2021 was yet another crazy year in the digital marketing world. Thanks to the pandemic-fueled eCommerce boom, it seemed like every brand and their brother was online trying to drive traffic. 2022 promises to be another big year for digital marketing, and with 53 percent of web traffic coming from organic traffic, you can bet SEO will play a big role in everyone’s strategies.

If you’re looking to increase traffic in this ultra-competitive digital landscape and improve your SEO rankings, be prepared to get savvier than ever. Here are eight blog best practices to help.

1. Define your content strategy.

Your blog may produce some of the finest quality writing around, but if it’s not aligned with a clearly defined content strategy, your traffic and conversion will suffer.

What makes a blog on-strategy?

• Every article topic is aligned with search trends, your audience’s needs and challenges, and your business goals.
• Your content contains keywords that are high-traffic, reflective of the search intent of your target audience, and not too competitive. 
• Your content calendar includes multiple categories of content to ensure you’re covering:
  • All your buyer personas
  • All your products and services
  • All the stages of the customer funnel from brand awareness to post-sale loyalty content

Don’t worry — it’s not as overwhelming as it sounds. More importantly, the results are worth it.

Ready to create your strategy? The good news is you can do it all on your own. Read “How to Perform a DIY Content Strategy for Your Blog” and simply follow the steps.

2. Publish more frequently. 

As hard as it can be to publish frequently, your web traffic depends significantly on your posting cadence.

In the first part of 2021, when I was still working at my previous company, I learned for myself that consistency pays off when it comes to blog content — and boy, does it pay off. I launched the company blog at the end of 2018 with a biweekly publishing cadence, and by the end of 2021, we had worked our way up to a cadence of two to three articles per week and were projected to reach a total of over 1.5M annual visitors by the end of the year.

Still, quality matters more than frequency. Neil Patel found that posting one more post per week increased traffic at his previous company KISSmetrics by 18.6%. But he cautions us not to publish substandard posts, offering up the example of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, who found high frequency was the number one reason for unsubscribes.

3. Become a thought leader in your space.

I attribute growing my previous company’s blog from 0 to 125K visitors per month not just to publishing consistency but also to consistency in quality. What does quality mean in 2022? In the crowded post-pandemic digital environment, every article you write should bring value to readers and offer a fresh take.

It’s not enough anymore to publish just “A” content. It’s not even enough to publish “A+” content anymore. It needs to be “A+” as well as offer a unique perspective on your subject, demonstrating your nuanced expertise.

To elevate your content to the level of thought leadership, brainstorm content topics with your subject matter experts and incorporate their perspectives into your briefs. Consider conducting regular surveys to keep the pulse on your industry and publish thoughtful analyses of your results. If your content budget is tight, consider recruiting your own executive team to contribute articles and hire a wordsmith to edit and optimize their content for SEO.

4. Don’t forget the basics (on-page SEO).

Sometimes, when you work in-depth in an area, it can be easy to forget your basics. Recently, after helping a brand win a number of Featured Snippets right at the top of Google for major keywords, I was reminded of the importance of the fundamentals —what’s called on-page SEO.

What’s on-page SEO, you ask?

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing elements of web pages, such as title tags, headings, the use of keywords, and internal links, to improve search rankings. 

In fact, the Search Engine Journal State of SEO Report 2021 reported that over a third of SEO professionals thought that meta titles, descriptions, and H1s were the most important ranking factor, and over a quarter of SEO professionals intended to spend time “on-page” over the next year. So obviously I’m not alone here!

