Do you blog?

If you’ve answered yes to both you’re in the right place. Because you’re probably wondering how on earth you can SEO your WordPress blog posts so you get higher search engine rankings. 

We won’t lie to you, SEO is not a sexy topic to talk about. A lot of people zone out as soon as we mention those three letters – They try and hide it, but we can see it in their eyes! 

That’s why we put together this handy guide to help you optimise your WordPress blog posts.

Don’t worry.

It doesn’t need to be technical.

It doesn’t need to be complicated.

And there’s a plugin (or two) for that.

Ready to get into it?

Firstly, why use WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular site builder and content management system out there. We love it because it’s completely customisable and super easy to use.

You don’t even need any knowledge of code or programming language at all because yes, it’s that easy to use! And when you come across something you can’t do, you have loads of people (other website owners or experts) and reputable forums you can go to for help. And even better, if there’s something you’re struggling with, there’s probably a trialled and tested plugin that will do the job for you.

But there are also some slightly more technical reasons why WordPress is always a great choice if you want your website to be found on Google. For example, WordPress offers a clean URL structure that allows you to create unique web addresses for each page. And it’s not built with lots of unnecessary code, which means it’s fairly lightweight and quicker than other platforms. And the search engines love that!

Ultimately, you can easily use SEO on your WordPress blog posts – even if you’re a beginner at SEO. 

We have a whole long list of reasons why we love and always recommend WordPress. You can read them all in the blog post Why Do We ONLY Use WordPress To Build Your Website?

Different WordPress plugins you can use to optimise your content

One of the big reasons why we recommend WordPress to all our clients and members is that it gives you access to easy-to-install plugins that allow you to optimise your content easily. And here are some of our favourites:

• Yoast SEO plugin. One of the most popular SEO plugins out there, it has a great free version, you can use it on multiple websites, and it comes with an extensive number of features to help you make your website more search-engine friendly.
• SEOPress also has a free version and is another strong contender when it comes to WordPress plugins for SEO. It includes most of the key SEO tools you’re likely to need and it works fast.
• Another WordPress SEO plugin worth checking out is All in One SEO (AIOSEO). 

But how exactly can these plugins help you optimise your WordPress blog posts?

How to SEO your WordPress blog posts – longtail keywords

When it comes to search engine optimising your WordPress blog posts, there are a few things we recommend you do to the text (or the content) of your article. But first thing first, you need to decide on the longtail keyword (or phrase) you want your content to be found for.

So, for example, if you’ve written a fantastic piece on how to grow your Personal Training business, you might want to optimise it for the longtail keyword “promote fitness business”. That means you’re going to include that phrase in various key, strategic places inside your blog post in order to give yourself the best chances of ranking high in the search results when someone goes looking for that phrase.

So let’s have a look at where you need to include the focus keyphrase you’ve picked. We’ll look at the following places…

1. Adding your keyword to your main heading or title
2. Using your keyphrase naturally in your subheadings
3. Adding your keywords naturally through your main body text
4. Using your keywords with your blog post images
5. Optimising your internal links
6. Using outbound links in your article

Let’s get started! 

1. Adding your keyword to your main heading or title

The very first place to add your keyword to (in our example, “promote fitness business”) is your blog post title. This is right at the top of your screen when you write your blog post. 

So using the same example as above, your blog post title might be something like:

• “10 Easy Steps to Promote your Fitness Business”.
• Or “How to Promote your Fitness Business in 2022”.
• Or even “The Best Marketing Strategies to Promote your Fitness Business”

How to assign a blog post title in WordPress

When you first create a post, simply type in your title, and WordPress will automatically assign it a Heading 1 tag (or Title Tag). That’s the only Heading 1 you’re going to use throughout your blog post.

Google will understand that this is a ‘H1 tag’, and the words you use in within this summarise exactly what your article is about. It’s hugely important for SEO, so try to make your title clear (and of course, include your keyword!) 

Top tip! The sooner your keyword phrase appears in the title, the better for SEO purposes.

2. Using your keyphrase naturally in your subheadings

Your subheadings are the Heading 2s, Heading 3s, Heading 4s etc. that you include in the body of your blog post to give it a nice structure and to make it easier for your readers to read through your content.

To SEO your WordPress blog posts for search, include the keyword phrase in some of your subheadings – not all of them, mind. You don’t want to sound too repetitive and robotic. It needs to sound natural and read well. If it doesn’t fit in the context of that section of the text, don’t try and force it.

How to assign a subheading in WordPress

As you can see below, we’ve added a H2 tag to the example blog post. To do this in WordPress all you need to do is simply highlight the text you want as your subheading, and change the text from pargraph to Heading 2, 3 or 4 etc. You can see where we’ve done this in the red circle.

Make sure your subheadings make sense. Your heading 3 should come under your heading 2 etc. Don’t mix them randomly! Google (and your end-user) read these to understand what’s most important on the page. It’s good for SEO and user-experience if you keep them logical and consistent. 

Top tip! Don’t worry about using variations of your keyword such as ‘promoting your fitness business’ or ‘promote your fitness and lifestyle business’ – Google is smart and will understands ‘user-intent’ i.e. the goal of the searcher (even if they use slightly different wording).

3. Adding your keywords naturally through your main body text

You’ll also want to include your focus keyword in the main text of your blog post and not just once. In fact, the longer the piece of content, the more time it’s recommended you use your focus keyword. Aim for 2 or 3 times at least, but if you’re writing a longer piece, your SEO plugins might suggest you sprinkle your keyword around the main body of the blog post a few more times.

When doing this though, always make sure the keyword phrase fits in the text naturally and organically. Don’t try to shoehorn it afterwards and out of context because your readers will be able to see through that. And they’ll quickly get fed up with reading and hit the back button. And that’s definitely not good for you or your SEO efforts!

How to add your keyword or phrase through your main body copy in WordPress

This part is simple. All your need to do is write as normal and include your keywords/phrases. There’s an example below highlighted in red (just please don’t highlight all your keywords and phrases 😂). 

Top tip! In all honesty, we don’t focus overally on keywords within our main copy. Yes, we may mention them. But it’s important you write for your users first. Write naturally, use personality. Don’t worry too much about keywords otherwise you’ll sound like a robot!

4. Using your keywords with your blog post images

No one wants to read a blog post that looks like a wall of text without breaks or images, do they? That’s not very easy on the eyes, so always make sure you include some relevant images with your blog posts.

The thing is though, Google and the other search engines cannot ‘see’ images as you and I do. To them, an image is a collection of pixels. It’s just a bunch of data. So in order to tell Google what your image is all about, include your focus keyword in two key places:

1. The name of the file. Wherever you can, just rename the file and make sure you include your focus keyword in there.
2. The Alt Description. This is a bit of text that you can populate when you edit the image. The Alt Description is normally used to describe to Google (in words) what the image is all about, and it’s the perfect place for you to add your focus keyword.

How to add an Alt Description in WordPress

Firstly, you’ll need to add your image. To do this, go to ‘insert’ at the top of your page. 

Then go down to ‘add media’ and upload your file (the tab on the left). 

Once you’ve done this on the right hand side you will see a section where you can add your ALT text. 

Top tip! There’s no need to add the phrase ‘image of’ or ‘picture of’ when adding your ALT text, just go straight into it. 

5. Optimising your internal links

Another important factor for SEO on your WordPress blog is including internal links in your content. These are contextual links to your own website – the same website where you’re publishing the blog post you’re writing. The reason why they’re important for SEO is that they tell Google how various pieces of your own content are related to each other.

It’s a bit like giving Google the ‘map’ for your website. Internal links tell the search engine that piece A is linked to piece B, piece B is linked to piece C, etc. Plus, they help your readers delve deeper into your content and get to know you and your work better. When you think about it, adding internal links is a great piece of customer service.

Don’t add these in at random though! Make sure you include internal links wherever they’re relevant. For example, if you briefly mention a topic that you’ve covered in more detail in another piece, add the link to that piece of content. You don’t have to have loads – 2-5 is plenty!

How to add an Internal Links in WordPress

All you need to do is highlight your text and click on the ‘insert link button’ (picture below) to link internally.  

Top tip! Don’t link the words ‘click here’ actually link your keyword or phrase instead, as then Google will understand more about the article you are linking too. 

