Roughly 8.28 million blog posts are published every day. Not all of these get the visibility or traction they’re aiming for. Why? The answer is in blog search engine optimization (SEO), i.e., how optimized the posts are to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Blog SEO determines how search engine crawlers view and rank your blog posts on Google and other search engines. Your approach to this practice affects your site’s success.
What is blog SEO, and why is it crucial? We answer these questions and outline eight essential blog SEO best practices you should consider to ensure your website dominates search rankings so your fitness business prospers.
What Is Blog SEO?
Blog SEO is the continuous practice of creating and positioning your blog posts to appear at the top of organic search engine results. It involves writing, optimizing, and publishing posts in a way that allows search engine bots to know what they’re about, determine their relevance and rank them high for specific terms.
Blog SEO is 3rd most popular strategy for gaining traffic to a website after social media and email marketing.
Blog SEO is 3rd most popular strategy for gaining traffic to a website after social media and email marketing.
Search engines use several signals to rank all the posts on a specific topic from the top (most relevant, valuable, and well-written post) to the bottom (least relevant).
Blog SEO entails understanding the most essential search engine ranking signals and using them strategically in your blog posts with an aim to rank high. The higher you rank, the more beneficial it will be for your fitness business.
Why Is Blog SEO Important?
Blog SEO is essential for many reasons. When you master the art of blog SEO, you will:
1. Establish site authority and gain a competitive edge: When you optimize your blog posts, search engines will rank your site higher than your competitors so more users can find you.
2. Increase organic search traffic to your website and grow your audience: Search engine users trust the top organic results. The #1 organic result on Google is 10x more likely to be clicked on than other results. If you rank this high, more people will visit your blog, and you can nurture them to become regular visitors.
1. Establish site authority and gain a competitive edge: When you optimize your blog posts, search engines will rank your site higher than your competitors so more users can find you.
2. Increase organic search traffic to your website and grow your audience: Search engine users trust the top organic results. The #1 organic result on Google is 10x more likely to be clicked on than other results. If you rank this high, more people will visit your blog, and you can nurture them to become regular visitors.
3. Improve the user experience: An SEO-friendly blog post is easy to read and navigate. There’s a flow to it that boosts user experience, increasing the likelihood of visitors returning to your blog or recommending it to others.
How To Optimize Your Blog Posts For More Traffic
Blog SEO requires you to properly plan and research your content before you write and optimize your blog posts for specific search terms. Here are our top blog SEO tips to help you optimize your blog content and improve your rankings on search results:
1. Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research is the basis of search engine optimization. A keyword is a term or phrase a user types into search engines when looking for information or answers online. You want to identify the specific terms your target audience uses to find out what topics you should write about.
Unless your website is well established, look for specific intent keywords, often called long-tail keywords, when performing keyword research. Rather than using the keyword ‘personal training’, you’ll have a better chance of ranking high for more specific (long-tail) key phrases, like ‘personal training programs for strength training’.
To identify the best keywords that will help you attract the most organic traffic, start by defining your niche and goals, pinpointing relevant blog topics. Brainstorm a list of seed keywords within your niche and analyze competitors’ sites for insights into their ranking keywords.
Unless your website is well established, look for specific intent keywords, often called long-tail keywords, when performing keyword research. Rather than using the keyword ‘personal training’, you’ll have a better chance of ranking high for more specific (long-tail) key phrases, like ‘personal training programs for strength training’.
To identify the best keywords that will help you attract the most organic traffic, start by defining your niche and goals, pinpointing relevant blog topics. Brainstorm a list of seed keywords within your niche and analyze competitors’ sites for insights into their ranking keywords.
Use keyword research tools like Semrush, Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to discover related keywords, considering metrics such as search volume and difficulty. Aim for long-tail keywords with decent search volume and low difficulty.
To show you how much information you can find out via keyword research, we used Ubersuggest to do a search for the long-tail keyword 'weight loss during menopause'. You will see how popular it is, how competitive to rank for the keyword organically or via paid campaigns and the average CPC.
2. Create High-Quality Content
Search engines prioritize quality content that’s relevant, well-researched, helpful, and contains original data. To create relevant content, assign a focus or main keyword for every blog post you intend to write. Then, identify the search intent behind each post’s target keyword and write content that comprehensively meets the search intent.
