Digital marketing is a rapidly changing landscape, and SEO plays a crucial in the digital growth of every business. It is nothing but the sum of all tools and practices that increase a website’s organic traffic. So, the question that arises is, what is an SEO agency and how does it help?

Your business, like many others, requires a strong web presence and needs to rank high on Google and other search engines to get more traffic to your website. This is often where most businesses put in feeble marketing efforts, not because they don’t want to be at the top but primarily due to a lack of digital know-how.

This is where an SEO agency comes in and proves to be the best choice for increasing visibility and authority.

What is an SEO agency?

An SEO agency is tasked with ensuring client websites rank high on search engines like Google to grow a business’ online presence with relevant traffic.

But how do they do this?

An SEO firm uses many specialised marketing strategies and tech tools to improve your overall web presence and generate leads. These, when bundled up, are called SEO services. So, a few broad strategies of a professional SEO company would utilise, include:

1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO
3. Technical SEO

Additionally, SEO companies have the expertise and specialised processes run by a highly experienced team. They collectively deliver efficient results and create more value than a website without experts working on their SEO.

In a nutshell, an SEO company thus provides your business with insights on developing a competent SEO strategy. It also takes charge of rolling out the devised plans on your behalf. So, since choosing an SEO company can be a make-or-break decision for your website, you must spend time exploring its intricacies.

To help you with this, we answer questions relating to the core functions of SEO companies and how do you zero in on one so that it caters to your specific needs. So let’s read ahead.

What are the typical services of an SEO Agency?

SEO services are designed to optimise websites (including content, backlinks, et al.) to boost search engine rankings. As such, SEO experts have a long list of tasks to design result-driven SEO campaigns; a few of which we list below.

However, a point to note is that not all SEO companies may offer a few or more of these services.

1. Analyze your website structure and audit

Site structure analysis (aka website optimisation) is usually one of the first steps in an SEO campaign. The process doesn’t entail rebuilding your site architecture but re-modelling or tweaking areas to boost SERP rankings.

To do this, SEO agencies follow best optimisation practices, including detailed keyword research and link building, to boost your site’s speed and improve search engine visibility since improved and fast display is a vital element for ranking.

Additionally, a good SEO company will also have prior experience in website analysis in terms of relevant keywords and content as per user intent. Since search engines prefer websites that are made for users’ needs and questions, the SEO agency will create and categorise every web page as per overall business goals and customer needs.

They work on the following critical elements during a website analysis:

• 404 or other error pages- these indicate to search engines that your site isn’t trustworthy to rank higher.
• Research of target market and competitors- SEO agencies research your target audience, their browsing patterns, and user expectations. They also look at the top sites for researched keywords and design your website emulating them.
• Internal linking- is an excellent opportunity to nudge website users towards other areas of your website.
• The URL structure- lastly, your website URL needs to match the chosen website structure.

  

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2. Work to improve On-Page SEO

Your website’s SEO agency works towards populating it with the right kind of content. Staying relevant is key for featuring in the first SERP. For this, you’ll need a wide range of digital marketing strategies, including blog posts, case studies, webinars, white papers, etc.

Apart from that, a few critical design-specific points on the checklists of On-page SEO agencies include:

• Choosing the right keywords- Since SEO runs essentially on the good-old keywords.
• Optimising title tags- This helps Google identify the context of your content via the page titles.
• Optimising meta descriptions- This acts as bait for a user to click a weblink. The meta description should have the keywords for users to know your content is what they want to see.
• Adding visual elements like videos, infographics, vectors, etc.- Gives users a break from long-running texts and usually conveys information better than words, and often helps reduce bounce rate.

   

  

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The SEO team studies these elements and weeds out inefficiencies that can affect the entire website and rankings. A few common steps that they take in such SEO efforts include:

1. Clears duplicate content and introduces new information.
2. Optimises landing pages with keywords and high-quality marketing copy.
3. Runs a deep keyword research to identify what all can work for your website.

3. Plan Off-page SEO strategies

Off-page SEO works to establish your overall brand value and authority with external efforts etched outside of websites.