6. Using outbound links in your article 

For similar reasons, outbound links are also important. These tell the search engines that your piece of content doesn’t just exist in isolation. So always try to add relevant outbound links to authoritative websites. This could be the BBC, national newspapers and other news outlets, or authority websites in your niche or industry.

You can actually see how ‘authoritive’ a website is by checking a website’s domain authority. This is where you can see how trustworthy a website is. Sidenote, do you see what we did there with linking out? 😉

Again, remember to only include links that are relevant and organic – you want to add value to your readers and give more authority to your content.

Top tip! This is a controversial one but for outbound links, we set them to open up in a new tab. This is because we still want people to remain on our website and not visit BBC then get distracted by something else – forgetting to come back to us! This is just for outbound links we do this. 

How to add an External Links in WordPress

You follow the exact same process as above (for internal links). However, you may want to set your link to open in a new tab. To do this, simply click on the gear icon when you’ve inserted your link. And then select ‘open in new tab’. 

How to use the Yoast SEO plugin to optimise your WordPress blog posts

So now you’ve sprinkled your keyword of choice in all the right places and done all the right things to give you brownie points with Google, you’ll want to use the additional features in your SEO plugin of choice and populate a few more entries. And here we’re going to give you an example of how to use the Yoast SEO plugin.

The Yoast plugin allows you to use search engine optimise your blog posts easily. There’s a free version too, so it’s well worth installing!

When you install and activate Yoast SEO on your WordPress website, if you scroll down to the end of your blog posts, you’ll see two separate tabs – one called ‘SEO’ and one called ‘Readability’. When you click on the ‘SEO’ tab, this shows you a few fields:

1. Focus keyphrase
2. SEO title
3. Slug
4. Meta Description.

So let’s get through each one in a bit more detail.

1. Focus keyphrase

This is easy. Remember when you decided on the phrase you wanted to optimise your blog post for before you even started writing it? We used the example “promote fitness business” earlier, so in this case, that’s what we’d type into the ‘Focus keyphrase’ field.

This won’t impact your rankings in any way, but it does tell Yoast what you would like to rank for. The plugin will scan your post (or page) for this keyword/phrase and tell you how well you’ve optimised your page for it. 

How to insert your focus keyphrase into Yoast

Just scroll to the bottom of your blog post to find your Yoast information. You’ll see the words, ‘Focus Keyphrase’, just go ahead and add your keyphrase into that section. Easy-peasy! 

Top tip – don’t worry about including words like “a”, “the”, “your” in the keyphrase. People don’t always type that kind of stuff when doing searches, so you don’t need to include it.

2. SEO title

Also known as the ‘Title Tag’, this is the title of your blog post that Google and the search engines will display when people run a search. If you look just above the ‘SEO title’ entry under the Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll see a section called ‘Google Preview’, which shows you (in blue) what your title looks like. In order to optimise your blog post, you want to make sure you include your longtail keyword in there.

If you don’t do this manually, WordPress will automatically take the title of your blog post and add this here, but you may find this is too long. It may also add other unnecessary details like your website name, which is fine if you have room but best to leave out if you don’t!

How to write your Title Tag using Yoast

Under the ‘SEO title’ section, you may need to delete anything prepopulated here (depending on how it looks under the ‘Google preview’ section). Once you’ve done that you can type in a more appropriate title that contains your keyword/phrase. 

Top tip – the earlier your focus keyword appears in the title, the better!

3. Meta Description

This is the bit in the search results that appears underneath the blog post title (the one in blue). This short bit of text gives the readers a little preview of what the content is all about.

When an exact match of your search term appears in the Meta Description, it’s highlighted in bold. This tells a user that your content is relevant to their search, so always make sure you populate the ‘Meta Description’ entry in the Yoast SEO plugin and stick to the length recommended by the plugin. You’ll see the traffic light go red if you’re over the maximum character length.

How to write your Meta Description using Yoast

Just head to the ‘meta description’ section and add an enticing description of your blog post that encourages people to click. Use the green and red marker to make sure you don’t go over your word count (where Google will cut off your words!)

Top tip – the meta description doesn’t impact the SEO for your WordPress blog post, however, it does encourage people to click on your website once you appear in search results. So make sure it’s enticing!

4. Slug

Also known as the ‘URL permalink, this is the unique web address allocated to your piece of content. Say you went for the blog title “How to Promote your Fitness Business”, your URL might look something like this:

www.yourwebsitname.com/promote-fitness-business

As you can see, there’s no need to use the full title there. In fact, the shorter your URL, the better! What matters for optimisation purposes is that your focus keyword is in there.

How to create your URL using Yoast

Head over to the section that says ‘slug’ and add your slug here, using hyphens to separate each word. You don’t need to add the www.yourwebsitname.com/, just everything that comes after that. 

Top tip – Keep your URL slug short (2-3 words if you can) and remove all unneccary words like ‘the’ ‘and’ or ‘of’.

The SEO Analysis for Your WordPress Blog Post

Once you’ve written and optimised your blog post and added your focus keyword in all the relevant places, you can check the section called ‘SEO Analysis’ under your Yoast SEO plugin. Hopefully, the traffic light against it will be green, which means you’re good to go. If it’s amber or red, you can use the drop-down arrow on the right-hand side, and the plugin will tell you what you need to fix.

It could be that you haven’t added or optimised any images, or that you haven’t included any inbound or outbound links. Or even that you’ve used the keyword phrase but just not enough times. But if you follow the instructions in this blog post, you’ll know exactly what to do to remedy any of these points.

And if you want more cool tips on SEO, head over to the blog post, SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

Having said all that… Please know that the traffic light system isn’t the end all be all of SEO! Because obsessing over the traffic light system is something we see people do all the time, and it’s a waste of your time.

Further Elements that Impact Your SEO for Your WordPress Blog

Although not WordPress specific, here are a few further elements that can impact your SEO results…

1. Wordcount

Word count (i.e. the length of your blog post) is also a big factor for SEO. Why? Because the type of content that’s published on the internet has changed over the years. Gone are the days when a short piece of 500 words would have ranked at the top of the search results. And that’s because people publish much longer content, which is why we always recommend you choose a specific topic and then go really in-depth when writing about it.

Ideally, you’re looking at creating blog posts over 1,000 words. But don’t be afraid to hit the 1,500-2,000 word mark (or even longer!) This will really help when it comes to your SEO for your WordPress Blog. Some of our top ranking articles are 2000+ words in length, and more importantly, they actually convert!

2. Include a Call to Action (CTA)

A Call to Action (or CTA) is your way of telling your readers what you want them to do once they’ve read your blog post. Do you want them to go read another piece of content? Check out your course or membership? Or maybe download your lead magnet and sign up to your email list?

Ideally, with your CTA you want to keep your audience on your website because this improves your bounce rate. Simply put, you want to stop your readers from hitting the back button and going back to Google to check out another piece of content. The longer they spend on your page, blog post, or website, the more Google takes this as a signal that your content is relevant, interesting, and trustworthy. And that means in the future when it comes to similar searches, they’ll rank your content higher than someone else’s who has a higher bounce rate than yours.

For example, here’s our call-to-action you’ve probably seen throughout our blog post – look at us getting it in here again 😉

3. Related content

And finally, you can add a section at the end of your blog post with ‘Related Content’. If it’s content you’ve published, this gives you the opportunity to add more internal links to your piece, which is great for SEO.

But you could also link to videos on your YouTube channel, for example. Or even better, embed those videos inside your blog posts. This increases the time that your audience spends on the page, which, again, tells Google that your content is relevant, interesting, and trustworthy.

Common Mistakes with your WordPress SEO for Blog Posts

Please please please don’t spend way too long trying to keep the Yoast SEO traffic light system happy. The plugin is there to help you and remind you of the things you could improve when it comes to SEO. But if you follow the tips in this blog post and have them at the back of your mind while you’re structuring and writing your blog post, optimising it shouldn’t take you more than 20-30 minutes.

And on that note, here are a couple of other SEO for your WordPress Blog mistakes that are worth calling out.