There are different types of keywords based on various users’ search intent:
Once you’ve identified your focus or main keyword and understand what the user intent is, assess the top posts on Google search to see what Google views as quality content on the topic. You’ll get an idea of the type of content you need to create to rank high and get the most organic traffic.
Also, take note of Google’s quality content guide to ensure your blog posts are:
There are different types of keywords based on various users’ search intent:
- Informational keywords: Users want to learn about a subject. These include various question-based keywords, like, “What is personal training?”
- Transactional keywords: The search intent, here, is to buy a product or service, e.g., “best online personal training software".
- Navigational keywords: The user is looking for a specific website, e.g., "Foodzilla meal planning website"
- Commercial keywords: The user wants to know more about a product or service before purchasing, e.g., “meal planning software benefits”.
Once you’ve identified your focus or main keyword and understand what the user intent is, assess the top posts on Google search to see what Google views as quality content on the topic. You’ll get an idea of the type of content you need to create to rank high and get the most organic traffic.
Also, take note of Google’s quality content guide to ensure your blog posts are:
- Easy to read
- Unique
- Organized
- Helpful, reliable, and people-first
- Up to standard following the E-E-A-T guidelines
3. Optimize On-Page Elements
Previously, keyword stuffing, i.e., placing your target keywords randomly throughout your blog content, worked. These days, it doesn’t. You’ll still have to use your target keyword throughout your blog post. But you must do it naturally and have the correct balance of the keyword throughout your text to rank well on search results pages.
Place your keyword strategically in these essential on-page SEO elements:
Some on-page SEO tools, like Yoast SEO or Semrush’s on-page SEO plugin, can help you optimize your blog posts and other web pages. Consider installing them to enhance your SEO success.
Place your keyword strategically in these essential on-page SEO elements:
- Your meta title (limit this to 50 – 60 characters)
- The first paragraph (preferably within the first 100 words)
- Your title tag
- Meta description (this should be between 50 and 160 characters)
- Blog URL
- Several times within the post. The exact number of times depends on your blog post’s length.
Some on-page SEO tools, like Yoast SEO or Semrush’s on-page SEO plugin, can help you optimize your blog posts and other web pages. Consider installing them to enhance your SEO success.
4. Use Multimedia
Add different media, including custom images, videos, infographics, and GIFs, to break up long paragraphs and enhance your blog’s visual appearance. This makes your blog posts easy to follow and keeps readers engaged.
Remember to optimize your blog’s images so they don’t affect your page speed. You can do this by:
- Selecting the appropriate image file format, e.g., JPG for photos and SVG or PNG for logos and illustrations.
- Compressing the image to reduce bandwidth usage and improve page speed.
- Adding a descriptive image alt text. An alt text helps search engines index your blog and screen readers describe posts’ images to visually impaired users, making your content more accessible.
5. Internal Linking
Internal links are a crucial on-page SEO tactic to improve blog SEO. Internal linking involves linking out to other relevant content you’ve posted on a topic. Doing this helps search engines plus readers find other posts on your site that might provide more information about specific search queries.
For example, this post is about SEO for fitness website, so a link from this page to our SEO services for personal trainers will help to boost the ranking of that page.
6. Build Backlinks
Unlike inbound links, backlinks are external links from other websites linking back to your site. They’re essential for enhancing your blog SEO. For best results, ensure the backlinks you build are relevant and come from high-authority websites.
A good backlink for your fitness website will come from another industry specific website. For example, you might get in touch with another personal trainer and offer to write for them, then include a link to your website in the post you write.
7. Monitor Metrics
Finally, monitor various metrics regularly to ensure your blog SEO efforts yield the best results. You can use Google Analytics data or the structured data of various SEO plugins to measure different metrics, such as:
- Organic traffic
- Average click-through rate (CTR)
- User experience metrics, including bounce rate and dwell time
- Number of indexed pages
- Referring domains or backlinks
- Keyword rankings, including keyword visibility and average position on organic search results, and so on.
Final Thoughts
In a world where millions of blog posts are published daily, mastering the art of blog SEO is the only way to stand out and attract traffic. By optimizing your posts for search engines, you establish authority, increase organic traffic, and improve user experience.
Optimize your existing blog content and new blog posts using these SEO tips and watch your site soar in the organic search rankings!
Optimize your existing blog content and new blog posts using these SEO tips and watch your site soar in the organic search rankings!