Brand value creation and perceived trust take time and are achieved through a long-term strategy. So, when you hire an experienced SEO company, they’ll clarify that off-site SEO is both labour-intensive and expensive.

Additionally, SEO professionals these days would also include tactics like PR marketing, influencer promotion, forum, and guest posting to establish your brand’s digital footprint. These improve your positioning in search engine results and generate referral traffic that is not directly part of your SEO.

To add to that, a few other powerful Off-page tactics deployed by SEO companies include:

• local SEO for brand discovery
• shareable content for social media buzz
• responsive customer service
• guest posting
• external linking

Thus although Off-page SEO is organic in the true sense, good SEO companies know to manoeuvre the direction of traffic and brand recognition by harnessing the social media limelight and creating a conversational and fun image.

4. Content analysis

One of the essential and basic SEO services- content evaluation, is a window of identifying new chances for attracting more relevant traffic and increased revenue.

A good SEO strategy involves identifying some common issues with existing content like:

• Poor choice of target keywords that search engine crawlers miss
• Unavailability of thorough information
• Poor quality of too difficult content

Content analysis thus discovers gaps that might be silently hindering your organic ranking on the search engine results page.

5. Setup of SEO tools

There’s a jaw-dropping number of tools out there. But most may not be of relevance to your needs. So, when you hire an SEO agency, you task them with scouting the best tools and techniques that are tailor-made for your business. They pick the right tools for reporting and monitoring to scan your site at regular intervals and generate status reports of your SEO.

From onsite content optimisation to monthly analytics reports, tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush; all help you keep track of your executed plans and their outcomes for regular assessment.

Thus, a competent SEO strategy should have the space to monitor rankings and keywords to get an overview of how successful your SEO campaign is and the scope of further improvement.

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How do SEO companies benefit a business?

With the above ambit of SEO services, you can expect many benefits when you choose the right SEO company as your partner. Some of these benefits include:

1. Bringing in the audience of your choice

SEO agencies target high-intent keywords that users search in large volumes. This boosts your website traffic as optimised content climbs up.

You must remember, Google is constantly working to show users what they want, so matched content with intent goes a long way in driving organic traffic.

2. Boosting your search engine ranking

With off-site and on-site technical SEO services, an expert SEO company can carve your way to the top of SERPs. They first gather solid keywords and then optimise your website architecture to let google spiders crawl your website results.

With a top SEO agency at your service, your website thus will be on par with top spot holders as your SEO strategy checks off all the right boxes of competition analysis, fast load speed, and informative content marketing.

3. Gives you the edge of experience

An SEO company is your best bet for an excellent long-term search engines ranking. You may skim and research through blogs (like this one) for knowledge on good SEO techniques, but practical experience beats online research any day.

So, rather than having hit-and-miss strategies in-house, approaching an SEO company that works with clients across different industries gives your website the professional touch and increase your visibility. Not to forget, the SEO agency’s seasoned hands can also sail you out of unexpected algorithm changes or goals rebranding, as they’ve done all of this before.

4. Lets you focus on the business

Outsourcing this massive load of website optimisation to an SEO agency will let you focus on what you do best- run your business with utmost focus.

Knowing a group of professionals are handling your website content and link building is a significant relief as your internal team need not micro-manage the performance but only work on the feedback the SEO company provides.

 

How to find the right SEO company?

Now that you’re aware of the multifaceted benefits of an SEO agency, it’s time you know how to go about finding the SEO company for your liking.

Since there are many SEO companies, and choosing ‘the right one’ may be more confusing than ever, considering the industry is worth more than $80 billion. You must also be careful to identify a legit SEO agency, as there’s a long line of organisations claiming to be the best, often promising overnight results with low investment.

Hence, you must consider the process similar to any business commitment you’d otherwise make, like hiring an employee or investing in an asset. Additionally, you must devote enough time talking to the shortlisted ones and touching upon the following point before announcing your favourite SEO company.

1. Past projects

This is your cue to always ask for previous client case studies to establish the credibility of the SEO company.

