How to Optimize a Blog Post for SEO? [Checklist]

Like to get your blog posts on top of the search engine pages for many keywords and doing different things one-by-one, but nothing is working?

Well, it happens to many newbies and professional bloggers too.

It's essential to get rid of this problem and create SEO-friendly blog posts➹, rather than just writing on daily basis.

All can write blog posts (if they can type) but getting your writings out of the box and to loved by your readers, you have to do something great like you have to add chillies in mutton to make it tasty.

Same applies to blog post writing, first you have to write articles just for humans and after that think about how you can get your blog post on first line in Google search engine and others too.

6 Ways to optimize a blog post for SEO (in a nutshell):

Read how you can easily optimize blog post for SEO in a nutshell and after that scroll down to read them in details.

1. Select one topic and do the search
2. Write down your thinkings on that search results
3. Add some headings for easy writing
4. Make use of keywords with low competition but high searches
5. Link to references and your old content
6. Optimize images of your blog post

That's how you can make a blog post standout in front of your audience and to search engine bots too. Now read more about these steps and dive into a perfect strategy on making a blog post search engine optimized.

1. Select one topic and do the search

Thinking is important in any field and if you think more than doing something, you'll definitely got more quick and awesome ideas (don't stay thinking).

Before writing a new blog post you should think about your old stuff (blog posts) and find out what type of content your readers read the most, after that you can select a topic.

Now open some tools such as SpyFu.com➹.

Now search for some keywords, for example:

You want to write on Insurance & Loans, you can type insurance tips or loan companies in the search box and it will show you the high potential and relative keywords.

What we get in this search? Let's create a title for out loans related blog post:

Take "loan companies" from first result, "top" from second line, "atlanta ga" from 3rd line, interest rate from 5th and "best" from last one.

Here's the title "Top and Best Personal Loan Companies with Low interest rate in Atlanta Ga" another is "Best Personal Loan Companies in Atlanta GA".

Now its up to you how you think and how you search to get latest and SEOptimized idea for new blog post topic and title.

2. Write down your thinkings on that search results

Wait, are you have enough data to start writing a blog post on? if not than see what we get after search that title in Google (I have deleted some results):

Don't just think, start writing on it and broke your blog post in four sections:

1. Introduction: In first some paragraphs you have to write about what is the topic about and why it is important for a reader to read this article.
2. Info or History: If you are talking about any product than add history information and let people know more about product or anything you are writing about.
3. Body: Now add main content and give readers main thing you are talking about.
4. Conclusion or Final words: At the end of your blog post give readers a call to action or summarize your blog post and ask to reader "what they want to be added".

That's the spirit,

Now open links from Google search and start reading next step.

3. Add some headings for easy writing

After writing the basic things of your topic, its time to add some headings for making it cool and longer in text-counts. So we can add more keywords and more information easily.

As I take example for "Loans" we should use these type of headings:

• h1 How loans can benefit our business
• h2 What to keep in mind while getting a personal loan
• h3 Can we get loans without interest in XYZ country
• h4 How we can get rid of loans

There are endless headings to add in your blog post, it depends on your topic.

4. Make use of keywords with low competition but high searches

Do you want to stick your blog post to the point and on one topic?

Then make use of keywords you use for creating title and body of your blog post. Just think about something like Football and write about Football teams, Football players, Football grounds and other things.

To make it short- try to add as many relative words you can easily add in a blog post on single topic and add keywords especially in these areas:

1. Title of your blog post
2. Description area and in URL
3. At start of the text (introduction area)
4. Add keywords in headings and sub-headings

Don't miss to add relative keyword for anchor text to other related post links on your blog and also other websites.

5. Link to references and your old content

Linking to your old content is precious and makes your blog more engaged, also increases the readership and page views.

Only you've to do is search for related content (related to topic you are writing about) and link that blog post with relevant anchor text to get more exposure and trust from search engine bots (as Google loves linked content and perform crawls twice).

Same goes to references:

If you are creating an article with help of other websites or blog (reading their work and creating your own on that basis) than you have to link them back.

Don't forget to add a link back to original sources using anchor text and link. It also help readers to trust on your writings and bots to crawl other websites and your as-well.

6. Optimize images of your blog post

Whatever you write about you must add a featured or any other image to make your blog post look good.

And a image can say thousand words. But! The problem is search engine bots can't access or index your images accurately without some in information which you need to provide.

Such as: Alt-text, Anchor text (optional) and captions, so Google and other search engines bots can easily index your blog post images in right direction.

You can also read my recent ultimate guide on optimizing images on your blog.

Final words:

These are the basic tips to follow for making your blog posts search engine optimized for a longtime to get higher rankings at serps.

If you want more tips to optimize your blog posts, you can ask me in comments form below, thanks for reading mate :)