Here are the top 25 blogging SEO tips to help all blog posts compete for a first page Google ranking.

1. Cut the time to write a post in half by using an AI SEO tool

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools, like Clearscope and RankIQ, tell you what topics marketer should cover in their post to compete for a first-page ranking on Google. This allows marketers to create a comprehensive outline in a short amount of time.

2. Do not use single-phrase search volume when choosing keywords

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when blogging, is using single-phrase search volume to identify keywords. This metric is only meant to be used for Google ads, and it is not an accurate measurement of the traffic you will get.

There are only two keyword research tools which provide an accurate traffic estimate, which are Ahrefs’ Traffic Potential and RankIQ’s Estimated Yearly Visitors.

3. Poll create original research posts from poll results

Original research posts get a high number of backlinks. One easy way to generate original data is for marketers and bloggers to identify large Facebook groups within their area of interest, and post polls. The answers gained from the polls can form the basis for building a research post.

4. Get interviewed on podcasts to generate high quality backlinks

Backlinks to a blogs can be generated in several ways, including being interviewed for a podcast. Links then often appear in the show notes page for the relevant episode.

One way to marketers can advertise employees as available for podcast interviews is to send emails to various show hosts. Details of podcast hosts are relatively easy to find through hosting sites; Apple’s Top Charts lists the top 300 podcasts in a number of different areas. If bloggers do not have time to send emails, there is the option to sign up to PodcastGuests.com and have the hosts reach out instead.

5. Write blog posts on the most searched stats for year-round passive backlinks

Journalists citing data or specific statistics will often add a backlink to their source within their articles, but they tend to click on a title which has the highest number of data points available. (E.g., 50 Latest Dog Biting Statistics).

Marketers can boost their blogs’ SEO by researching keywords to glean the most searched for statistics in a specific area of interest. Once a blogger knows which statistics are popular, there is the opportunity for them to write a blog post with additional data points.

6. Use Google ‘friendly’ terms in your title

When marketers run an AI SEO Report through a tool like RankIQ, it lists the words Google ‘likes’ the most within titles. This enables bloggers to create perfectly optimised post titles from words driving the highest click-through rates (CTR) for specific keywords or phrases.

7. Use a targeted front-end modifier on your blog post title

A strategically placed front-end modifier, like “best,” “top” or “good”, can bump a marketers blog  ranking from #3 to #1. Different topics and areas of interest have unique front-end modifiers. Food bloggers get over 90% of their traffic from recipe posts. The top front-end modifiers for recipe posts are “easy,” “best,” “homemade,” and “simple”. (E.g., Easy chicken pot pie recipe).

8. Always go higher than your competition

Before a list post is published, marketers should look at their competition on the first page of Google. If the highest number in a title is 15, then they should consider lengthening their blog list post to 25. This is going to increase the CTR and push their blogs’ posts past titles with lower numbers.

9. Do not go over 60 characters in your blogpost title

Ahrefs SEO tool found titles with more than 60 characters are rewritten by Google 57% more often than those with 60 or less characters.

10. Use brackets with the current year at the end of each post title

Google searchers want content with the latest information. Blog posts which have the current year in their title are going ng to get more clicks than those that do not; using square brackets increased the click-through rate by 38%.

An example would be: ‘25 Email Marketing Tips for Bloggers [2022]’.

11. Internally link to a new post from two other high authority posts

As soon as a market publishes a new post through a company blog, they should link it to at least two of historical blog posts which have plenty of inbound links.

12. Write 40-50 word paragraphs to rank for featured snippets

Multiple studies have confirmed the majority of featured snippets are pulled from paragraphs which are 40-50 words in length. This is also the ideal length of a paragraph for maximum reader engagement.

13. Make sure your ‘content grade’ is an A+ before publishing

Backlinko looked at 11.8 million Google results and found posts with a high content grade ranked significantly higher in Google search. Content optimisation tools, like RankIQ, will grade a blog’s content based on what Google wants to see from a post for a specific keyword phrase.