You should also go over their websites and see testimonials and enquire first-hand if they’ve helped other companies find their place on the first page of search results.

2. Customized plans

An SEO company with cookie-cut plans like “grande/premium/regular” is a red flag. All businesses are different with varied goals, and if an agency puts you in a group without assessing your needs and potential, they are not ideal.

Moreover, it’s always good if a company proves that they have spent time researching your business and the required milestones to get higher SERP ranks. So, that’s what you need to look out for.

3. Modern tools and tech

SEO services are constantly updating, if not changing. A company with outdated techniques or case studies may not be able to help you grow adequately. These include website structure planning, back-end coding, social media-embedded content marketing, and strategic keyword research.

4. Set SEO contracts in place

After you decide the best one for you, it’s essential to draw up a specific contract with desired deliverables, reporting frequency, and pre-decided fees along with due dates for a smooth relationship with the SEO company.

 

You’re all set!

With the correct information at hand, it’s now time for you to look for the best SEO company for your website’s future ranking. We’d suggest choosing an agency that offers a comprehensive SEO strategy plan and not in fragments.

Additionally, a few mistakes to avoid in the process of choosing the right SEO company would be:

• avoiding black-hat SEO agency
• only looking at lower price tags and not value-creation of the SEO company
• hiring an inexperienced company with tall talks and lofty promises.

Lastly, remember good SEO services take time to develop, and companies that treat your website as their own are worth placing your money on.

Why would you want to pay for SEO when there are tools that you can use for free? When it comes to driving organic traffic to your business, SEO is indispensable. With the right tools, however, you can do it yourself. I can tell from the fact that you are here that you want to improve your website ranking on SERPs. Now, what is meant by Yoast SEO? Learn more about it here!

Let me introduce you to the Yoast SEO tool. It can end your struggles with SEO in the UK for good. So, without further ado, let’s get to it.

What is Meant by Yoast SEO: A Brief Introduction

Yoast SEO is a highly popular plugin for WordPress sites, if not the best.

It helps better optimise your WordPress sites and simplifies tasks, like sitemap managing. You can use it as an all-in-one SEO solution for better page analysis, optimisation, and ranking.

It is an excellent solution for people with little to no SEO knowledge, but it is also a favourite among webmasters. The plugin is fully customisable and offers a platform easy enough for anyone to use.

The Importance of SEO Plugins for Ranking in Search Engines

If you are not well aware of SEO and plugins in detail, then you need to know what they do precisely. SEO plugins make operating and optimising a website a lot easier for anyone in just a couple of clicks.

·        You can modify your website even if you do not know how to code

·        You get the latest updates on SEO trends and optimise accordingly

·        The tools are easy to set up and operate

·        SEO plugins do not interfere with the theme or other plugins on the site

·        They do not make your site slow

·        You can make your site interface more user-friendly with breadcrumb navigation.

In simple terms, an SEO plugin can help increase visits, click-throughs, and ranking of your site on Google, Bing, and other search engines.

What Does Yoast SEO Do?

Now I know what you are thinking! Is Yoast good for SEO?

The plugin has been around for over a decade, in a time when search engines keep changing algorithms left and right. So, it must be doing something right. Let me show you what.

This SEO plugin has gone beyond being a simple plugin tool and does wonders for your website. It can even help you choose the right keywords, for that matter.

Let’s look at the various features and functionalities of Yoast SEO to get a clear idea.

·        Optimising the Posts and Pages

One of the key elements of any SEO is adding meta tags and descriptions to your posts. It is the blue link section and the short description underneath that users can see while searching. Simultaneously, search engines can also index the websites according to the tags.

With Yoast, you get to see a snippet preview similar to what users see on Google.

 

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Now you may wonder, how does Yoast improve SEO? After all, you can also create meta title tags and descriptions via WordPress themes.

Well, your meta info can be affected if you ever decide to change the theme of your site. With Yoast, these remain unscathed. Moreover, it is effortless writing the meta info via the SEO plugin.

