Starting a blog is easy, even writing a post is as a piece of cake and fun. However, how can your posts reach target readers? What does it take to become a successful blogger? Right here, I am willing to introduce a checklist of 12 simple tips to optimize your posts for users and search engines. It doesn’t matter if you are a new blogger or a seasoned writer looking for refresher on SEO practices, this checklist is right for you. Brainstorm ideas, set goals and research keywords This is always an importantly initial part of every process and writing a post isn’t an exception. How can you make ideas come out of your brain? I strongly recommend you follow these steps to get achieved: 1. Determine your goal and the audience of your post Do you want to attract new audiences after each post? Are you planning to share some big news that will hopefully get lots of re-tweets and likes? Whatever your goals are, get certain and specific before you start them. For instance, your goal may look the following way: Achieve at least 20 subscriptions Get 1000 page visitors per month Get in the top 10 search results in Google for “the best Mega Menu extensions for Joomla”. Need more? Take a look at huge list of 101 blogging goal ideas by Tristan Higbee. Also, you need to determine your audience initially so that you can know what you need to write about. Please do not skip this step. It’s vital for your blogging success 2. Find 3-5 key phrases that have similar search intent. There is a great number of keyword research guide on the Internet but generally, this process includes 3 steps: Write a seed list of starting terms Extent the list using keyword research tool Refine your list using competitive research. Sounds easy? Actually, it get complicated when you get down to it. Today, users can search by typing or speaking, I mean voice activated search assistant. By this way, semantics is thing we need to keep an eye on. So how do we find these semantically related groups of key phrases? Well, Rank Checker can help! Say, you are in mood for writing a post how to find an apartment to buy. In Rank Tracker's Keyword Research module click the Suggest button, pick Google AdWords Keyword Planner (you may choose other sources later to expand the list) and type in your keyword — "how to choose an apartment to buy" in my case. After Rank Tracker finishes collecting keyword ideas, you'll see them neatly organized in groups. Just looking at the group, I can restructure my post (or posts) as the following: Is buying an apartment a good investment? An apartment or a house — which is better? Flat buying checklist. If you still need more, click Suggest again and choose other options. Done? Let’s move on next step. 3. Check your keywords for traffic and competition Generally, the next step of 12 simple steps to optimize blog posts for users and search engines is that you should look at search volume, competition and keyword difficulty to choose 3-5 main keywords for your post. Use Rank Checker again. Go to Target Keywords -> Keyword Map. Select the words you want to analyze and press Update Keyword Difficulty. Create and optimize your post 4. Choose a good topic for your post Keep in mind that top 3 ideas for a good blog topic: Answer a question Provide a checklist Provide a guide or how-to tutorial In case you are get stuck in coming up ideas, you can: Analyze comment section to see questions popping up more often Be active on social network and ask your followers what they want to learn in the next post Take a look at forum discussions to see which type of questions get more comments and answers. 5. Plan to add different types of content Among a forest of content type such as: photos, new release, articles, infographics, etc. it’s hard to choose which one is the most effective, right? Ascend2 did a research on types of content and here’s what is found out Now you see which one you should pick? 6. Make your post easy to scan After you finish your post, turn off your computer, relax for a while because you have worked hard and then come back to take a look at what you created. Is it enough easy to scan? Remember that readers don’t have much time to read between lines, so please make your post as easy to read as possible. Don’t forget to use images or videos for supportive purpose. I bet they will be satisfied with it and surely visit your blog again and again. 7. Optimize on-page elements That’s clear and familiar to do SEO activities, right? Look again at your keyword list. Make sure main keyword goes exactly matched in title, headline, possibly URL and content. After that, you can use two to four secondary key phrases in such elements, as content meta description images' alternative texts subheadings link anchors I believe that you all know about that tips so I won’t mention them in details here. Any wonders or questions, feel free to ask in comment section, okay? So what’s the 8th step? 8. Proofread the post This is also a vital step because it helps you check grammar, spelling and consistency mistakes before you publish. You can use Grammarly to proofread. Don’t ignore. What is written binds the writer! 9. Make sure the post is mobile friendly Responsiveness has been the goal of every site since smart devices came out. 80% Internet users use smartphones to search the Internet, and 91% of Laptop/PC, so if your website is not responsive, you are sure to lose a large number of visitors. Plan to outreach and link building 10. Place links from older posts The must-not-forget step among 12 steps to get a successful blog post is that to add links from older related topic posts. That's a win-win case — people reading older posts will be able to discover this new piece, while the search engines will index and rank the new post faster. 11. Share your post on social media and bookmarking sites Besides using the power of Twitter, Facebook, G+, and Pinterest to let the world know your new post's out, submit your post to the social bookmarking site is another way to spread it out: Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Growthhackers.com Inbound.org Hacker news BizSugar.com Blogengage.com ManageWP.org Techspy.com 12. Reach out to influencers By the following ways and you can make your post more popular. Remember to choose right influencer: Send an email if you've already communicated with this influencer. Just give a heads up, don't be pushy about sharing your post. Mention them in a tweet. Mention them in a Google+ post. Are you ready to become a good blogger? Well, I have just presented 12 steps to optimize your posts and search engines. The important thing is to experiment and analyze. And then one day, you'll just see that most of your posts keep getting new traffic, backlinks, and higher rankings. Hope you'll enjoy using this checklist! I'll be happy to see your questions and tips in the comments below!
