully visible in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

It’s always smart to include your main keyword in your title as well so that both your readership and search engines can easily understand what your blog post will be about simply from looking at your title.

When it comes to the URL, make sure you separate words with “-“ so that the URL itself is easier to read and understand. Moreover, you may also want to shorten your URL by removing any unnecessary words, to optimize it a bit further.

Use headings correctly

As mentioned previously, you should avoid writing your blog as just a huge chunk of text. Instead, you need to divide it into numerous sub-topics and sections so that your readership can have an easier time perusing your content.

This can easily be achieved by using headings, but you also need to make sure you do it right. Of course, a single blog post should have only one Heading 1, which is reserved for your blog post’s title.

In addition, the main sections of the blog should be marked with Heading 2, while other sub-sections should use other headings (H3, H4….) hierarchically.

Keep your paragraphs short

You should aim at keeping your paragraphs short. As the audience’s overall attention span is constantly decreasing, you should make sure that your blog is easy to navigate.

If there’s a point that needs to be emphasized, you can always rely on different formatting options to achieve this. So, feel free to use bold, italic and underline, as well as bullets or numbering.

Optimize your meta description

Just like it’s important to come up with a good title and optimize your URL, it’s equally important to optimize your meta description. Here, you will need to try and summarize your entire blog post in 200 characters or less.

If you find yourself struggling to create a good meta description, you can always reach out to reliable marketing agencies to help you out.

Meta decryptions are very important ranking factors, so you need to make sure you take care of this part properly.

Add links when it makes sense

Adding links to your blog post is a great way to improve your SEO, particularly if you make sure that you do it right.

Internal linking will help search engines discover other pages of your website, and it also helps them learn more about what the page is about.

Including external links, particularly from relevant sources, will bring more credibility to your blog post, which will have a positive effect on your reputation.

Including relevant and well-placed links will not only encourage search engines to give your blog post higher rankings but will also encourage your readership to check out and explore your other pages. Needless to say, this is also a great way to drive more relevant traffic to your website.

Do make use of keywords (but not keyword stuffing)

Another thing that we’ve mentioned previously is keywords. You probably already know that ranking for the right keywords will help you boost your SEO, as you will make it easier for your audience to find your content.

But aside from making sure you include your keywords in your blog posts, you also need to make sure you don’t overdo it. Keyword stuffing, or including your keywords more times than it actually makes sense, is heavily frowned upon by SEO rules.

Optimize your images and other media elements

In the end, if you choose to include images or any other media in your blog post, you need to make sure they are optimized as well. Poorly-optimized images and media will negatively affect your loading speed, among other things, so you need to make sure you avoid making this mistake.

In order to reap the most benefits from well-optimized images and media in your blog post, you can also look for a good web design and development company that can take care of this part for you. When it comes to taking care of such important ranking factors, it’s always best to leave things to professionals in the field.

To sum up

As you can see, there are so many different things you need to keep in mind when writing an SEO-friendly blog post.

You need to make sure you clearly define the topic you wish to cover, think through the way in which you wish to approach it and make sure you create an interesting and engaging title.

Moreover, you need to include proper links and keywords – but only where it makes sense, and optimize all of your content – visuals included – so that your blog post has a harmonious and natural flow.

Ellie Northcott is a long-time marketer, currently working as a freelancer in Miami, Florida.

Editor at Digital Strategy One.

She is also a passionate writer and loves to explore new, innovative and digital news.

In her spare time, she is an eco-activist.