Here are some ways to make sure your on-page SEO is on-point in 2022:

• Choose your keywords strategically: Make sure your primary keywords are aligned with your content and will attract the right audience. Choose longtail keywords that are both high in traffic and low-to-medium in difficulty. It’s always better to opt for keywords that have lower traffic counts (a monthly traffic count of 250 or less), as long as they have high relevance for your audience, than to go after the higher-difficulty keywords, as tantalizing as their traffic counts may be. 
• Integrate your keywords naturally: Use all your keywords naturally, and try to weave them into headers as much as possible without coming across as “keyword-stuffy.” Your primary keyword should appear in your H1, in one of the H2s, and in the first 150 words of your body copy. Secondary keywords should appear in the H2s and H3s as well as in the body copy as much as possible.
• Be proactive about winning Featured Snippets: Land these dream spots at the top of Google by identifying the People Also Ask and other Featured Snippets you hope to win in your content briefs. Make sure your content directly addresses these questions and topics more thoroughly than the website that currently occupies that spot.
• Start off with a competitive audit: For every content piece you write, study the top-ranking content for your primary keyword and come up with a way to one-up your content competitors. For example, if they’re offering “5 best practices,” offer 10. If they’re offering “tips,” offer “the complete guide.”
• Be thoughtful about your metadata: Take your time writing your meta title, meta description, and alt text for images. Conduct tests regularly to ensure your content is as click-worthy as possible.

5. Focus on link building.

Link building is the SEO strategy you know you need but likely haven’t focused on to the degree that you should. Well, not anymore. If you expect to get ahead in 2022, when the content landscape is more competitive than ever before, link building must be part of your SEO strategy.

DA is, after all, one of the top three search ranking factors. At the very least, you should aim for a DA of 40, but if you want to compete with the big boys in your category, you have to have a much higher score.

The secret to increasing domain authority is acquiring high-quality back links — links from other sites to your own, which signal to Google that you’re an authoritative source on the subject at hand. Just take a look at the number of back links the top-ranking articles have for the primary keyword “content writing” below. 

Note that it has an SEO difficulty of 62, which is moderate. But also note that the top ten articles have an average of 410 backlinks and a domain authority of 62. This tells you a couple of things: 1) You’ll need to have a domain authority of about 62 to rank on page 1, and 2) it takes about 410 backlinks to get a domain authority of 62. So if you’re nowhere close to that number, you have no time to waste on starting a backlink strategy.

When I launched the C-POP website last summer, my DA was … 1! After all, what else would it be for a brand new site? Still it was a shock to see it. So I started doing some link building myself through guest posts. Within just six months, my DA went from 1 to 7. While 7 isn’t the most impressive number, this increase of 6 points in just 4 months bodes well and underscores the value of this strategy.

Interested in adding link building to your SEO strategy in 2022? We can help. Contact me and I’ll be happy to tell you more about this service.

6. Master the art of linking.

Links are a vital SEO ingredient. When you use them well, you can significantly increase engagement on your site, which signals to Google that your content is valuable to readers. Make sure your blog articles link to several authoritative websites — and skip the no-follow tags, which can actually hurt your SEO rankings. 

There’s a lot of debate in the SEO world about how many internal links (links to other blog articles as well as product and service pages) to include in your blog content. Aim for moderation — a sea of hyperlink-blue can give the impression of a spammy site. The longer your article, the more internal links you can afford to add. Just make sure every page you link to is relevant, and include keywords in the anchor text. 

7. Make your headlines irresistible.

Fun fact: 8 out of 10 headlines are read, but only 2 out of 10 of them are clicked on. And since the more clicks your article gets, the higher it’s going to rise on SERP pages, it pays to get your clicks as high as possible. That’s why in 2022 you should pay closer attention than ever to your article titles. How much attention? Neil Patel thinks you should spend 40 percent of your writing time on your headlines.