14. Add FAQs at the end of a post to increase ‘dwell time’

One way to prolong people’s time on page is to add a frequently asked questions section to the bottom of a blog post.

To find out the best questions to include, search engines can be used by any marketer to find out the most common questions searched for on specific topic. Google even has a dedicated “People also ask” option.

Marketers should consider included around 3-5 of these questions, and their 40–50 word answers, within their businesses’ blog posts.

15. Listen to teaching podcasts like ‘The Blogging Millionaire’

The host of The Blogging Millionaire – a podcast devoted to teaching different blogging strategies – gets 5 million monthly visitors from over 100,000 first-page Google rankings.

Brandon Gaille, host of the podcast, has so far taught over 100 blogging and SEO growth hacks in short ten-minute episodes.

16. Keep your intros to three sentences or less to increase engagement

Readers want to get to the body of blog post as quickly as possible. For list posts, marketers should ensure readers can see the first item on the blog’s list above the fold.

17. Create a meta description tease to increase click through rates

In 150 characters, markets should include the best part of a post and end with an ellipsis. This can increase the click-through rate on a post enough to move up several spots in Google’s rankings.

Here’s an example of a meta description tease:

Title: 11 On-page SEO Best Practices for Blog Post

There are eleven On Page SEO tactics that pro bloggers use to get ridiculous results. The one tactic that plays the biggest role in SEO is…

18. Buy an aftermarket domain with existing backlinks to rank higher faster

Using a high domain authority expired domain will allow a blog post to rank high on Google from day one. The best place to find these domains is at GoDaddy Auctions.

• In the advanced search, select expiring “.com” or “.org” domains which are at least 4 years old.
• Copy all domains which come up with at least 1 bid into a Google sheet.
• Run these through a bulk domain authority checker and remove all domains with less than a 30-domain authority.
• Use the Wayback Machine to find domains with content which are at least loosely related to your subject area.

19. Identify the word count that google prefers for every keyword you write on

The word count needed to hit a keyword is different, depending on the subject area.  For a recipe post, it may only take 900 words. For a marketing tips post, 4000 words may be needed.

AI SEO tools like Frase and RankIQ use algorithms to determine the word count a post needs to compete for the top Google ranking.

20. Keep your URLs short by focusing on the core keyword phrase

A study by Backlinko found URLs in the top Google position are 9.2 characters shorter than the URLs in position number 10.

21. Use your own video thumbnails and links

SEO can also be bolstered by avoiding video embedding from a hosting site. The YouTube embed code significantly slows down the page speed of a post, which is a component of Google’s algorithm.

22. Place your target keyword in the first 100 words of your content

This tactic has been around for a while, and it still makes an impact.

23. Run your post through Grammarly before you hit publish

There is nothing worse than a blog post littered with spelling errors or grammatical errors; it suggests author laziness or a rushed blog post.

Grammarly’s tool is almost as good as having an editor who reviews your work. It will instantly take a rough post and flag any inconsistencies or errors and suggest corrections.

24. Include short stat-based infographics for more backlinks and social shares

There are few things which attract backlinks and social shares like simple stat-based infographics. By using a 16:9 ratio, your stat infographics will work for both desktop and mobile audiences.

25. Get a list of the lowest competition keywords with the highest traffic potential from RankIQ

Most bloggers end up writing more than 50% of their posts on keywords they will never be able to rank for.

RankIQ’s top keyword research experts have identified the lowest competition high traffic keywords in over 300 blogging niches.

