A step-by-step guide for writing the perfect SEO blog post

SEO blogs improve websites' search rankings and help your audience connect with your business

Writing SEO blogs is an art and a science all at once. Blogging for most businesses isn't about writing down personal thoughts or even just about telling a story anymore.
Nowadays, thanks to the "content is king" epidemic that has flooded the internet with more garbage content than quality information, making your blog stand out takes a ton of effort. But when it's done right, it will improve your website's search rankings and by posting SEO blogs frequently, you'll gain a ton of traction, no matter how competitive your industry may be.

To achieve on-page SEO, or SEO blogs, we need to write the proper, using keywords and strategic techniques.

Here's how to make every dollar or minute you spend blogging worthwhile:

Step 1. Identify your keyword

Each blog post should only have one keyword. The topic of the article should be focused on that keyword.

What is a keyword?

In online marketing, a keyword is a way to connect your content with the words or phrases people type into Google when they're searching for a topic or for information. Check out HubSpot's explanation. (Note that broad keywords aren't useful in most cases these days, and long-tail keywords are generally more effective.)
Let's say you're a Realtor in Calgary, Alberta. You may want people to find your website by typing "house prices Calgary Alberta" into Google. "House prices Calgary Alberta" is your keyword!

Step 2. Write an SEO-friendly headline

The headline for your blog post should include 2 things:

1. Your keyword

2. An attention-grabbing or informative promise

In the case of the above Realtor's blog, the SEO-friendly keyword for the article might be "The future of house prices in Calgary Alberta looks grim: Prices plummet 18%"

Step 3. Write your opening paragraph

Your opening paragraph must also include your keyword. It should also grab people's attention and intrigue them enough to read on.

Step 4. Write the body content

The body content of the article is everything except the first and last paragraph. It's the largest part, but also the easiest. A great article should tell a story to readers, and should also include researched statistics.

Step 5. Use headings

Whichever tool you use to write articles for your blog, such as Blogger or WordPress, you'll see an option to change the format of the text. The default is the "Paragraph" style, but SEO-friendly blogs require that H1, H2 and H3 tags be used – those stand for Heading, or Header, 1, 2 and 3.
Basically, Google looks at the words you write in these headings to determine the importance of the text in your article, and helps your content get found on the internet. Yoast SEO has a great article about headings.
Header 1 is the most important in Google's eyes, and Heading 6 is least important, before Paragraph.
Use the headings strategically within the article to organize the content and make it easier for people to read. In this blog, I made the headers that say "Step 1. Identify your keyword" and such into Heading 3s.

Step 6. Write the closing paragraph

The last paragraph of text in your article should include your keyword again.

Step 7. Apply external links

Great articles link to external sources. This also helps Google to rank your page, but it's a way to show your readers that you've done your research as well. Think about essays you wrote in high school, which often required footnotes and indexes. Or newspapers that quote sources. Blog articles, like newspaper articles, should include trustworthy sources.

Step 8. Improve the blog post's URL

Most blogs have the option to edit or customize the URL for each post. The default is usually to have the URL end with all of the words in that post's headline. There's nothing wrong with that, but long headlines make for ugly URLs. It's fine, and even encouraged, to take words like "a," "the," "that" and "for" out of the URL.

Writing for SEO is a major undertaking. High-quality blog articles can no longer be pumped out in 20 minutes – they require a ton of skill, strategy, planning and research in order to be effective enough to affect your website's SEO and Google search ranking in a positive way.
If SEO blogs sound like too much to chew, you can chill – that's what we do. Contact us and tell us about your business, your blog and your SEO goals and we'll create a customized blogging plan just for you.