• Spending too long on keyword research. This doesn’t have to be complicated! Use handy tools like KWFinder, Answer the public, or Keywords Everywhere to help you.
• Focusing on search rather than users. We mentioned this quite a few times throughout this blog post, but this is important. You don’t want to stick words in for the sake of it because your readers will see through it and will disengage from your content and, as a result, from you as a brand. So always make sure your keywords are included organically and naturally in the text – they need to sound like they belong there. And if you’ve chosen your keyword and your topic right, they will! 

If you want to find out more about all this, head over to our blog post, The Biggest SEO Mistakes You’re Making (And What to Do Instead).

Ready to take your SEO to the Next Level? 

The benefits of good SEO are clear – it helps you get more leads and sales organically, without having to spend so much time on social media or fork out a load of money for ads. 

But often, business owners find SEO a bit too complicated, which is why we’ve created our SEO Starter Pack. This pack is aimed at complete beginners and will teach you exactly how to optimise your website for better search engine rankings. 

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post WordPress SEO For Blogging – How to Optimise Your WordPress Blog Posts appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

We’ve all heard that we need to produce valuable, in-depth content and that ‘content is king’.

And that’s absolutely true. But if you tried it in practice, you also know how time-consuming content creation and can be. Plus, let’s not forget that your prospective customers and clients are busy. Just because you’ve shared a piece of your awesome content once, it doesn’t mean they’ve seen it!

So here’s something a content strategy you may have not considered – content repurposing.

In this blog post, we are going to share 6 different ways for you to repurpose a blog post (and save yourself a hell of a lot of time in the process!).

But first thing first…

What is Content Repurposing? 

Content repurposing means taking a piece of content that you’ve previously created and turning it into something that you can reuse and re-share somewhere else. Easy, right?

Repurposing can take many forms. You can record a YouTube video or a podcast episode and turn that into a blog post. Or you can take sections from a blog post and share them as a series of social media posts. You can even pull out interesting quotes from a piece of content and create beautiful graphics, memes, or infographics out of them. That’s repurposing too!

When it comes to content repurposing, you have plenty of options, but we always recommend that you start with a blog post first.

And here’s why…

Why Repurpose a Blog Post? 

We tell all our clients and members to have a ‘website first’ mentality.

Are you now wondering what that even is? Well, fair enough.

It’s simple, really. It means you create content for your website first and then slice and dice it however you like and repurpose it into different pieces. And once you have repurposed it, you can share it in different formats and on other platforms, like your email list or social media, for example.

But why start with your website?

Because the more content you share on your website, the more chances you give yourself to rank on Google for different keywords. And that gives you opportunities of being found by your ideal customers or clients.

Pretty cool, right?

We think so.

Because if you don’t publish content for your website first, you’ll miss out on all those search engine searches that could easily land more and more people on your website. If you want to read more about how creating content helps you drive traffic to your website, head over to our article, SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

But the blog post is the foundation of your content strategy – it’s where it all starts.

So now that you’ve got some amazing blog posts, what can you do with them?

1. How to repurpose a blog post onto LinkedIn 

The great thing about creating a longer piece of written content first (and that’s your blog post!) is that you can then easily take sections of it and create 5-10 individual posts that you can share on social media.

We use this method from Content Writer Sara Bussandri to repurpose our blog posts on LinkedIn, but it works for Facebook or your Instagram feed too.

All you need to do is to grab a section of your blog post (a teaching, a lesson, or a key point you want to share) and ‘dress it up’ for the social media platform you’re sharing it on.

Using Sara’s method, to put your post together, you need:

• A ‘hook’ – an interesting line or question that will stop people in their tracks. You want them to quit scrolling and read your post.
• A short introduction to your topic. Why are you talking about this today? Why does it matter to your audience?
• The lesson or point you want to make. This can be taken directly from your blog post. If it works, copy and paste. If not, rephrase and summarise.
• A conclusion or question to encourage your audience to engage with your post. You want people to comment on your post, as that tells LinkedIn that your content is interesting and popular. And in turn, it will be shown to more people.
• And finally, some hashtags. These work as keywords. If someone searches for a particular term or follows the hashtags you’ve used, they will see your content pop up in their feed.

LinkedIn posts are limited to a maximum of 1,300 characters, so you’ll have to break your blogposts down and repurpose the content.

An Example of a Blog Post Repurposed into a LinkedIn Post

Below, is an example of how we turned a blog post about creating a lead generating website, into a LinkedIn post. The main part of the LinkedIn post (the 3 key steps to get leads on your website) comes from this blog post. Every time we write a blog post we also write up 5-8 LinkedIn posts too. This is because the blog post is fresh in our minds and it makes it a much faster process!

Repurposing Your Blog Post Into A LinkedIn Article

But nothing stops from you sharing longer articles on LinkedIn.

You can either create a LinkedIn article out of your entire blog posts or use parts of it and encourage your readers to go and read the full version on your website. Publishing articles on LinkedIn can help with your brand awareness and visibility. And it’s also a great way to build relationships with your connections.

If you want to find out more about creating LinkedIn articles, our awesome member Louise Brogan wrote this piece: How to Create LinkedIn Articles That People Will Read and Share.

Repurposing your blog post into a LinkedIn Carousels

We don’t ordinarily see LinkedIn as a visual platform. But this recent article from Content Repurposing Expert, Amy Woods at Content 10x, was really interesting! Amy talks about how you can repurpose your content into a ‘LinkedIn carousel’ which is multiple images that you need to swipe through. These images tell a story or explain something. And they work incredibly well on LinkedIn. This isn’t something we’ve tried before but it’s on our to-do list after reading the article!

2. How to repurpose a blog post on Instagram posts and Stories 

Compared to LinkedIn, Instagram is a much more visual platform. So if you are going to repurpose your blog post content for Insta posts or Stories, you need images!

When we repurpose content for our Instagram account, we create graphics out of the content. We use templates from Viral Marketing Stars to help us, which can be customised with your brand colours and fonts in Canva. They’re designed to generate engagement and grow your following and have been working really well for us. 

Obviously, if you’re posting on your Instagram feed, you also need some written content to go with your image. The graphic will capture your audience’s attention and stop them from scrolling, but the text in your post is your chance to encourage them to engage with your content and go and check your website.

So make sure you write a unique and engaging post to introduce your blog content. You don’t want to just tell them to click on the link in your bio! You can use the same tips we shared for creating LinkedIn posts to write your Insta posts too.

An example of how we repurposed a blog post to an Instagram Post…

Below was one of several graphics we made based on our blog post, what to put on your homepage. As you can see the image doesn’t just say, ‘hey we have a new blog post!’ It gives people some actual advice (such as the 8 things you should include on your homepage).

3. Repurposing your blog post into a Podcast 

Your blog post can also be turned into a podcast. So once you’ve written your blog posts and organised all your thoughts on a particular topic, it’s easy enough to record a podcast episode out of it.

You can either record yourself as your read out your article like a script and then upload your audio file onto your podcasting platform, or you just use your blog post as a starting point and guideline. Instead of reading, you talk your audience through it naturally. And that will become your podcast episode.

Awesome, right?

If you don’t have a podcast show already, you may have a few other things to think about, including equipment, graphics, etc. To find out more about how to start your own podcast, check out this article from Colin Gray, a.k.a. The Podcast Host, How to Start a Podcast: Every Single Step for 2021.

And if you are a podcaster and your content creation machine starts with podcasting rather than with your website, you can fix that. Your podcast episodes can also be turned into blog posts that you can publish on your website to drive more traffic to it. For more information on how to do this, check out this blog post from Content Writer Sara Bussandri, How to turn your podcast episodes into blog posts.

An example of how we repurposed a blog post into a podcast episode…

We took a blog post on how to create the perfect website and transformed it into a podcast episode called: The 6 Elements That Make a Successful Website. Both contain the same 6 key elements that make a successful website. And both break these 6 elements down.

The podcast and blog post are both similar, only one is written and the other is spoken. So if you have blog posts and you’re planning to start a podcast, remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! You have plenty of content on your blog that you can transform into podcast episodes.

4. Using your blog post within an email 

Your blog posts can also be used to share content with your email list.

Again, we recommend that you don’t just send out an email that reads,

“Hey! I’ve written a blog post. Here’s the link. Go over and read it!”

Honestly? No.

You won’t get a lot of people who actually go and click on that link to read your awesome blog post.

