1. Focus on 1–2 long-tail keywords
that match the intent of your ideal reader.
Optimizing your blog posts for keywords
is not about incorporating as many keywords into your posts as
possible. Nowadays, this actually hurts your SEO because search engines
consider this keyword stuffing (i.e., including keywords as much as possible
with the sole purpose of ranking highly in organic search).
It also
doesn't make for a good reader experience -- a ranking factor that search
engines now prioritize to ensure you're answering the intent of your
visitors. Therefore, you should use keywords in your content in a way that doesn't
feel unnatural or forced.
A good rule
of thumb is to focus on one or two long-tail keywords per blog post. While you
can use more than one keyword in a single post, keep the focus of the
post narrow enough to allow you to spend time actually optimizing for
just one or two keywords.
Why
long-tail keywords? These longer, often question-based keywords keep your post
focused on the specific goals of your audience. Website visitors searching
long-tail terms are more likely to read the whole post and then seek more
information from you. In other words, you'll generate right type of
traffic: visitors who convert.
2. Include these 1–2 keywords in
specific parts of your post.
Now that
you've got your one or two keywords, it's time to incorporate them into your
blog post. Where are the best parts of your posts to include these terms so you
rank high in search results?
There are
four essential places where you should try to include your keywords: title tag,
headers & body, URL, and meta description.
Title Tag
The title
(i.e., headline) of your blog post will be a search engine's and reader's first
step in determining the relevancy of your content, so including a keyword here
is vital. Google calls this the "title tag" in a search result.
Be sure to
include your keyword within the first 60 characters of your title, which
is just about where Google cuts titles off on search engine results pages
(SERPs). Technically, Google measures by pixel width, not character count, and
it recently increased the pixel width for organic search results
from approximately 500 pixels to 600 pixels, which translates to around 60
characters.
Long title
tag? When you have a lengthy headline, it's a good idea to get your keyword in
the beginning since it might get cut off in SERPs toward the end, which can
take a toll on your post's perceived relevancy. In the example below, we had a
long title that went over 65 characters, so we front-loaded it with the keyword
for which we were trying to rank: "on-page SEO."
Headers & Body
Mention your
keyword at a normal cadence throughout the body of your post and in the
headers. That means including your keywords in your copy, but only in a
natural, reader-friendly way. Don't go overboard at the risk of being penalized
for keyword stuffing. Before you start writing a new blog post, you'll probably
think about how to incorporate your keywords into your post. That's a smart
idea, but it shouldn't be your only focus, nor even your primary
focus.
Whenever you
create content, your primary focus should be on what matters to your
audience, not how many times you can include a keyword or keyword phrase in
that content. Focus on being helpful and answering whatever question your
customer might've asked to arrive on your post. Do that, and you'll usually
find you naturally optimize for important keywords, anyway.
URL
Search
engines also look to your URL to figure out what your post is about, and it's
one of the first things it'll crawl on a page. You have a huge opportunity
to optimize your URLs on every post you publish, as every post lives on
its own unique URL -- so make sure you include your one to two keywords in it.
In the
example below, we created the URL using the long-tail keyword for which we were
trying to rank: "email marketing examples."
Meta Description
Later in
this post, we'll dive into meta descriptions a bit more. Your meta description
is meant to give search engines and readers information about your blog post's
content -- so be certain to use your long-tail term so Google and your audience
are clear on your post's content.
At the same
time, keep in mind the copy matters a great deal for click-through rates
because it satisfies certain readers' intent. The more engaging, the better.
3. Make sure your blog is
mobile-friendly.
Did you know
more people use a search engine from their mobile phonesthan from a
computer?
And for all
those valuable search queries being done on mobile, Google displays the
mobile-friendly results first. This is yet another example of Google
heavily favoring mobile-friendly websites -- which has been true ever since the
company updated its Penguin algorithm in April 2015.
So, how do
you make your blog mobile-friendly? By using "responsive design."
Websites that are responsive to mobile allow blog pages to have just one URL
instead of two -- one for desktop and one for mobile, respectively. This helps
your post's SEO because any inbound links that come back to your site won't be
divided between the separate URLs.
As a result,
you'll centralize the SEO power you gain from these links, helping Google more
easily recognize your post's value and rank it accordingly.
Pro tip: What search engines value is constantly
changing. Be sure you're keeping on top of these changes by subscribing
to Google's official blog.
4. Optimize the meta description,
and use all the space.
To review,
a meta description is the additional text that appears in
SERPs that lets readers know what the link is about. The meta description gives
searchers information they need to determine whether or not your content is
what they're looking for, and ultimately helps them decide if they'll
click or not.
The
maximum length of this meta description is greater than it once was --
now around 300 characters -- suggesting it wants to give readers more insight
into what each result will give them.
So, in
addition to being reader-friendly (compelling and relevant), your meta
description should include the long-tail keyword for which you are trying to
rank.
In the
example above, I searched for "email newsletter examples." The term
is bolded in the meta description, helping readers make the connection between
the intent of their search term and this result. You'll also see the term
"E-Newsletter" bolded, indicating that Google knows there's a
semantic connection between "email newsletter" and
"E-Newsletter."
Note: Nowadays, it's not guaranteed
that your meta description is always pulled into SERPs as it once was. As you
can see in the above image, Google pulls in other parts of your blog post that includes
the keywords searched, presumably to give searchers optimal context around how
the result matches their specific query.
