Everyone and their best mate knows that SEO is a great way to generate new leads, but if you aren’t able to hire the services of an SEO agency, you might be looking for some SEO tips to help you with your own DIY solutions.
At BeKonstructive we focus on content-first SEO strategy, which leans heavily on creating and adding new content to your website. This includes updating landing pages with additional information or creating new blogs (like this one!).
Blogs are an incredibly great way to add new content to your website that both indicates to Google that your site is still being updated, but also (when written strategically) supports your cornerstone content (aka your landing pages or service pages).
But not all blogs are written equally! If you are writing blog content for the purposes of SEO, you need to make sure you are doing your best to optimise it for Google and other search engines.
Incorporate Your Keywords
The first – and I mean first – step to any SEO campaign is to do your keyword research. Using tools like Semrush, you will come up with a list of keywords that are relevant to your business and its target audience – but this isn’t very useful unless you know how to properly incorporate your keywords into your website copy.
Keeping track of and incorporating your keywords is what helps your site to rank in search engines, and it is very important to make sure you are using it enough in your copy. Some keywords, however, can be difficult to seamlessly incorporate into your copy.
If you’re struggling with this we suggest writing your article with your keyword in mind, but without making it the sole focus of your blog. Writing this way will make for a piece of copy that flows seamlessly and makes sense for the reader, which is always the goal. Once you’ve written your copy, you can then start to go back and add your keyword and keyword variations into the text, which will be a lot easier once you have written a complete page of copy.
You should make sure that your exact keyword is included in the right places within your copy: the title, the subheadings, the metadata, as well as a few variations of your keyword sprinkled in amongst the text.
Blog Title
The most important place to incorporate your keyword is your blog title. This one is fairly easy, as your blog should really revolve around the keyword you are writing – or optimising – it for. Make sure that the keyword in your blog title is an exact match for the keyword you are wanting to target with this piece of content.
Sometimes this is really straight forward. For example, SEO Consultant is easy to create a blog title for, such as “5 Things To Ask When Choosing an SEO Consultant”. Whereas a location specific or longtail keyword might need you to think out of the box to make it work. If your keyword is Brisbane Copywriting, your blog title might be more along the lines of “Choosing a Brisbane Copywriting Agency” and contain helpful information that business owners should keep in mind when looking for a copywriting service.
Optimising blog titles for chosen keywords will often be the reason why a blog title reads a little bit differently, because we have to get creative to make it work.
Subheadings
Subheadings require a little more finessing to fit your keyword – not because it’s far more difficult, but because you need to ensure it’s not just a repeat of your blog title. If you have a listicle (a blog that contains a numbered list of tips, tricks, or reasons why you should xyz), it can be harder to insert your keyword into your subheadings without it looking out of place. One of our cheekiest SEO tips is to put your keyword above your final paragraph, which can include a call to action such as “Contact SEO Consultants Brisbane”.
Copy
In order to make sure your keyword shows up enough in your blog, you’re going to have to insert it into the copy somewhere. But you don’t necessarily need to make sure you write exact matches for your keyword. In fact, one of our best SEO tips is that including different variations of your keyword can have a great positive impact on your SEO.
Keyword variations include reworded or longer versions of your original keyword. Keyword variations for Real Estate Brisbane might include:
- Real Estate in Brisbane
- Brisbane Real Estate
- Real Estate Agents Brisbane
Tips for keyword density in your copy:
- For copy that is 600-800 words, you should mention your exact keyword twice and have at least 2-4 keyword variations.
- For copy that is 1000+ words, you should mention your exact keyword at least four times and have at least 4-8 keyword variations.
Metadata
Even though it’s down the bottom of this list, including your keyword in your blog’s metadata is one of the biggest Tips for writing your SEO blog article. You can add your own metadata and page title by using website plugins like Yoast SEO. Speaking of metadata…
Create Unique and Compelling Metadata
The meta description is how search engine users know what your blog content is going to be about. Think about whenever you’ve searched for something on Google – the meta description is the text under the webpage’s title that lets you know what is covered within that webpage.
By default meta descriptions are created by the search engine – in most cases, Google – and its AI, which picks out what it thinks is the most relevant part of your blog or webpage for the user. The problem with this is that the person who best knows the key points in your blog is… you.
Creating your own meta descriptions allows you to create a summary that is a) optimised for the keyword you want to rank for, and b) more accurate than a sentence that is plucked out by an AI.
There are a number of metadata rules that you should take note of if you’re creating your own. These rules help you create metadata that is accurate, succinct, and properly optimised for use by search engines.
Strategic Internal Linking
Internal links are those that link to other pages on your website. Most of the time, these internal links aren’t signposted (ie, check out our blog on 10 SEO Ranking Factors Copywriters Need to Know here), but rather suggest that you can read more information on the topic at the link provided (ie BeKonstructive makes Brisbane copywriting easy).
Most internal links exist for the purpose of informing the reader where they can find more relevant information on the topic on your website, however when used for SEO purposes, they are also there to add credibility to the linked page.
For example, if I lead you to our Brisbane SEO services landing page, I am saying that the linked page is a credible page for those looking for Brisbane SEO services. I’m indicating to the search engine bots crawling our website that I recommend this page to people already reading my site that want to learn more on the topic.
Dotting Your Is and Crossing Your Ts
Optimising your content for keywords doesn’t just stop at including them within the text of your blog – you should make sure that you dot the i’s and cross the t’s by optimising the images you upload, as well as the metadata for the page you’re creating.
You can optimise the image within your blog by using the keyword within the image titles and alt description. Your image should be titled something that reflects your blog and its keyword, such as “BestRealEstateBrisbane.jpg” or “RealEstateBrisbaneTips.jpg”.
Using the keywords, and creating unique file names for each image, shows that you are uploading new, relevant content to your blog, and not just reusing the same 5 images across your website.
One of the most useful tools for making sure your blog is as optimised as it can be is to use the tool mentioned earlier – Yoast SEO. Installing this plugin gives you access to tips for SEO best practice. It can tell you if you need to include your keyword more often, if your image names need to be updated, and even if your metadata is too long (or too short!).
Need More SEO Tips?
If you’re looking to DIY your SEO, these tips just scratch the surface of the many ways your blogs can be optimised to support your SEO activities. In fact, we have a whole blog category about SEO!
Taking on your own SEO can be a huge undertaking if you’re trying to also run your business, manage employees, and take care of other marketing channels at the same time. That’s why SEO agencies like BeKonstructive Marketing exist!
If you’d like to discuss how we can help to take some of the load off of your SEO efforts, get in touch today! We can help you with each piece of the SEO puzzle – from consulting to copywriting, strategy to full service, get in touch today to see how we can work together.
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