Think about it – if someone’s trusted you enough to give you their email address it’s because they liked what they saw on your website, and they wanted more of it. So your email needs to deliver some value!

You want your lovely subscribers to learn something from your email, so don’t just ‘link drop’. When you put your email together, include at least some of the content from your blog post. Pull out the most important or interesting points, for example.

Obviously, you can still give them a link to it, but we’re talking about repurposing here. So ideally you want to use your blog content in the newsletter and give your audience the information they’re after.

An example of how we repurposed a blog post into an email newsletter

As we said, you can’t just link to your blog post in your emails. It’s good to actually give some content within the email itself. In this example, from our bi-weekly newsletter, The Jam Sandwich, we break down just one point from our blog post, The Ultimate Guide to SEO.

We go in-depth on this one point and ask people if they want to read the whole blog post. But the point is, they will have learnt something even if they don’t go on to read the whole post.

5. Create a lead magnet out of your blog post 

Another way to repurpose your blog posts is to create content upgrades or lead magnets.

A content upgrade is a piece of content that you offer to your readers as a bonus or as additional information in exchange for their email address. It’s basically a lead magnet that goes with your blog posts.

Why add bonus content to your blog posts? Because that way you can capture email addresses and turn anonymous website users into subscribers. And once you have those people on your list, you can then nurture that relationship, offer value, and hopefully, one day turn that subscriber into a loyal customer.

Cheatsheets, checklists, or guides work really well as content upgrades, and you can create them yourself with very little effort using a free resource like Canva.

An example of how we repurposed a blog post into a lead magnet

You can find a content upgrade example in our blog post, The Ultimate Guide to Generating More Leads From Your Website. Right in the middle of our article, we have a call to action that invites our readers to download our 10-minute Lead-Gen Guide.

6. Use your blog post in a presentation 

And last but not least, you could also repurpose a blog post into a presentation. Once you have a series of nicely designed slides, there’s a lot you can do with them.

For example, you could:

• Upload the presentation as a Document on LinkedIn.
• Give a talk at a networking meeting, an industry event, or inside a private membership.
• Share your content during an online webinar on social media (for example, in a Facebook live).
• Upload the slideshow onto your YouTube channel.
• Talk through it and record a Loom video that you can then upload onto your website.
• Use the content in a paid training session or workshop.

As you can see, there’s a lot you can do with your content, and it all starts from a blog post!

Want some help with consistent blogging?

Thinking up fresh new content for your website, social media, your newsletter, and any other marketing channels you might be active on is so difficult! But hopefully, you can see now why we advocate creating content for your website first. Repurposing your blog posts will make your life easier and save you time too.

And if you’d like some accountability, our next 90-day Content Challenge (or 90DC for the cool kids) kicks off on the 17th May 2021. We encourage you to create a fresh piece of content every week for 13 weeks. It can be any type of content you like, but if you create and publish blog posts, imagine how much you could get out of 13 pieces of content in terms of traffic to your website and repurposing opportunities!

When you join the 90DC you get:

• Accountability.
• A dedicated feedback channel.
• A Private community group.
• Weekly training.
• SEO and Content Marketing courses.
• Content Strategy Planning sessions.
• And even Canva blog post image templates.

All for only $297 for the full 90 days! Or you can join our membership for just $59 per month and get access to the challenge and so much more You can sign up for the 90DC here. See you there!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post How to Repurpose a Blog Post (and Save Yourself So Much Time!) appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

What’s a Learning Centre?

Have you ever come across a Learning Centre on someone’s website? Maybe, just like on our website, you may have spotted a menu item called ‘Learn‘.

The term Learning Centre is something we originally picked up from Marcus Sheridan, author of They Ask You Answer. Since then, we’ve not only built one on our website, but we’ve created Learning Centres for our clients too.

First thing first, what’s a Learning Centre?

[easy-tweet tweet=”A Learning Centre is a page on your website where you can organise your content in a way that’s digestible and accessible to your readers. “]

With the information all in one place, it becomes really easy for your website visitors to find your content and consume it in the way they prefer. Literally, at the click of a button.

If you regularly create any type of content (be it blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, PDFs, etc.), you’ll need a Learning Centre.

Problems with a Blog

A website blog in the traditional sense is a page on your website that houses all of your written content. It’s a fantastic way for you to generate traffic to your site and show your visitors how knowledgeable you are. However, when it comes to accessibility and relevancy of content, a website blog poses a few problems.

1. Your latest piece of content isn’t always relevant to your website visitors

If someone lands on your website today and clicks on your blog, they might see a blog post about a topic that’s relevant and interesting to them. But someone else who happens to find your website on the same day might feel that your latest article isn’t helpful.

And what do you think they’re going to do when that happens?

Click away.

Sadly, they’ll never find out that only a few weeks prior you had published something that was exactly what they were after!

Because of the way a blog is set up, you (the business owner) cannot pick and choose what type of content is displayed when you want it to. Different visitors may want different information from your website. And because your website blog displays your content in reverse chronological order, it may not always be easy for your readers to find posts that are relevant to them.

2. People don’t like clicking through lots of pages

As much as we’d like to think that our website visitors will click onto the next available page of our blog until they find what they’re looking for, the reality is that not many people will do that.

Think about it. When you’re online, do you ever click on the second or third page of the Google search results?

Probably not.

And if people don’t take the time to wade through pages of content when it comes to Google, are they likely to do that on your website? Chances are they might miss that epic piece of content that you took weeks to create and is now collecting dust on the fourth page of your blog, where no one will see it.

3. Older posts don’t tend to perform as well

People presume that older posts are less accurate. This is something that’s been shown over and over again. When you type something into Google and see results from 2014, you’re not likely to click on them. Not if you have the option to access something that was produced later.

You may have content on your blog that’s evergreen and still relevant. But people will just assume that because it’s older it’s not as accurate. And they will skip through that.

4. You can’t showcase your best content

The other problem you have with a blog is that it doesn’t allow you to showcase your best content.

We know what our best content is. And we also know what content drives people to get in touch with us. But with a typical website blog that displays your content in reverse chronological order, your prospective customers and clients aren’t able to access your best content unless you organise it differently.

And this is where a Learning Centre would come in handy and solve all of these issues.

Should a Learning Centre replace your blog?

We’ve given you so many reasons why a blog in the traditional sense doesn’t do your content much justice, that you’re now probably thinking you should swap out menu items and have a Learning Centre instead of a blog.

No, you shouldn’t.

Please keep your blog.

Do not get rid of your blog under any circumstances.

And here’s why.

Yes, a blog might display your content in reverse chronological order, but people still access content via your blog because a blog is what they know. A Learning Centre, on the other hand, is still a new concept to a lot of people. If you swap your blog out for something that a lot of your visitors haven’t heard of before, you may not get as many clicks on your content. And you don’t want that.

So keep your blog in the main menu item, and then find a place to put a Learning Centre page as well. If you don’t want to call it Learning Centre, ‘Learning Zone‘, ‘Learn‘, or ‘Information Centre‘ are also good alternatives. Whatever you want to call it, as long as you use it as a way for your visitors to access your content in a nice, easy-to-use way, you’ve got one.

To give you an idea of how we encourage our visitors to use our Learning Centre on our website, have a look at our Home Page. As you scroll down it says ‘Visit our Learning Centre’, and it links to our blog, our videos, and our articles.

How do you create your own Learning Centre?

The answer will be slightly different according to what it is that you do. The Learning Centre page for an e-commerce shop will be different from a service provider’s, for example.

But all learning centre’s should be:

• User-friendly
• Give people content in a way they like to consume it.
• Easy for people to filter through your content.

You can create a learning centre based on what your target audience needs and what you offer, but here are some examples of what you can include.

1. The search field

This is the single most important element of a Learning Centre. A search field is a place where your readers can type in a word or a phrase to find out more information about a specific topic.

When your readers search for something in this field, they’ll be returned with all the relevant pieces of content that relate to that topic. This doesn’t just include blog posts. If you have podcast episodes or video content on your website, this can be displayed as well.

From a design point of view, your search field is the biggest part of your Learning Centre. It’s right there at the top of the page, or ‘above the fold’ as we say. You don’t want people to miss it.