 

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·        Optimising the Content

Yoast works in various aspects to help you optimise the content better.

a.      It provides suggestions on improving the readability of your content

b.      You get focus keyword and phrase suggestions

This feature is a new addition to the tool that removes unnecessary factors, like keyphrase length and keyword density.

 

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·        Addressing the Common Issues with SEO

You can see all the problems in your SEO from the WordPress dashboard upon installing the Yoast SEO plugin. The tool will send you a report when it notices any issue.

 

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·        Making Social Media Cards

Just like the meta info appears on the search engine results, social media cards display your post or site’s title, description and image on social media.

The problem is that each social network site has its own unique rules and format for posting. This can make developing customised social cards a real task.

Fortunately, the Yoast plugins come with an in-built social feature that makes the work easy for you.

 

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You get a preview of the snippet before posting. The outcome is something like this:

 

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·        Internal Linking

Knowing how to build links is essential for improving the SEO of your website. You can do this in two ways:

1.      Backlinking usually comes from guest posting or blogging on other sites and drives traffic to your site.

2.      Internal linking, on the other hand, lets you send traffic within the pages of your own site.

Now, knowing where to use the interlinking is crucial. Yoast can identify the right keywords and keyphrases for you to hyperlink. However, this is a premium feature of the tool.

·        Building Sitemaps

Sitemaps allow search engines to crawl more easily on your site and index them according to importance. It also tells Google which information on your site is the most valuable.

It is a list of all the high-value pages on your site so Google can index them for a better ranking.

Now you can either do it by coding or via another plugin.

Fortunately, Yoast makes it easy to make sitemaps even without coding.

How to Configure the Yoast SEO Plugin

The truth is setting up the plugin is rather simple. However, let’s assume that you do not have any SEO knowledge, nor have you imported any settings. So, let’s take it from the top, and I will walk you through each step for the setup.

Pro Tip: You can only install Yoast SEO if you have a self-hosted site, which is unfortunate for the free WordPress users.

Download and Install Yoast SEO

·       The first thing you need to do is log into your WordPress account and go to the dashboard.

 

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·        Click on the icon on the top right corner of your website.

·        This will take you to the backend of your site.

·        From there, click on “My Sites” at the top left corner of the screen.

·        Scroll down to find the “Plugins” option on the left sidebar again.

 

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·        Hover over the “Plugins” menu and click on the “Add New” option that appears next to it.

 

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·        You will be redirected to a search page, where you can find the Yoast SEO option easily.

·        Simply click on the “Install Now” option, appearing next to the Yoast SEO icon.

 

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·        The download will start automatically, and then you can install and activate the plugin.

·        After this, the “SEO” marked option will appear on the left bar of the admin menu.

·        Now go to your WordPress dashboard and look for the “Plugin” option. You can find it on the left-sidebar where all menus appear.

Import Settings of Other Plugins and Set Up Yoast

Once the installation is complete, you can start your journey of becoming the SEO specialist of your own site.

Now, the work will be easier if you have any other SEO plugin, like Robota Meta or RSS Footer, installed before this.

Simply import those settings by clicking on the “Import from other plugins” option. If you have never used SEO plugins before, you can still set up Yoast SEO in four easy steps.

·        General Settings

Go to the “SEO” menu from the dashboard and click on “General”. It will redirect you to the page where you can set up the SEO for your site.

Pro tip: If you ever want to revert to the default settings, you can do so from the “General” tab.

·        Enter Your Info

Right next to the “General” tab, you can find the “Your Info” tab. Here, you can put all details, like the site’s name, whether it represents a company or an individual, and choose an alternate name too.

·        Set Up the Webmaster

Click on the Webmaster Tools tab next to the Your Info tab. You can also link other Webmaster Tools, like Google console, to your account.

This feature provides all the insight and analytics to let you know your site’s performance on the SERP (search engine results pages).

·        Security

This setting is not much important for single-user sites. However, if you have a multi-author blogging site, it is recommended to limit the access to customise posts.

This is where you need to enable the “Security” tab.

