Smarter SEO behind the scenes of your blog
Smarter SEO behind the scenes of your blog
By Stephanie Oley
So, you’ve committed to boosting your website’s traffic with a blog that supports your search-engine optimisation (SEO) activities. You have a content plan, some dedicated writers and an optimised Google Analytics dashboard.
But, as all digital marketers know, the magic doesn’t just happen on-page. There’s a behind-the-scenes aspect of blog SEO, too.
That includes ensuring your website has a clear user experience (U/X) and a mobile-friendly site design, for starters. It also means allocating a team member to regularly research the most relevant SEO keywords, update meta tags, seek backlinks and manage other activities.
Without this extra legwork, even your finest blog articles will struggle to get found online. Your Google Ad spend will also deliver greater returns if your SEO is cleverly set up.
Here, we provide an overview of the main behind-the-scenes steps to take if you’re optimising your blog’s SEO.
First, understand how Google indexes web pages
Let’s remember why we need a disciplined approach to SEO in the first place. At the time of publishing there were 1.6 billion websites around the world, according to real-time statistics generator, Internet Tracking Stats. Although only 200 million of them are active, hundreds are likely to be your direct competitors.
Keywords simply help users find the right information from the right source. If you’ve ever clicked on a link that promised content it didn’t deliver, you’ll know what we mean.
To ensure keywords are accurate, up-to-date and user-friendly, Google patrols the internet ceaselessly. Using software called crawlers, it examines a public website's links and makes records of its content and descriptions. Sometimes, Google also indexes pages without accessing their content.
You can’t pay Google to index your site, nor can you ask for your page to be better ranked. You simply need to be abreast of Google’s latest Search Essentials requirements, which are freely available on its technical support pages.
Use short and longtail keywords
Remember to plan each blog article around short and longtail keywords. This will help you appear in searches by people seeking the answers to specific questions.
For example, if you’re a business law firm based in Sydney, you want potential clients to understand your niche offering in full. Your blog posts won’t just attempt to rank for the SEO keyword ‘business law’. You’ll want to use specific keywords, such as ‘five costly trademark issues that most businesses don’t know,’ or ‘quick guide to business shareholder agreements.'
Whether you’re using paid tools such as Moz or SEMRush, or free ones like Google and Answer the Public, keyword research is both an art and a science. Consider taking a one-day crash course in Introductory SEO to set up systems you’ll draw on for many years.
Incorporate your customer’s search terms, too
Make sure also to regularly plan new content around emerging queries. For example, a search of ‘best smartphones’ plus the date of your search will often deliver reams of copycat pages. However, go one level deeper, and you’ll see how users often qualify their searches: adding terms such as ‘camera,’ ‘cheap,’ ‘battery,’ ‘gaming’ and others.
This is where the gold lies. When your blog answers specific questions that people want answered, you can become an authority precisely in that field.
Write meta tags to capture the right queries
In the backend of your website, make sure to use the most valuable keywords in your titles, links, meta descriptions and image descriptions to start with. You can create individual sub-sections with specialised keywords, for example by using them in the subheadings.
You can also turn common questions into subheadings or sentences in the body text. This could help you get into search results' snippet sections.
Metadata also helps to create information taxonomies if your blogs often involve overlapping topics. For example, an accounting technology blog might release two separate posts that each discuss software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools for accountants.
Look closely, though, and one article might speak more to small, general practitioners. The other could focus on forensics accounting. This difference should be reflected in your metadata. As your content library grows, make sure also to edit the metadata regularly across different posts, to avoid duplication and help Google correctly index the unique content on that page.
Ask other organisations for backlinks
Don't be an island: many of your competitors are getting great referral traffic, also known as backlinks. Build relationships with other businesses, reviewers, or any organisations with a complementary (but not competing) audience, and suggest content that could link back to your website. You can also offer reciprocal backlinks.
As we know, blogging draws traffic to your website by answering important questions that users have about your service. It also supports any valuable keywords on the site’s static pages, such as About and Services. Blogging ultimately adds to your keyword richness and variety, helping boost your website’s visibility.
Make sure to support your on-page efforts with the behind-the-scenes tactics discussed here, and you’ll help make your business much easier to find online.