Plus, it’s a great handy feature for you as the business owner. We use it all the time to quickly find our own content and signpost people to it!

Example of a Learning Centre search field

We can’t talk about a learning centre without, of course, talking about Marcus Sheridan. On his company website, River Pools, he provides the reader with everything they’ll need to make an informed buying decision when buying a pool. For people to search through all his content (and there’s a lot of it), River Pools provides an easy search field. You can even use it to filter down by resource or topic.

2. Links to popular topics

Another element you want to include in your Learning Centre page are links to popular topics.

Let’s say someone is browsing your website, but they don’t yet know what you do and how you help people. Sure, you have a search field at the top of the page, but at this stage, they’re not entirely sure what they should be searching for.

So how can you help your users?

You can help by giving them some prompts.

And you do that through the links to popular content you provide.

Example of links to popular topics on a Learning Centre

This is a great example of a learning centre for an ecommerce website by Picture Frames Express.

They break down their learning centre by particular topics, which the customer or potential customer can easily sift through. It’s all their helpful information in one place.

3. The ‘Most Common Questions’ section

This is the bit where you answer the questions that people ask you on a regular basis. Having some of the answers on this page means that when someone decides to get in touch with you, they’re already familiar with the way you work. It’s a bit like the self-serve checkout! It’s great for your users, and it saves you time.

If you don’t yet have a lot of content on your website, consider using an FAQ plugin or an accordion-type setup to display your most common questions. That way, when a reader clicks on the question, the website just shows them the answer with a couple of lines of text.

Example of ‘Most Common Questions’ on a Learning Centre

Rachel from All Things Inc has over 1250 blog posts teaching people all about internal communications. Rachel joined our membership community, Make Your Mark Online, and made use of our free, plugin, learning centre template. We LOVE what she’s done. Especially the section ‘Most Common Questions’. She answers each question on this section with a link to an in-depth article. Really helpful stuff.

Example of ‘Most Common Questions’ on a Learning Centre

Another great example of this is from Debbie Ekins who produces amazing content for Eagle Leisure, a hot tub and spa supplier. Eagle Leisure answer their readers’ most common questions with links to blog posts and videos – an amazing way of delivering excellent customer service.

4. Give people access to the different types of content you provide

Do you offer content in a variety of different formats? For example, do you share articles on your blog but also have a podcast or a series of videos? Then give people the choice to consume your content in whichever way they prefer.

The worst thing you can do on your website is to just show the content in one format (or in the format that you prefer) because that may not be the way some of your prospective customers or clients like to consume it. Some people prefer video. Others prefer reading. And vice versa.

Example of ‘Most Common Questions’ on a Learning Centre

On our website, we offer our readers the opportunity to consume our content in different ways. Now, this sounds like a lot of work, but we actually repurpose a lot of our content into different formats. For example, this blog post was previously a podcast episode!

5. Include links to recent content

Another element you might want to include on your learning Centre page is recent content. So, for example, you could include links to your three most recent posts, podcast episodes, or videos.

This isn’t always necessary, especially if you already have a lot of content. But if you’re still building your content library, this is definitely a nice-to-have.

Example of ‘Most Recent Content’ on a Learning Centre

We loved designing Superfast IT’s website. They provide IT support to business and have so much helpful content on their website. They list their most recent blog articles on their learning centre, encouraging people to click through.

Reading resources

This is a section where you can add any guides, tools, or resources you want people to be able to access. So if you have any free giveaways, this is the place to showcase them on your website. Otherwise, your visitors might miss them. This is a great opportunity for you to add value to your readers but also potentially build your email list.

Example of ‘Free Resources’ on a Learning Centre

We love Yva’s learning centre over at Content Boost. Yva uses her reading resources as lead capture tools on her learning centre page. The design is fab, and it’s really easy to access them all in one place.

Your Best Resources

By selecting your best resources, you’re directing your reader to your best converting content. This could be more information about how you work or a particular product. Of course, it’s got to be helpful, but it’s a good idea to highlight these pieces of content.

Sara also joined our membership community, and made use of our free, plugin, learning centre template. We love how she’s highlighted her best resources here. Her blog post series, advising people how to batch write their blog posts, is so helpful! But she’s also featured information about why you should hire Sara, and more about podcast repurposing (a service Sara offers). This is a smart way of offering helpful content that also sells you at the same time.

Would you like a FREE Learning Centre template?

As most of you know, we run a monthly membership called Make Your Mark Online (or MYMO for short). This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website.

Recently, we’ve done something really special for our members. We built them a Learning Centre template free of charge that they can just plug into their website and customise to match their branding and preferences. It literally takes two minutes to do this. And of course, we have a video inside our membership walking our members through how to set it all up, step-by-step.

If you’re interested in becoming a member, the doors for the membership are currently open! It’s been amazing to see so many of our members get great results with their websites since they joined in October last year. So if you want to find out more, check out our membership, and we’ll see you on the inside!

Over to you

Have you ever heard of a learning centre before? Is this something you’ll consider doing now? We’d love to know your thoughts!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post What is a Learning Centre and why do you need one on your website? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Before 2017 we neglected our website.

Yep, we’re web designers who abandoned our site. But it’s easy done, isn’t it? You’ve got better stuff to do than keep faffing about with your website, stuff that brings in actual money – client work, invoicing, admin.

We thought the same. We were so busy with client work that we didn’t touch our website. Problem was, client work dried up, and we had nothing in the pipeline to sustain us. We hadn’t put any effort into our website and we found ourselves stuck.

In this podcast episode, we discuss how we managed to increase our website traffic by 10-fold, so we could continue to bring in leads and sales to our business.

In this episode I tell you how we increased our website visitors by 10x within 12 months.

We discuss:

– What we were doing before 2017
– How many visitors we were getting per month
– Why we decided to change things
– What we did to increase our traffic
– How we did it step by step
– Traffic number after 2017

Resources

Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Facebook Group

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 27 – How we increased our traffic by 10X appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

WordPress makes everything easier.

Within seconds you can copy and paste your content into the editor and publish a brand new blog post for the world to see.

There’s only one problem, how can you make it look good?

Design is important

Good quality content is one thing, but DESIGN is important too. Especially if you want people to read your articles properly and share your content online.

The standard WordPress editor is easy to use but VERY basic. You can barely change the font size without knowing a bit of code. This makes it very difficult to create something visually appealing for your readers.

So what can you do about it?

Realistically, you’re not going to learn how to code; even the basics would take months to learn.

You don’t want to rely on your web designer for every little change. That could cost a fortune.

You may be tempted to add some drag and drop software to make things easier, but that’s going to affect your page load speed.

Good news

Luckily, all is not lost. WordPress allows you to make lots of visual changes to your articles within their editing system and you won’t need ten different plugins either.

All you need is one handy little plugin, and you’re all set.

Within a few steps, you’ll have everything you need to make your blog posts look amazing without spending a penny.

Install Tiny MCE advanced

Before reading the rest of this post, you’ll need to install this plugin. I always try to avoid adding more plugins where possible, but this one is going to be worth it. It will make your entire blogging life easier.

As you can see, it comes with so many extra options, and I now install this plugin on every website we build.

WordPress Blogging Tips

Now you’ve installed the plugin you can follow along with these 15 steps to make your blog post look epic. And if you want to understand what to actually cover in your blog post, have a look at our article on how to write a blog post.

1. Never create content within WordPress

Never. Ever create your content in WordPress.

Never.

You could spend hours writing a post, and if something goes wrong with your internet, you’ve lost it. I learnt this the hard way and so have many others.

I create all my content using Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Whatever you use, save it often until you’re 100% finished.

How to add content

Once you’ve written your blog post and you’re happy with it, don’t just copy and paste it into WordPress. It sometimes transfers over some messy code from the text editor you’ve used.

Instead, you want to right click in the white space of the blog post and select “paste and match style.”

This will clear all of the previous formattings and give you a clean post to work with.

2. Use Headings and Subheadings

The headings and subheadings on your post will help your reader consume your content easier. They will also allow you to break up your content with little milestones.

Headings are usually much bigger than the normal text, and your readers will often skim your headings before reading the content fully.

Adding headings is the first thing I do after adding the content.