Rank IQ provides AI-powered tools to help marketers and bloggers improve their SEO by identifying key words and topics that top Google’s ranking algorithm. 

https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2022/01/14/top-25-blogging-seo-tips-for-2022/

Do you use multiple social media pixels and tracking tools on your website? Want an easy way to install and manage those code snippets without waiting on a technical pro? In this article, you’ll learn how to use Google Tag Manager to quickly add social media pixels and tracking scripts to your blog or website. […]

The post How to Easily Install Tracking Pixels on Your Website With Google Tag Manager appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tracking-pixels-google-tag-manager/

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https://arstechnica.com/?p=1339247

 

By now the advantages of blogging are undoubtedly well-established. Statistics show that:

• Businesses that blog get 67 % more leads than businesses that do not
• Marketers that prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to get a positive ROI compared to marketers that don’t
• Companies that blog get 97 % more links compared to companies that do not blog
• Websites with a blog are likely to have 434 % more indexed pages.

However, if you don’t have an SEO strategy for your blog, you are most certainly missing out. Research shows that SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, compared to a 1.7% close rate through outbound means.

In other words, it is not enough to blog. You need to make sure your blog ranks in the search engines. The following basic tips will help you optimize your blog for search engines:

1. Employ the use of breadcrumbs

Take a look at the screenshot below — from an article on the Writers in Charge website:

You’ll notice the section underlined in red? That’s breadcrumbs.

You can also see this implemented on all Search Engine Watch articles, including this one you are reading.

Using breadcrumbs has two main advantages:

• It helps Google and other search engines understand the structure of your blog. Using clickable paths, it makes it easy for search engines to see how your blog is structured. It also helps your blog’s internal linking — making it almost impossible for content on your blog to be undiscoverable by search engines.
• It improves the user experience of your blog. It makes it easy to navigate sections of your blog without necessarily having to go back or close the browser tab. This increases time spent on site and reduces bounce rate, and good user experience will help your SEO.

 

2. Write longer and topically relevant content

Any article discussing basic blog SEO tips that doesn’t talk about content is incomplete. While Google has maintained a level of secrecy about factors it uses to rank websites, it has never shied away from emphasizing the importance of content. In fact, according to Google Search Quality Senior Strategist Andrey Lipattsev, content, links, and rankbrain are the three most important search ranking factors.

The main question, however, is this: what gives a blog post an advantage over others in the search engines. While Google has been very vague, SEO experts have some data based on analysis:

• Longer, in-depth content rank better. Studies have shown that content in the 1800 – 2,000+ words range tend to rank better than shorter content.
• Topically-relevant content has been found to rank better. Making a blog post focus on one topic and discussing it in-depth will yield better results than having it discuss two or more unrelated topics.

3. Make your blog posts visually appealing

Taking the extra time required to add relevant, properly-tagged images to your blog post can seem frustrating, but it will be well worth it. It’s one of the easiest, most basic things you can do to help your content rank better.

According to Backlinko’s analysis of over one million articles, blog posts that contain at least one image significantly outperformed content without any images. That said, it doesn’t seem to matter much whether a piece of content has one or ten images: at the very least, make sure to include an image in all of your blog posts.

4. Internal linking

Links are undoubtedly one of the most important search engine ranking factors. In fact, the impact links play on search engine rankings is so significant that Backlinko’s research found that links influence the rankings of any content piece more than anything else.

However, a lot of attention is often paid to external links to the detriment of internal links. In a case study, Ninja Outreach explained that they were able to boost their search traffic by 40% simply by working on their internal linking.

Here are some tips:

• Use descriptive anchor texts when linking internally
• Moderate the number of links on your page — while internal linking is good, there’s no point having too much on one page.
• Occasionally review old content pieces to ensure they link to other content pieces.

5. Improve your blog’s permalink structure

Depending on the CMS you are using for your blog, you’re likely to be stuck with an SEO-unfriendly permalink structure. Permalinks are the web address used to link to your content.

For example, if you own the blog: howtoteachadog.com and publish an article titled “How To Teach a Dog to Catch,” the resulting URL structure could be this:

howtoteachadog.com/?p=100

Or this:

howtoteachadog.com/how-to-teach-a-dog-to-catch

In most cases many blogs are stuck with the first version — which gives no indication of what the article is about. The second structure, on the other hand, is more descriptive and will be more effective from an SEO perspective.