Optimise Titles and Metas

Next, go to the “Titles & Metas” section from the “SEO” menu that appears on the left side of the screen. This is where your active SEO work begins, as you can customise how your site will appear on search engines.

This is a six-step process that you can optimise chronologically.

·        General

The best thing about Yoast is that it can automatically detect whether a forced rewrite is needed. So you might not need to enable the “Force rewrite titles” section.

However, I recommend turning the “Enabled Analysis” on for better post readability.

·        Homepage

You can customise the ‘Title template” with different title separators, like ‘-‘, or ‘|’, which will make your title appears as:

·        Your Site Name | Contact Us

·        Or, Your Site Name – Contact US

I would recommend putting the post title first and the site name second.

·        Post Types

This tab lets you customise how your page and post title appear on the search engine. Again, my suggestion would be to focus on the “Title templates” first as it appears in the image. You can use the default settings for the rest by leaving the remaining boxes unchecked.

·        Taxonomies

WordPress offers default taxonomies to categorise the data and content. That means similar data is organised together. However, you can customise it a bit by clicking on the noindex option under ‘Categories’ and ‘Tags’, respectively.

Since these pages are of no value to your visitors, you can stop Google from indexing them with this method.

·        Archives

Having archived content sorted by date and author is a great way to organise the content. This makes it easier for the readers to find old content.

The only problem is that search engines often mistake the archive pages for duplicate content.

You can prevent this by disabling the archive pages and stopping Google from indexing them.

·        Other

Finally, you can fine-tune the search results further by turning off all the settings in this tab. This will help keep your title crisp.

Social

When discussing SEO, you cannot ignore the role of social media. Yoast has also taken care of this segment so that nothing gets left behind.

You can optimise your blog easily with your social media URLs from different platforms. Each tab will let you customise the content you share on various social media.

Configure the XML Settings

Sitemaps are maps for a search engine to crawl your site better. Yoast SEO makes it very easy to create and manage sitemaps. Once you enable the functionality, the Yoast plugin will create a sitemap automatically.

·        Upon landing on the XML sitemap menu, click on the “Enabled” option at the top first.

·        Next, click on the ‘XML Sitemap’ box.

·        Copy-paste the link to the Google Webmaster Tools.

·        The next tab, ‘User Sitemap’, is not needed unless your blog features many authors. So, keep it as it is.

·        In the ‘Post Types’ tab, choose the type of post you want in your sitemap.

·        The ‘Excluded Posts’ tab lets you select the posts you do not want Google to crawl.

·        In the ‘Taxonomies’ section, you can select the categories and tags you want to include or exclude in the sitemap.

Advanced

You can use some simple tweaks from this section to further enhance your SEO game.

·        Breadcrumbs settings let you decide the path through which a user will visit certain pages. There are quite a few settings in this section, so you need to know how to implement breadcrumbs.

·        Permalinks tab lets you further declutter aspects, like permalinks and URL structure, to make them more search-engine optimised.

·        The RSS feed settings help you link back to all the blog posts. This will be helpful if any of the content ever gets scraped, as the users and search engine will be notified of the original source, that is you.

Tools

The built-in tools of Yoast SEO are also helpful.

·      The bulk editor option lets you edit the titles and descriptions of multiple posts all at once.

·       File editor helps you make modifications in the robots.txt and .htaccess files.

·      Import and Export let you have a backup copy of all the settings you just made, so you don’t lose it.

 

Search Console

·     This is the last big setting in Yoast and is only helpful if you already are a Google Search Console user.

· Simply go to the ‘SEO’ option to find the ‘Search Console’ section and click on it.

·        Click on the ‘Get Google Authorisation Code’ to receive a verification code.

·        Click ‘Accept’, copy the code, and then paste it inside the ‘Authenticate’ box.

·        Now, click on it and choose the profile from the list.

·        ‘Save profile’, and that’s it.

How Does Yoast Improve SEO?

SEO can appear to be a complex subject for the uninitiated. This is where a simple plugin tool like Yoast comes into play. However, do not be deceived by its simplicity, as it has multiple uses that will make your SEO tasks a breeze.