How to add proper headings/subheadings

Highlight the text you want to use as a heading or subheading and use the drop down list in your editor (pictured below) to choose the relevant heading style.

For more information on how to choose the correct WordPress headings, read this article here.

Depending on the theme you’re using, each heading will have its own style. This means that it might not look how you want it to, but don’t worry, you can change this without knowing any code.

Once you’ve chosen the appropriate heading, simply highlight the text again and use the editor to change the size, colour and style of the font.

3. Create a main featured image

WordPress allows you to add a “featured image” to each blog post. This is a dedicated image that often gets shown when your article is shared online. I always upload a unique image for every new blog post and ensure it’s included within the blog post article too.

These big images are the visual representation of your article and, like it or not, people still judge a book by its cover. The better the image, the more people will take notice and share it online.

I also include this same image within the post too, usually right at the top, above the entire article. Just like this one.

How to add a featured image to WordPress

When editing your blog post scroll down to the featured image section on the bottom right of your sidebar.

Click the “set featured image” link and add the image via your media library.

4. Use short paragraphs (My English teacher would kill me)

I love short paragraphs.

Just like the one above.

And this one.

They make it easy for people to read and it doesn’t feel like a novel.

It’s more important earlier on in the post. It’s about easing your reader into your blog post with short, snappy paragraphs to keep them engaged.

I very rarely use paragraphs over 2-3 lines of text and instead, I choose to show more white-space on the page.

It makes the process of writing easier too.

Give it a go and see how you like it.

5. Use a larger text size

The size of your text is very important. If it’s too small, it makes it very difficult to read, and this may cause the reader to lose focus.

I use size 20px (15pts) text for my blog post, and it works well and allows most people to read it clearly.

Anything below size 16px (12pts) is probably too small, and you might want to increase it.

How to change the font size

As you can see below, the new WordPress editor will allow you change the font size for each blog post. Simply highlight the text you want to edit and select your font size.

Note:

Ideally, you would change the text size within the theme code for your website. This way, you wouldn’t have to manually do it every time you created a new post/page. However, if you don’t know how to do this, this can be a good backup option.

6. Use dark coloured font on a white background

My best advice when it comes to text colour is to make it stand out. Using black or a very dark grey will allow your text to be read easily on a white background.

Many websites use a lighter grey colour for the main content, but it’s more difficult to read and will require more concentration from your visitor.

Make things easy and keep your text as dark as possible.

How to change the colour of your text

Highlight the text you want to change and select the colour from the colour swatch like in the image below.

7. Use a clear font style

Always try and use a clear font style for your blog posts. This will make it easier for your readers and will keep them around for longer.

The font will be set by your theme, but you can change this for each post using the WordPress editor.

How to change the font style

Simply highlight the text and change the font style as you can see in the image below.

8. Use images throughout your post

Using images within your blog post is an excellent way to keep your visitor engaged while they’re reading your blog post. It will help you communicate your point on a more visual level.

Try to avoid using cheesy stock photos where possible and opt for more helpful images like I’ve used on this post.

How to add images to your post

Place your cursor where you’d like to add your image and click “add media.”

You can then select the image from your computer or image library.

Once you’ve selected the image, you can use the image align tool to make it centred or left/right aligned.

9. Use links throughout your post

Where relevant, try to include internal links to the other pages or posts on your website.

Helpful links will allow your user to navigate through your website easily and consume more of your content.

The hyperlinked text is usually a different colour too which makes it stand out.

How to add links to your blog posts

Highlight the word or phrase you want to hyperlink and use the link icon in the editor and insert the destination page

I always try to hyperlink a related word such as SEO for Blog posts rather than use the words “click here” or “find out more.”

You could also list recent blog posts and hyperlink to the relevant page as I’ve done below.

The Ultimate SEO Checklist for your Blog Posts

7 mistakes you’re making on your homepage and how to fix them

Web Design & SEO Jargon Buster

10. Embed videos within your blog posts

Adding videos to your article will dramatically increase the value of your content.

By including video, you can keep people on your post for longer and engage more of your audience.

How to add a video

The most common way to include a video within your post is to upload it to a video hosting platform first, like YouTube.

You can then get a snippet of code from YouTube and paste it onto your website.

11. Use Bullet points

Adding bullets or numbered lists is a great way break up your content in a different way.

How could you use bullets?

• Listing pros and cons
• Giving step by step instructions
• Listing product features
• Listing benefits of a service
• Making a list of items
• And many more

How to make a bulleted list in WordPress

1. Add the list of items, one line per item
2. Click at the start of the line
3. Click the bullet or number button in the editor
4. Do the same for each item

12. Include Tweetables

A Tweetable is a shareable link which you can insert into your blog post.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Tweetables look good and make it easier for your audience to spread your message on Twitter.”]

You can ask your readers to tweet a sentence from your post which helps it reach more people online.

It looks good and makes it easier for your audience to spread your message on Twitter.

How to add tweetable links within your website

I’ll be honest; I use a plugin for this. It comes as part of my social media sharing plugin, however, there are many other plugins that will allow you to add “Tweetables” to your posts.

Click To Tweet is a popular choice and it’s free.

If you’d rather not use a plugin, there is a free online service you can use by the same company.

Simply authorise your Twitter account and add the text to field like in the image below.

It will give you a short snippet of code, and you just need to add it to the HTML of your post.

13. Add coloured boxes

Placing a box around sections of text is a great way to highlight it and change things up for the reader.

How to add a coloured text box

To add a simple text box within the WordPress editor, you can select the “Table” option and choose 1 cell.

You can then type in your text within the table.

Then click “table properties” and select advanced.

Using the field at the bottom, you can assign a background colour

14. Use horizontal lines to separate paragraphs

Adding a simple line in between your content is another way to break up your text in an interesting but subtle way.

How to add a line between paragraphs

Press enter after you’ve finished writing a paragraph and click “insert” on the editor menu and select horizontal line.

15. Lead captures

One of the more interesting ways to bring your blog posts to life is to include some kind of lead capture.

This could be an email signup form like the one below, which is used to capture your reader’s contact information in exchange for a free giveaway.

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_1]

How to create lead captures in WordPress

To be able to collect your prospects email addresses on your website, you’ll need an email marketing tool such as Aweber, Convertkit or MailChimp.

These are 3rd party tools that allow you to easily add a signup form to your website.

Simply create a new form within your chosen tool, and they will give you the code to copy and paste onto your website.

Most of these tools do have a WordPress plugin you can install to make the process easier, but it’s up to you if you’d prefer to copy and paste some code.

You may have to switch to the text editor to paste the form code, but you don’t have to do anything.

What’s Next?

Making your website and your content look attractive is the best way to keep your readers interested and willing to share it online. Now you have 15 tips to make your blog posts look fantastic.

But, you also have to write a blog post that’s engaging too! Have a look at our article on how to write a blog post that people will actually read.

Over to you

Do you have any tips of your own that make your blog posts look better? Share your thoughts and comments below.

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post 15 tips to make your WordPress blog posts less boring appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

It takes a long time to draft, re-write, edit, create images and then publish it.

And after all of that, you have to think about SEO too?

It’s enough to make you want to cry.

We’d like to think that producing great content is enough, but in reality, if you want to get found online, SEO is essential.

But with all the advice out there, how do you begin to know where to start?

This is why I created this checklist. I wanted you to have a go-to resource that you could use over and over again.

After all, if you’ve spent so long writing a great blog post, you want to make sure you have as many readers as possible.

1. Keyword research for your blog post

Keyword research is used to gather a list of common words and phrases that people type into search engines and it’s still an important part of SEO. Understanding the popularity of certain words and phrases is an excellent way to reach more people.

It’s also a good idea to use a keyword research tool to validate your ideas for future articles.

Ideally, you would do your research before you begin writing, that way you can plan the structure of your piece with keywords in mind.

However, even if you’ve already written your post, you may want to go back and confirm that you’ve at least considered the best keywords. You might have missed some key opportunities.

How to do keyword research so you know what keywords to target.

Keyword research tools allow you to search for words and phrases and tell you the average number of monthly searches.

You can use a number of online tools for this and most of them come with a free trial of some kind. Here are a few for you to try out.

