Blog posts are an excellent SEO strategy. They help you rank better on search engine pages because they have a higher word count, which the algorithms take into consideration when ranking websites. Blogging also has many other SEO advantages that can boost your web design and marketing efforts!

Don’t just focus on the SEO benefits

There is more to getting potential customers engaging with your brand and value proposition than a blog post that gets found on Google.

In order to get full benefit from blog posts, the content should be harvested for other formats. Just not at the same time – let people read the content the first method you send it out on before sending it out again and again.

As an example, a series of 500 word blog posts considering specific aspects of your topic could be very good for your content marketing on LinkedIn, for example. You could do five 500 word blogs as posts on LinkedIn so your social media content is on a specific theme for a week, followed by an email newsletter with a link to all parts of the blog post series. Alternatively, you could then combine the five blog posts together into one big 2,500 word length article for your website’s blog.

Depth is better than length

The chances are that you are writing about something you are an expert on, have a passion for and you’re not tied down by a word count restriction like when you were in school. Focus on what you can offer the reader and really go into detail on what you know – you will find that the keywords come naturally and readers don’t feel bored (because if they are bored, they will probably just not read it).

Here are some rules of thumb for word counts but use them as just that – a stiff word count and your writing could very well feel like a chore for both writer and reader.

300 words: Short, snappy and focused use of words. It’s generally not great as SEO algorithms usually opt for longer content.  But if your aims are to focus on converting traffic or providing a short snippet of information, you can well find benefits from blog posts this short.

500 to 750 words: This length is great for adding value when providing information to your readers. You might find that you do not have enough space for in-depth answers to your reader’s questions – but there are alternatives depending on the goals of your blogging and content marketing strategy. You could create a series of blog posts at this length tackling very specific aspects of the topic being discussed rather than a brain dump in one university assignment length post.

1,000 to 1,500 words: For most people, this will take four to five minutes to read. It is long enough to promote SEO keywords and get a fair bit of information out their without boring the reader.

2,000 to 2,500 words: This will be a long-form, very detailed and information rich blog post. It will quite possibly be full of the keywords and phrases Google is looking for and it could quite possibly quench your readers thirst for knowledge on the subject matter. When writing at this length, you do need to think about what you are saying and have a clear structure with sub-heading; some people will opt to read only the paragraph that interests them and some will just scan the page – it is a lot of words to read through otherwise.

Optimise for “featured snippets”

Ever noticed how, when searching a question, that a direct answer comes up – like this image below shows?

Google shows this answer because it believes that this is the very best answer available of all the answers available on the world wide web. If you want to try and feature here, you need to answer the question itself thoroughly and concisely.

The question itself will need to be a subheading and in the paragraph explaining the answer, you should feature a part of the question in the answer. For ‘how to’ guides, Google would expect to see actionable verbs such as “click” or “type”.

Alt together now

If you have images on the blog post you’re creating, it’s recommended that they have something called alt text.

The alt text is also referred to as the “alt description” of an image. This would be a better title for it because the key thing good alt text needs is specific detail.

In fewer than 125 characters, you want to be jumping straight into the image description while using a good perspective of the image context.

The alt text isn’t just good for SEO. The user experience of those who can’t load the image (usually because of very poor internet connection) is bettered as they can read the alt text. It has benefits for accessibility too, as those with visual impairments can hear a description of the image.

Be scannable

People have short attention spans, especially in the age of scroll culture.

That’s one reason why sub-headings help people in a hurry determine what your website features and which bits they want to read.

The same goes for the Artificial Intelligence search engines like Google use to index your blog post and determine what it contains and how useful it is to read. The more you can break up a post into readable sections with clear sub-headings, the better.

Readable for your audience

If you’re blogging in English and writing to an international readership, make sure it’s easy to read with clear grammar and punctuation. If they don’t know what ‘whom’ means then they probably won’t be reading any further than that sentence!

But when we talk about SEO there are some points of syntax that should never be ignored: always use “keyword phrases” like ‘blogging tips’, not individual words or single letters – which would look kind of strange if written out on their own in plain text.

Not only will using keywords out of context and excessively not help your cause with search engines, they will also repulse the people you find to read the article. If all you are doing is blogging to get brownie points with Google, it’ll show in your writing and pretty much everyone will avoid reading it.

In Summary

It’s important to remember that you’re not writing for the search engine algorithms. You are writing for your readers.

It may seem counter-intuitive but when SEO is done well, people will enjoy reading what you have to say and follow up on links provided in your post. This creates a positive experience with your blog post which encourages them to share their thoughts about the topic via social media or emailing others about content they found interesting so they can find out more information themselves.

The best strategy for SEO blogs? Make sure all of these points are covered: Clear subheadings with descriptive text; Images (with alt text) that help break up long blocks of words and make the article more stimulating; A length which is suitable for your topic, what you’re trying to say and what you are trying to achieve.