If you use WordPress, this article will show you how to change your blog permalink structure. If you use other CMSs, they most likely have an official tutorial on how to do this.

 

6. Install basic SEO plugins

Plugins can give you a kind of superpower when it comes to your blog SEO. While you want to be careful with what plugins you install (in order to avoid clunking your site and making to slower), installing and using the following basic SEO plugins will give you an edge:

• All in One SEO/Yoast SEO plugin: this allows you to review each of your posts based on a number of factors until it is “perfect” from an SEO perspective.
• The WP Smush.it plugin: site speed is one of the ranking factors Google and other search engines use, and images are often a major culprit when it comes to site loading times. This plugin will compress your images and as a result boost your site speed and helping your SEO.

 

7. Get quality external links

This is as basic as it gets. Google admits that links are one of the top three ranking factors it uses when ranking websites. Effective blog SEO is not possible without external links.

Here are some ideas to help you get backlinks to your blog:

• Identify relevant and authoritative publications and become guest authors for them. These publications will let you have a bio link and sometimes an in-content link to your blog posts. If relevant, these links can positively impact your blog SEO.
• Get relevant industry blogs and publications to feature you — it could be in the form of an interview, a quote, or as part of an expert roundup.
• Develop an outreach strategy aimed at getting relevant blogs to link to content on your blog.

https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/06/28/seven-basic-tips-for-blog-seo/

In a nutshell, you need to address the three areas of profitability: direct sales, advertising and affiliate marketing.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309352

You don’t have to be hip, trendy, or in an arrantly dynamic new market to pique our interest here at Go Media. We love the challenge of working with clients who have a long history in business but are in need of what I like to call a Marketing Makeover. This could amount to any number of things: from re-imagining a logo, to a complete brand refresh, to freshening up your communications with copy that sheds new light on your business while adding a singular twist to the ongoing dialogue you enjoy with your customers.

Fact is, there are many seasoned and vibrant company’s out there looking for a little TLC, commercially speaking. From re-introducing you to the world with a beautiful, new, fully responsive website, to employing a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy [complete with SEO and social media marketing], the potential for engagement with your audience is staggering nowadays.

And from our perspective here at Go Media, there are few things more rewarding than taking the scattered brand assets and outdated communications of what we like to call a legacy company with a notable history and updating them for today’s marketplace. The process is kind of like treating you to a long weekend at the spa while we rummage through the attic of your house for old family photos, heirlooms, and clues to your family history.

As a copywriter, I particularly enjoy the challenge of updating a company’s overall communication strategy. The task of casting a company’s vision in a new light with a fresh new narrative is one that I relish. And no matter how conventional, or seemingly mundane the subject matter, the prospect of making a company’s communication strategy comprehensible and appealing across new and different platforms (website, blog, social media, etc.) is exciting and should be handled with gusto.

Case in point, Allied Tool & Die [a 70+ year old, Cleveland-based manufacturer of metal stampings for Automotive, Medical, electronic, and commercial industries worldwide] approached Go Media in early 2017 requesting a marketing makeover themselves: new Web Design, Inbound Marketing services (SEO), Upgraded Logo Design, and comprehensive Copywriting Services. Fortunately, the good people at Allied gave us the keys to their “attic” and free reign to rummage.

The Go Media team went for a more acute, contemporary approach to an otherwise fixed industry traditionally accustomed to staying in their own lane. And like a duck to water, we dove in and delivered punchier communications for the pages on their website (Capabilities, Services, Equipment, etc.). Then we launched it all on an intelligently designed, fully responsive Go Media Designer Site complete with artful photos and video presented on a cinematic scale. Phew! Now that’s one stunning Marketing Makeover!

If you know of a company that you’d like to recommend for a Marketing Makeover, or you suspect the company you work for could benefit from one too, give us a nudge!