KWFinder
SEO Book
Serps
Wordstream
Keyword.io

Here’s an example of what KWFinder looks like when using their keyword tool. You can read this very helpful review of KWFinder right here.

Basic keyword research tips

• Write down a few words and phrases related to your blog post
• Use one of the tools above to gather a list of relevant keywords & keep them to one side
• Put them in order of most relevant to your article
• Take note of the most popular keywords

2. Choosing a blog post title for first page rankings

What is the name or title of your blog post? This is usually the first thing people will see when they visit your post for the first time.

The name you choose will also be the main heading for the post which makes it very important for search engines. For instance, my main heading at the top of this page is “SEO checklist to optimise your blog posts” This is also what will appear when you share your content on social media.

Search engines will take note of the keywords you use in your main heading and use it to rank your blog post. This is why it’s important you take your time with it.

It’s tempting to try to be funny or clever with your heading but I encourage you to tread carefully. I could have chosen something like “10 steps to search engine success” or “10 secrets to get more eyeballs on your blog” but the reality is, that kind of title doesn’t work as well as you think.

“Buzzfeed” type blog titles are only good for one thing: getting low-value traffic from content junkies.

You really don’t want your blog post being treated this way. They might get a couple more shares but you’re missing out on lots of organic search traffic. You also want to position your article as a valuable resource for your target market.

Blog post title tips

• Include your main keyword
• Use sentence form e.g. SEO Checklist to optimise your blog posts
• Try to keep it short. I usually aim for less than 60 characters in length
• Avoid keyword stuffing

3. Optimise your blog post URLs for better SEO

Not to be confused with your domain, URLs are the unique pages on your website. For example, the URL for this page is jammydigital.com/seo-checklist-blog-post. URLs are an extremely important part of SEO. Search engines take note of the URLs you have chosen for your blog posts and will rank you accordingly.

URLs can also be called a page “slug” and depending on which content management system you’re using you should be able to change them easily. Below I’ve shown an example of how it looks in WordPress.

How to choose the best URL or slug for your blog post?

• Try to keep it as short as possible e.g. /seo-checklist-blog-post
• Include your target keyword
• Avoid using any strange characters (%&$£%**&)
• Use hyphens to separate words (not underscores)
• Don’t use stop words such as AND,A,TO,IN,AN
• Avoid using additional elements such as .html or .php

You don’t want an extremely long and messy URL such as jammydigital.com/an-seo-checklist-for-optimising-your-blog-post-for-better-google-rankings.

An extremely long URL doesn’t look very appealing to your users and less people will click through to your website and share it on social media.

4. Structuring your headings and subheadings (H1-H6) for better rankings

The headings you use within your blog posts will help decide what keywords you rank for.

Search engines want you to use heading tags to break up your content, making it easy for their robots to understand.

Headings also have the added benefit of breaking up your content, making it easy for your readers to consume.

Your headings and subheadings should be used in a specific order as shown below. I often see people use H1-H6 tags randomly. They use the different H tags to style their article rather than use them in the correct order.

How to use headings for SEO

Heading 1 (H1) is the main heading on your page (this is usually the blog post title)
Heading 2 (H2) is used for your subheadings and is this is usually the most commonly used headings on a page
Heading 3 (H3) is used for subheadings within your sub headings
Heading 4 (H4) is used for a subheading within your H3
Heading 5 (H5) is used for a subheading within your H4
Heading 6 (H6) is used for a subheading within your H5

Here’s an example of how you use them correctly as a blog post.

Top tips for headings and subheadings

• Outline the main sub-sections of your blog post
• Try to include your keywords where possible
• Try to use sentence form rather than one word (This is harder than you think)
• Only use one H1 Tag
• Don’t forget about H3 to H6

5. Optimising your content so it ranks highly in search results

These days, high quality content is absolutely vital if you want to rank on the first page of search results.

I’ve seen this for myself over the past few years. It’s pretty much impossible to rank highly online with thin, low quality articles. It might have worked in the past but search engines can spot low quality a mile off.

Unfortunately, Google don’t have an individual person reading your article from top to bottom to see how good it is. They use a number of ranking factors to determine the quality and it’s easy for them to spot the weak from the strong such as:

All of these factors will determine how good your content is and will count towards your rankings.

Here are a few tips to help you content rank higher

• Write at least 1000 words for your article (most of my articles are over 2000 words)
• Try to include your main keyword in the first paragraph
• Include your other keywords naturally throughout the post
• Include images and videos within your blog post
• Link out to other trusted websites online to strengthen your article e.g. Wikipedia

6. Optimising your images for search engines

Most websites use images to brighten up an article or break it up so it’s easier to read. Whilst that is a good thing, it’s also possible to use your images to rank your article higher in search results.

Search engine robots can’t see your images, they can only scan the information that you attach, which is why you need to take care when optimising them.

Image file name

When you save an image onto your computer you have the option to give the file a name. Most images taken with a smartphone or digital camera are saved like this “IMG_00001.jpg”

To save time, people often leave this as it is and upload it to their website. The problem, is that you’re essentially telling Google that “IMG_0001” is what you’re hoping to rank for.

You need to use this opportunity to describe the image so that it fits in nicely with your article.

Take this image of my cat, Muggles for example. The file name is “black-cat-shelf.jpg”

Image size

The file size of your images can also impact your rankings. Make them too big and your website will load slower and create a bad user experience for your visitors.

A standard image size for a picture taken on an iPhone 7 is around 1500 kb (1.5 mb) and 3000px x 4000px in dimensions.

The average laptop screen is around 1200px wide. So that means if you upload an image from your iPhone it’s approximately 3 times larger than it needs to be.

As you can see from this ruler, the width of this blog post is around 750 pixels. There is absolutely no reason for me to upload an image bigger than this.

Even if you re-size the image once it’s on your website, it’s still been uploaded as a big file and this will have repercussions.

Use a website such as Picresize to reduce the size of your images. Keep them as small as possible without losing the quality.

The image of my cat measures 400px wide by 533px tall and the size of the file is 160kb. This is tiny compared to a standard iPhone photo and could easily be reduced even more.

Image alt tags

Once your images have been uploaded to your website, you can add some Alternative text or alt text to explain what the image is. This is how Google rank your images in their image search tool.

Using alt text will also enable you to rank your blog post higher as you are likely using similar keywords throughout the post. I have described the image above using the alt text “Black cat climbing white shelf”

I suppose I could have also used “Muggles destroying my office like she always does” as the alt text. Sigh!

Most content management systems such as WordPress will allow you add alt text without needing to access code.

Tips for optimising images

• Use hyphens (not underscores) in your file names to separate the words
• Use short file names i.e. 2–3 words in length is good
• Include your keywords in the file name e.g. black-cat-shelf.jpg
• Use a tool like www.picresize.com to resize your images BEFORE uploading them
• Use the batch feature on the same website to upload multiple images
• Use sentence form in your alt tags
• Include your keywords in your alt tags e.g. black cat
• Describe the image “Black cat climbing white shelf”

7. Use internal links

If you want to rank highly, your website should act as a valuable resource within your niche. Your articles are certainly going to help with this but you need to make the most of them. An internal link is where you create a hyperlink from one post to another relevant post.

You can use a number of internal links within your blog posts to help your visitors navigate through your website seamlessly and allow them to consume more of your content.

The more pages your visitor views will show Google that your website is valuable and they’ll likely send you more relevant traffic.

Links can also be used to show search engines that your content is trustworthy. Each link pointed to an article counts as a little “vote”. It’s a good idea to try and link to each post on your website at least once.

Another way to help Google rank your articles is to use keywords within your hyperlink when linking to a page. This is called anchor text. For instance, if I’m linking to a page talking about “SEO Jargon”, I would want to hyperlink the words SEO Jargon and not words like “click here” or “find out more”. This is a common mistake that lots of people make but it’s quite easy to fix.

• Include a few internal links to other relevant articles on your website
• Use keywords within your anchor text
• Don’t use too many links as this will affect visitor experience and look messy

8. Search engine title (Title Tag) (this appears in search results)

Not to be confused with the blog post title in step 2. Title tags are not visible on your website. They are mainly used by search engines to determine what your page is about.

Title tags are another important aspect of SEO. Each page on your website will need to have its own title. The same goes for each of your blog posts. Although the title tag is mainly for search engines your users will still be able to see it within search results, so it’s important to take care when choosing your title tags.

