If you’re attempting to grow traffic to your website organically, writing engaging blogs is one of the most important steps you can take. Consistent, high-quality blog content is a great way to start achieving those coveted page 1 rankings. However, pouring time into crafting a blog you’re proud of, only to find that it needs to compete with higher-ranking content, can be frustrating.
At Redefine, we’ve written, scheduled, edited, and analyzed thousands of content pieces. Through this experience, we’ve identified three focus areas that can significantly boost your blog’s ranking position. Remember, even if you create the best content out there, it won’t matter if no one is looking for it. Optimizing your blog isn’t about keyword stuffing to trick Google; it’s about ensuring your content reaches the audience who actually wants to read it.
Optimize your content for search intent
It’s important to remember to check for search intent when trying to improve your blog positions. The topic you are writing about might be searched for often, but if users are looking for a product or specific website, you’ll have a much harder time competing.
When optimizing your blog for search, you’ll want to learn the different types of search intent. This helps ensure your content aligns with what users are actually looking for:
- Navigational intent: Users are trying to reach a specific website or page (e.g., “Facebook login”).
- Informational intent: Users want to learn about a topic (e.g., “how to fix a leaky faucet”).
- Commercial intent: Users researching options before purchasing (e.g., “best noise-canceling headphones”).
- Transactional intent: Users are ready to make a purchase or complete an action (e.g., “buy Samsung Galaxy Phone”).
When writing or refreshing a blog, try to write for informational or commercial keywords. These are much more likely to rank blog pages or longer, more informative pieces of content.
Technical SEO improvements
Technical SEO is super important when getting your pages to rank online. If you haven’t checked the proper technical boxes, your site might not get picked up in the Google algorithm, and the blog you spent all that time on will remain at the bottom of SERPs or maybe not even rank. There’s a lot that goes into technical SEO; below are some of the ones we think are important when it comes to improving your blog rankings.
Improve website speed
Page load time is a ranking factor that directly affects both user experience and SEO. Slow-loading websites can lead to higher bounce rates and lower search rankings. To ensure your site loads quickly, consider using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, which offers valuable insights and suggestions for improving load time.
Mobile optimization
With mobile-first indexing, you want to be sure that you have a mobile-responsive design. Your website needs to function as smoothly on mobile devices as on desktops. A bad mobile experience can hurt your rankings and even start to drive potential users away. Ensure your site is optimized for mobile screens, with touch-friendly buttons, legible text, and fast load times on mobile.
Website crawling and indexing
When implementing SEO you want to ensure that search engines can properly crawl and index your valuable pages. Start by reviewing your robots.txt file to ensure you’re allowing search engines to access important content while blocking low-value or duplicate pages. This helps optimize your crawl budget.
On-Page SEO best practices
Following SEO best practices is one of the easiest ways to boost your blog’s search engine visibility. These techniques help search engines understand the relevance and quality of your content while improving user experience. By optimizing key elements like keywords, internal links, and image alt text, you can create content that ranks higher and reaches a wider audience. Below are three fundamental on-page SEO strategies to implement in your blogs.
Keyword research
One of the first steps in SEO is conducting keyword research before you write your blog. Understanding your audience, the language they use, and their search intent is how you can learn to improve your blogs rankings. Plenty of tools are available for keyword research, such as Ahrefs, but it’s essential to ensure the terms you’re using in your blog are being searched by real users.
For example, if you’re writing about “gardening tips,” keyword research might show that more people search for “how to start a garden” rather than “gardening advice.” If you target the phrase with a higher search volume, you’ll increase your chances of ranking higher and reaching a broader audience while still being able to write about the same topic.
Proper use of keywords
Effective keyword placement is key to improving your blog’s visibility without overloading it. Focus on strategically placing keywords in titles, headings, URLs, and naturally throughout the content. Avoid keyword stuffing, as it can harm your rankings and result in poor user experience. Instead, aim for natural and meaningful integration that enhances the flow of your content while signaling relevance to search engines. These may be areas you’re not thinking about when writing your blog, but trust us, they make a difference in ranking.
Internal linking
Internal links connect related pages on your site. This creates topic clusters that help search engines understand the structure and importance of different pages. Internal linking also distributes page authority, making it easier for less visible pages to gain traction. Use internal links to guide users and search engines toward your most valuable content.
Conclusion: good information matters the most
When it comes down to it, no amount of SEO tips and tricks will help out a bad blog. The tactics mentioned here are meant to be the icing on the cake of your well-researched, well-written, informative content. If you have a blog or article you’re excited about, don’t let it fall to Google’s wayside because you forgot to do keyword research or because your site isn’t optimized for mobile. Implementing these tactics from this blog and consistently updating your content will help you start to rank. Often, blog refreshes are necessary to keep your content up to date for users.
Keep writing good content that people are looking for, ensure it’s optimized properly, and you’ll be climbing the Google ranks in no time.
Redefine your content strategy
If constantly optimizing, rewriting and publishing content for your site sounds overwhelming, this might be the perfect time to bring in an expert. At Redefine Marketing Group, we specialize in all aspects of blog content—from writing and optimizing to refreshing and reviving older posts. With our keyword research skills and SEO expertise, we can help your content rank higher and drive more traffic. Reach out to us today to discover how our content marketing, SEO, and social media strategies can help you achieve your organic growth goals.