First and foremost, Yoast SEO is well-known for helping you optimise your content for SEO. The colourful bullets provide feedback on how SEO-friendly the content is.

You can easily edit your content from the WordPress Block Editor with the help of Yoast SEO.

·        Focus Keyphrase

This is the first section in the Yoast SEO sidebar and the meta box. You can see the editor on the right side and the meta box underneath.

You can enter the specific phrases for which you want your blog post to rank. It is better to add

this before writing the content to stay focused while creating.

·        Readability Analysis

This is the next tab below the focus keyphrase field. Three coloured bullets tell you about the readability of your content.

You can learn how well the content will perform from the analysis:

·        Green means good

·        Orange or red means there is scope for improvements

However, do not stress too much on turning all the points green as it may cause you to cheat your own research.

·        SEO Analysis

Next is the SEO-friendliness of the content and correct placement of the keyphrase. Yoast SEO tool finds out whether you have used the keyphrases well enough. It also prevents you from keyword stuffing.

Also, using the keyphrases in the meta descriptions, images, subheadings, and titles is necessary for getting a good rank.

·        Google Preview

Lastly, you can get a complete preview of your content from the snippet preview or Google preview option. It will let you see how the page will appear on search engines and let you modify the title and meta info if needed.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now have a clear understanding of “what is Yoast SEO”. Following these guidelines, you can optimise your website and blog posts for better ranking.

The WordPress exclusive plugin is simple but comes with many useful features. All you need to do is follow the steps to correctly install it and be smart with the analysis and optimisation.

If there is still confusion or you face any trouble at any step, you can always avail yourself of the services of high-end agencies. However, it is much more cost-effective if you can install and do the SEO yourself.

Blogs are your company’s online voice. They go beyond the usual practical business content and help build a connection with customers. A company’s website usually does not have enough personality, content, and authority on its own. This is where blogs prove helpful, as they help bring freshness and flexibility in communicating your message to your users. So, how to optimise blog for SEO?

Additionally, they help drive traffic to websites. But it’s not a stiff and concrete solution to low site footfalls. Hence, simply filling a website with blogs does not guarantee that they’ll be read or shared. So what must you do?

You should optimise your blog content!

If this feels overwhelming, fret not, we will take you through all the steps you need to follow. So, let’s begin by understanding what is blog SEO and then we’ll get to how to optimise blog for SEO.

What is blog SEO?

Your focus must not just be on writing content; instead, you should strive to create informative and well-designed content that’s optimised for search engines. Blog SEO, hence, is essential to optimise the written content as per user intent to ensure better visibility.

But before diving deep into how to optimise a blog for SEO, let’s quickly recap what search engine optimization is and why you should bother spending time and money on it.

What is SEO?

You need to design and improve your website’s elements to gain more visibility when users type in queries related to your business. SEO is all about that. It involves stepping up the website’s technical configuration and content design so that search engine crawlers identify and match your content with user searches to feature higher on SERPs.

To do this, there are broadly two different SEO strategies that you can use:

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is used for building your brand voice and overall authority on search results. It is nothing but efforts such as guest posting, backlinking, and featuring in local listings. These can work in your favour to boost the Domain Authority (DA) score.

The DA is a ranking grade that reflects if your website can rank in the SERPs of Google and other engines. This score ranges from 1 to 100 and is determined by a set of attributes like linking root and top-level domains and a total number of links.

Your site’s DA is not a prime Google ranking factor, but it is an excellent marker of how well your site is performing in terms of off-site SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-page or on-site SEO is nothing but optimising your web pages and their contents with tech tools and techniques to feature higher on Google and other search engines for your product or service-related keywords.

Like other SEO types, on-page isn’t a solo effort and goes hand in hand with off-site and technical (non-content) optimisation.

In this article, as the subject at hand is how to optimise your blogs for SEO, we’ll discuss more about on-page SEO.

Why are blog posts important?