Let me show
you another example. Below is an example of two different search queries
delivering two different snippets of text on Google SERPs. The first is a
result of the query "no index no follow," and pulls in the original
meta description:
The second
is a result of the query "noindex nofollow," and pulls in the
first instance of these specific keywords coming up in the body of the blog
post:
While
there's not much you can do to influence what text gets pulled in, you should
continue to optimize this metadata, as well as your post, so search engines
display the best content from the article. By creating reader-friendly content
with natural keyword inclusion, you'll make it easier for Google to prove your
post's relevancy in SERPs for you.
5. Optimize your images' alt text.
Blog posts
shouldn't only contain text -- you should also include images that help explain
your content. But search engines don't just look for images. Rather, they look
for images with alt text.
Because
search engines can't "see" images the same way humans can, an image's
alt text tells them what an image is about -- which ultimately helps those
images rank in Google Images results. Alt text also makes for a better user
experience, as it'll display inside the image container when an image can't be
found or displayed, and can improve accessibility for people with
poor vision who are using screen readers.
Technically,
alt text is an attribute that can be added to an image tag in HTML. Here's what
a complete image tag might look like (bolding added for emphasis):
<img
class="wt-blog__normal-image"
src="image.jpg" alt="image-description"
title="image tooltip">
Adding
keywords to your alt text may seem minor -- and it isn't going to impact your
search rankings as much as other things on this list. But it isworth the
extra minute it takes to change the name from "IMG23940" to something
accurate and descriptive, like "puppies-playing-in-basket:"
Read this
blog post to learn more on-page SEO tips for keyword optimizing the most
critical parts of your website.
HubSpot
customers: The SEO Panel will recognize whether or
not you have optimized your images. Though these elements are not as important
as some other optimizations, they're still necessary (not to mention easy to
add)
6. Don't use too many similar topic tags.
Topic tags
can help organize your blog content, but if you overuse them, they can actually
be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, you may get penalized by search
engines for having duplicate content.
Think of it
this way: when you create a topic tag, you also create a new site page
where the content from those topic tags will appear. If you use too many
similar tags for the same content, it then appears to search engines as if
you're showing the content multiple times throughout your website. For example,
topic tags like "blogging," "blog," and "blog
posts" are too similar to one another to be used on the same
post.
If you're
worried that your current blog posts have too many similar tags, take some time
in the near future to clear them up. Choose about 15–25 topic tags that you
think are important to your blog and that aren't too similar to one
another, and then only tag your posts with those keywords. That way,
you won't have to worry about duplicate content.
7. Use URL structures that help
your visitors.
The URL
structure of your web pages (which are different from the specific URLs of your
posts) should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of
your website
What if
there's a specific article we want to read, such as "How to Do Keyword
Research: A Beginner's Guide"? Its URL structure -- http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht --
denotes that it's an article from the Marketing section of the blog.
In this way,
URL structure acts as a categorization system for readers, letting them know
where they are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines
appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to identify exactly what
information searchers will access on different parts of your blog or website.
Get more best
practices for URL structure from Moz here.
8. Link internally when possible.
Inbound
links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of
your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your
website. If you've written about a topic that's mentioned in your blog post on
another blog post, ebook, or web page, it's a best practice to link to that
page.
You might've
noticed that I've been doing that from time to time throughout this blog post
when I think it's helpful for our readers. Not only will internal linking help
keep visitors on your website, but it also surfaces your other relevant and
authoritative pages to search engines.
HubSpot
customers: The SEO Panel automatically
suggests linking to other internal resources on your website. Think of it as
solving for your SEO while also helping your visitors get more
information from your content.
If you're
looking for more internal links to add to your post but aren't sure which would
be relevant, you can click "Explore some internal links you might use in
this post" for a list of recommendations.
9. Use Google's Search Console.
Google's
free Search
Console contains
a section called the Search
Analytics Report. This
report helps you analyze clicks from Google Search, and it's useful to
determine which keywords people are using to find your blog content. Learn how
to use it by reading this blog post written
by my colleague Matthew Barby, and by checking out Google's
official support page here.
If you're
interested in optimizing your best-performing older blog posts for traffic and
leads like we've
been doing since 2015, this tool
can help identify low-hanging fruit.
A lot of
content marketers struggle with optimizing their blog posts for search. The
truth is, your blog posts won't start ranking immediately. It takes time to
build up search authority. But when you publish blog
posts frequently and
consistently optimize them for search while maintaining an intent-based reader
experience, you'll reap the rewards in the form of traffic and leads long-term.
10. Use topic clusters.
The way most
blogs are currently structured (including our own blogs, until very recently),
bloggers and SEOs have worked to create individual blog posts that rank for
specific keywords. The result is disorganized, and hard for the user to find
the exact information he or she needs. It also results in your own URLs
competing against one another in search engine rankings when you produce
multiple blog posts about similar topics.
Here's what
our blog architecture used to look like using this old playbook:
Now, in
order to rank in search and best answer the new types of queries searchers are
submitting, the solution is to use the topic cluster model: Choose the broad
topics for which you want to rank, then create content based on specific
keywords related to that topic that all link to each other, to create broader
search engine authority.
Using this
model, this is what our blog infrastructure looks like now -- with specific
topics surrounded by blog posts related to the topic, connected to other URLs
in the cluster via hyperlinks:
This model
uses a more deliberate site architecture to organize and link URLs together to
help more pages on your site rank in Google -- and to help searchers find information
on your site more easily. This architecture consists of three components --
pillar content, cluster content, and hyperlinks:
We know this
is a fairly new concept, so for more details, check out our research on the topic, take
our SEO training or the video below.
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