The title will be display on the search engine results page. As you can see it’s displayed in big blue text.

You can edit your Title in your website dashboard. Here is what it looks like in WordPress.

How to choose the best title tags for your blog posts

• Stick within 55 characters in length – If not, it may get automatically cut off and…
• Make sure you include your main keyword
• Use short sentences e.g. “SEO checklist for Optimising Blog Post”
• Avoid stuffing titles with too many keywords e.g “SEO Checklist. Best SEO checklist Blog Post, SEO”
• Use hyphens (-) or pipes (|) to separate sentences. It looks neater.

9. Make the most of your meta description (Google shows this before someone visits your website)

Each blog post you publish will have its own meta description. It’s the small grey text beneath the URL on the Google results listings.

As you can see, it’s longer than the title tag so there’s more room to include more information. Unlike the Title tag, Meta Descriptions are no longer classed as a strong ranking factor. However, they are still extremely important.

The words you use here will determine how many people click on your listing rather than the other results on Google. A compelling description will dramatically increase your click through rate.

A lot of businesses don’t spend the time producing quality meta descriptions and miss out on visitors.

You can edit your Meta Description in your website dashboard and it’s usually right next to your search engine title (title tag)

Top tips for meta descriptions

• Use 130–150 characters in your description
• Ask a question e.g. Are you writing blog posts that nobody reads?…
• Include a call to action where possible

10. Categories and Tags

Categories and tags are used to structure the content on your website. You can group certain content together by assigning a number of categories and/or tags. Although they don’t have a massive SEO benefit, this will make things easier for your visitors when browsing your website.

There are no hard and fast rules about categories and tags but I like to follow a certain system that makes sense for users and search engines.

Using categories

A category is usually used as the MAIN topic of the post. For this post I’ve used “SEO”. I only tend to use one category per post but you could use more if you really needed to.

Using tags

Tags are used as extra topics that you speak about throughout the post. I usually use 5 per blog post and for this one, I used SEO, Blog, Blogging, Content and Content Marketing.

As you can see, I’ve used SEO for the category and also a tag.

I’ve found that by structuring each post this way, it allows me find my own content easier and has a nice clean pattern for my visitors to follow too.

Related content

I also have a section at the bottom of my blog posts that show related content. Depending on which post you’re reading, different content will appear based on the categories and tags I’ve chosen.

Top tips for using categories and tags

• Try to use one category
• Use a number of tags for any sub-categories
• Try to keep a similar process for all future posts

11. Social media signals help rankings

Social media plays an important role in how Google views your content. Blog posts that get lots of likes and shares show search engines that your content is interesting and/or valuable. On the flip side, if your content doesn’t have as many, Google may favour other content on the web and show them higher up in search results.

Most SEO software such as Moz now includes social media counters to encourage you to focus on increasing these social signals.

There are a number of things you can do with your blog articles to encourage people to like and share them.

• Include a social sharing bar like we have on the left of this article
• Include tweetables to make tweeting your content easier
• Ask for shares as your call to action
• Include links to online influencers and brands. They’ll likely share it too.

What next?

So now you have a list of things you can do before, during and after you’ve written a blog post. Even if you aren’t able to do every single one, you’ll still put yourself in a very strong position to rank well in search engines.

If all that seems a little overwhelming or time-consuming, then check out our SEO content writing service. This is a full blog management service where we do all of your content creation for you, from keyword research and content strategy, to writing the content and optimising it! This saves you up to 10 hours a week doing it all yourself! Good eh?

Or if you want to up your SEO-game yourself, check out our SEO quiz! It takes just two minutes to do, and when you’re finished you’ll find out your SEO score and get a personalised report which tells you exactly how to improve your site for SEO!

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post SEO for Blog Posts – The Ultimate Checklist appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

‘Clickbait’ gets a lot of bad rap, and sometimes, it’s for good reason. If you click on something and find yourself on a slow-loading page, rammed with ads and content completely unrelated to what you expected, then you’re going to be pretty annoyed.

However, clickbait has been prevalent for centuries, just in different forms. From the summary at the back of a book, to the Oliver Twist look-a-like kid shouting ‘extra, extra read all about it!’ – these are all ways to get you to engage with the author’s content.

There’s no problem at all with readers being lured into clicking on your article but only if they’re rewarded for their curiosity with good quality, engaging content.

But how do you get them to click? Below, I’ve listed the most common ‘clickbait’ techniques, with the ones I think you should be using and ones you should definitely steer clear of!

1. Lists posts

Yep, we know, we’re guilty! But lists are a great way of gaining visitors to your content.

The user knows the article or video is going to be in easily digestible, bite-sized pieces and that’s always more appealing than big chunks of text. It’s also more likely to be actionable content, with facts instead of opinion pieces.

2. Boobs

I can’t believe I have to say this. But please don’t use women in bikinis unless your article/content is directly related to bikinis! The amount of times I see articles that have nothing to do with the female anatomy, using a picture of a woman dressed in barely anything is scary. And it’s not just prevalent in content marketing but advertising in general.

Don’t get me wrong, for some companies it may work where that kind of thing is part of your brand – just look at ads for gambling and gaming, but for most it just makes you look desperate and kind of confused about what you’re selling. Plus, you’re potentially putting off 50% of your market.

3. Being mean/horrible/bitchy

I know it sounds cheesy but I treat people how I like to be treated, so causing unnecessary hurt or anger would be something I’d certainly steer clear of.

I’ve seen articles with headlines such as ‘Celebrities with ugly partners’ and ‘Stars who have piled on the baby weight.’ Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these ‘articles’ – if you can call them that – gain a lot of traffic, but it’s not something I’m into. We’re all human, including celebrities, and I would hate to think I’d hurt someone purposefully over something I’d written.

4. Sarcastic headline

16 reasons you shouldn’t wear sunscreen, 12 reasons not to visit New York, four reasons you should put a fork in the plug socket.

This particular one is a real Buzzfeed favourite and although a little annoying at first, it does have that punch to the stomach value.

For example, what’s a more powerful message…

Neglecting to wear suncream over long periods of time could cause skin cancer

or

Don’t bother wearing suncream, who cares about skin cancer anyways!

The second one certainly has the shock factor.

I’m not a big fan of this method but I do see its benefits. I’d advise to use with caution.

5. We like number 5 the best!

Which one do you like the best

Yep, we’ve gone and done it again in the article headline! By stating which one out of your list is your preference/the most shocking/made you laugh etc. your intriguing web users. They want to know what number five is and they want to see if they agree.

Overall, it’s not the most advanced strategy but it does work!

6. Humour

Sometimes, you don’t want to learn anything or digest a load of information. You just want to laugh and be entertained – hence the sheer popularity of cat videos.

So inject some humour into your headlines (if applicable to your brand, if you’re a funeral director maybe not – although it would make me laugh!)

7. Controversial headline

This can be tricky.

Firstly, I see a lot of people use a controversial headline to lure people in, and then backtrack the headline in their article.

Someone did this recently using the headline ‘SEO is dead.’ I clicked on it and the guy went through all the benefits of SEO. What he actually meant was some methods of SEO have been phased out – but of course, that’s not as exciting as ‘SEO is dead.’

I think controversy is good, if you truly believe in your opinion and you have stats and facts to back yourself up. Healthy debate is what keeps us up-to-date. However, using controversy to gain links should be avoided, because essentially, you’re just going to annoy people. See example above!

8. Stupidity

Again, like the boobs, I’m not really sure why I have to say this but some people think that being purposefully stupid will attract web hits. And it will, but from people who want to tell you that you’re an idiot.

Please don’t resort to stupidity to gain links, instead be an expert on your chosen topic and earn respect for your knowledge.

9. What happens next will make you cry…

Tearful content

This is actually one of my pet peeves! But I understand why they work so well.

You can usually spot these on Facebook; it’ll link to a video featuring puppies and sad music and annoyingly, you may start to get a tear to your eye!

I hate them because I don’t like feeling manipulated but some people do enjoy them and overall, they seem to receive positive comments. I suppose this one is down to preference!

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post 9 most ‘clickbait’ headline techniques – we like number 5 the best! (Oh, the irony!) appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.