As mentioned earlier, blogs help rank higher on SERP and bring in more organic traffic. So extra attention to blog SEO while writing them becomes crucial. This entails:

1. Familiarizing and updating your target audience with the business

Apart from the website, a blog post is an excellent tool to inform users about your business in detail. While website and landing pages are precise and to the point, blogs offer a conversational space between the company and prospective customers.

2. Having a platform to explain your business creatively

Blogs help you centre your content around the product and services you sell or offer. It lets you demonstrate and inform your audiences in-depth about your offerings.

For instance, you can write about previous client experiences or case studies, “How To” guides along with listicles with attractive words like “Top 5” or “Best Tips”.

Remember, the more you write about topics in your industry with detailed research and a breezy tone, the more users will read your content.

3. Improving internal linking

Internal linking, unlike inbound links, is in your control in terms of where to place across web pages. So it would help if you place relevant internal links all over the blog posts. So, include CTAs and product shop links.

This will help make site navigation easier and will nudge users to other pages that you wish to have them see on priority. This, in turn, will increase the users’ time (or dwell time) on your website.

Remember, Google occasionally hints at the importance of dwell time, so you may as well pay attention.

4. Basking in social exposure via blog posts

Blogs are the simplest way to enhance your social media presence and gain higher website traction. So, attach links to your socials like Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook on blogs, and also link your online posts to the website blog to increase website visits

5. Maxing on optimised keywords

Keywords are crucial for website discovery across Google and other search engines. As such, your blog posts must have sufficient relevant keywords and titles to strengthen your SEO strategy.

How to optimise a blog for SEO?

Your digital marketing plan will only work if you spend enough time developing a relevant content strategy, which includes your blog posts.

As such, you must optimise a blog for SEO by following the techniques listed below.

1. Decide on your content topics and style

The first step in your strategy to optimise blog content should be of deciding which topics would work best.

As such, you must keep in mind the three elements of good content to include in your blog SEO:

• Your Intent

  Google places a lot of value on user intent, and so should you. You cannot have a blog title of “Best SEO Services in X area” and optimise your blog with a primary keyword like Digital Marketing.

  Although not irrelevant, it doesn’t hit home if a user searches for the best SEO places in that area or nearby. And Google knows this.

• Its Relevance 

  You may be successfully writing blogs within your niche and exploring various topics, but are you checking your older posts for updates now and then?

  At times, the information on a blog post may be supported by stats or current trends, which eventually become a thing of the past. Such outdated information can hurt your brand credibility and sabotage backlinks.

• The Quality

  Value creation is the buzzword, and SEO best practices have come a long way in the last decade. For example, there was a time keyword stuffing and black-hat strategies would work. But they can get you a penalty from Google today.

  So shift your focus on making valuable content that solves a user’s problem or presents solutions.

2. Conduct keyword research

Keywords are the holy-grail elements of SEO, and your research of them must be thorough.

As such, you must begin by asking:

• What keywords are searched most often?
• What are the frequently asked questions in the chosen topic?

Thereafter, run a quick keyword search on Google and look at the Autosuggests, and observe your Google Analytics data to check what keywords are already attracting traffic.

Subsequently, run a similar Google search for other words and check out the related searches for more ideas. Additionally, choose a mixture of keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner while also carrying out manual searches for rounded research on your high focus words.

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Furthermore, for new blogs, find long-tail keywords (a keyword phrase with more than three words). They are crucial because:

• such keywords are less competitive on search engines, so you get a better deal on pay per click ads
• they help rank higher in search results due to specific keywords bundled in together

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However, avoid keyword stuffing (overusing). Instead, use them in an optimum range across:

1. Title tag and meta descriptions

Unless you place the keywords in your title tags and meta description tag, Google may not show it in the results, let alone rank your blog high on the first page.

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2. Add keywords in headings like H1, H2

3. Have the keywords appear in the introduction and conclusion sections of the blog post.

4. Search engines use your URL to identify the topic of your post, and it’s one of the first things they’ll explore on a webpage.

Since all blog posts have their own separate URLs, you need to optimise the URLs with a focus keyword in them.

