When I was starting out in my SEO journey, the first thing I learned was how to write blog posts for SEO. It seemed complex to my newbie brain.
I have a background in politics, ya know?
And the writing that I knew back then was creative writing. I struggled to transition from writing about myself to writing for other people. Seriously!
But now that I have been doing this for almost five years, I don’t even “write for SEO.” I just write whatever comes to mind. SEO is secondary in my writing process.
And by “secondary,” I mean I write the draft first but make sure to add the keyword in the first few lines, and then I will insert the other keywords later in other places.
I was a writer first after all.
But when I was new to SEO, my newbie brain back then wouldn’t allow me to write “ya know” like I did earlier because it would sound inappropriate.
SEO writing aims to educate people, so being casual will not seem right if you have just stepped into this world. You will want your writing to sound like your Math teacher. Boring!
That is what education sounds like, right? Hah!
If you want to enter the SEO world and you are nervous because your newbie brain tells you some scary things that don’t really exist, here is how to write blog posts for SEO.
How to Write Blog Posts for SEO
The first thing you need to do is be a writer or at least know how to write like a writer. Anyone can write, but not anyone who writes is a writer.
You are reading this, but are you a reader?
If you are a non-native English speaker like me who wants to work with people all over the world, you should have English skills on top of your writing skills. English is the universal language.
If you are confident in your writing and language skills, you need to learn how to write blog posts. Not all blog posts are the same, but these are common among them:
- Title
- Subheadings
- Paragraphs
- Conclusion (sometimes)
- Images
If you think you are already an expert at writing blog posts and you are becoming impatient, fine. Optimizing them for search engines comes next.
To optimize a blog post for search engines, the bullet points above continue:
- Make sure the target keywords are in the title
- Don’t write a long title
- Add the keywords in some subheadings
- Add the keywords in the first sentences
- Mention the keywords naturally throughout the blog post (don’t overdo)
- Add internal and external links
- Make sure the images are not larger than 2000px (my preference)
- Edit the images’ alt text
- Add the keywords in the meta description
- Use the main keyword as the slug
- Add the keywords in the post tags (if you want)
The list looks long, but once you have gotten used to writing blog posts for SEO, you will not even know you are doing them. BUT!
The SEO process doesn’t stop there, although it is your choice whether you take things further and do off-page SEO and the really technical SEO.
In my experience, on-page optimization is enough if you can wait.