3. Optimise meta descriptions of blog posts

Meta description explains what your page is about when featured in the search results. They help users decide if the result is relevant to their query and whether or not they should click on it. Hence, ideally, it shouldn’t be longer than 160 characters and must include your long-tail keyword along with relevant and concise sentences.

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To help you with this further, here are a few tips for writing an excellent meta description as a part of your blog SEO.

1. Stay within the character limit, although there’s no guarantee that Google displays part or all of it.

2. As it is more of an invite to your website, write in an active voice without making it dull and challenging.

3. Make it relevant to the web page as much as possible.

5. Use an SEO plugin

Plugins are extensions that help optimise your content for more traffic on your website. With a wide range of plugins available for everything from keyword research (Keyword Tool) to overall monitoring platforms like Semrush, plugins are your ultimate solutions for getting high ranking across search engines.

No matter what CMS you use and how SEO friendly they may be, plugins are the catalysts that help your website immensely without writing tricky codes.

Additionally, they help with-

• Optimising the meta description and title tag of your blogs automatically
• Creating an XML sitemap of your website for search engines to locate your blogs and other content.
• Staying connected with website visitors via push notifications and many more.

5. Optimise for mobile devices

Mobile optimisation is a long-term strategy for your website to gain footing in the search results.

Mobile users are exponentially growing, and about 63% of Google searches happen on them. This means that most of your target audience is on mobiles to look for products or services similar to yours. So, improving and working on your mobile SEO would help bring in more traffic.

With Google’s mobile-friendly update in 2015, your website must have its mobile version to bring in organic visits. You cannot have users seeing the same desktop version on their mobiles. Responsive designs with a UI suited for smaller devices are what you want must to stay on top.

Additionally, take Google’s mobile-friendly test to understand the gaps in your web structure.

If you pass, you’ll be greeted with the following message:

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But if it is red, it means there’s still a bit of work to be done.

Much to the delight of developers, there’s also a Mobile-Friendly Test API where you can test URLs with the help of automated tools. The platform allows you to quickly test more pages alongside monitoring the website’s essential pages without manually using the browser tool each time.

6. Focus on link building

You might be creating high-quality blogs but still, have low to no website hits. The reason could be that it’s relatively new and needs to piggyback on other recognised websites to gain clicks. As such, you need to add both internal links and backlinks to your blog posts for SEO friendly content.

We know the former is in your hands, but getting the latter is no easy task. Hence, you must focus on:

• making your own articles high-quality, so others deem them worthy of linking
• develop link building strategies to gain more backlinks like guest blogging, social media promotion, and manually outreaching other pages.

Additionally, consider these tips for building successful links:

1. Request links from authoritative websites similar to your niche and get a backlink in return.

2. Manually adding links without any formal outreach.

3. Create linkable content like infographics, videos, and other visuals to earn links.

7. Add featured snippets to your blog post

A featured snippet is an excerpt that Google pulls from your website and places on what is called Position Zero. Placed above organic search results and below paid ads, this is a comfortable spot on the search engine results page.

They give a quick and one-glance solution to a search query. Google can include tables, videos, and images as a featured snippet, but blogs have a good chance with multiple target keywords.

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So, create a featured snippet in blog posts for SEO by carrying out the following steps:

1. Make good use of the focus keyword or phrases across the blog post you want Google to grab.
2. Consider placing the keyword as a question in an H2 tag in the beginning section of the blog. This could be placed as a text snippet with a few simple optimised lines of topic definition.
3. List snippets also include a keyword-inclusive question with trigger words like ‘Top’ or ‘Best Tips’, followed by a bulleted list of answers. You can also create a table snippet with many rows of content.

SEO your blog to the top!

With all these SEO tactics up your sleeve, your blog posts can see good growth on search engines and help get in customers. Whether you take the help of SEO experts from agencies or optimise your own blogs, keep in mind critical elements like content design, effective blog post title tag and meta description with optimum links.

However, you need not incorporate all these tips in your strategy as it depends on your current business goals and needs. But it’s necessary you alter your blog SEO plans as the website grows with time.

So, start writing your new post using these effective blog SEO tips and watch your business get more traffic!