While your headlines don’t have to be clickbait-y, they do need to be click-worthy. Blogging Wizard offers some suggestions:

• Opt for negative headlines: Leave out positive words like “Best” or “Amazing.” For example, instead of  “5 Amazing Ways to Increase Your SEO Rankings,” take a negative spin: “The 5 Biggest SEO Mistakes to Avoid.”
• Try a question headline: Stand out with an irresistible question that readers have to answer. For example: “Which of These 5 SEO Mistakes Are You Guilty Of?” 
• Incorporate parentheses or brackets: These can be used to make headlines stand out from the clutter, emphasize part of the headline, add credibility by including specific data, and add an oh-so-clickable extra. Examples: “8 Best Blog Practices to Try in 2022 (#5 Increased Our Traffic Big Time)” and “8 Best Blog Practices to Try in 2022 (Free Checklist Included).”
• Use specific numbers: Numbers are a surefire way to build credibility and avoid being generic. For example, what would you rather read: “Blog Practices for Growing Your Traffic” or “8 Blog Practices That Grew Our Traffic by 115% in 6 Months”?

A few more tips:

• Write 30 headlines for every article: Did you know that Maria Forleo writes at least 30 headlines for every piece of content before deciding on The One? No wonder why she’s created a digital empire.
• Lean on your top-performing headline formulas: Study your highest traffic-driving articles, make note of their headlines, and repurpose them for new content.
• Test your headlines: Conduct regular tests and see which ones result in the highest rankings and most clicks. 

Meta Titles Versus Article Headlines

What’s a meta title and how is it different from your article headline? A meta title, also known as a title tag, is the HTML code that determines the title for your page when it turns up in search results or on social media. Like this:

Having a clickable title tag is one of the most important SEO ranking factors, vital for attracting the right users to your article and helping Google understand what your content is about. It should be more keyword-rich than the headline displayed on your website.

Here are some additional tips for writing a winning meta title:

• Make it 60 characters (or 600 pixels) or less. Google SERPs usually display the first 50 to 60 characters or 600 pixels of a title tag. Make sure to a colon or vertical slash ( | ) rather than a hyphen so you can maximize that space.
• Include your primary keyword ideally at the beginning or close to the beginning of your title. 
• Make it actionable. Use words like “How to,” “Step-by Step Guide,” and “Expert Tips,” etc. so the reader expects information they can use.

Just because it’s a meta title doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be enticing to readers — in fact, all the more reason to make it as irresistible as your H1s. 

8. Refresh Your Old Content

It’s easy to get so focused on publishing new content that you forget about your older, long-ranking articles — but as these are likely to be your top drivers of traffic, it pays to keep them fresh and optimized, especially as more and more SEO newbs enter the blogosphere.

Chances are, as the years have gone by and you’ve become a savvier blogger, your blog content has gotten better over time, leaving a wake of under-optimized content behind, which is likely riddled with old data and any number of SEO no-no’s. Why not protect your investment and make it as effective as possible with regular content refreshes?

Check out my step-by-step guide on content optimization, which will help you through the process.

Blog Best Practices for the 2022 Content Landscape 

As the pandemic-era digital boom continues into 2022 and beyond, more and more brands are getting wise about SEO, but the good news is, they’re not all as committed to results and dedicated to quality as you are. Following the blog best practices above will be sure to help you get better results with your blog this year. 

As always, we’re here if you need any help with your content marketing this year. Contact us to learn more about working with us.

Looking to increase your content production, or just want to make your content team more efficient? Let’s talk about your content workflow. If you’re falling behind on deadlines or you’re not able to publish at the cadence you want to, ironing out your content workflow can make all the difference.

Back when I used to manage the blog of a major brand, I took that baby from a cadence of biweekly posts to eventually five articles per week. During that time I learned a thing or two about establishing a content creation workflow. Below you’ll find my top learnings.

The sooner you establish a content creation workflow that works for you, the sooner you can take your content production to the next level — not to mention, save yourself and your team unnecessary stress.

1. Start with strategy

A lot of businesses are understandably eager to pump out articles from the get-go — and who can blame them given the amazing potential of SEO content? But in their enthusiasm they tend to miss a vital first step, the very foundation of any content marketing effort: the strategy. 

In short, a blog content strategy tells you:

• Who your target audience is (hint: there are probably multiple audiences)
• What they want to read about and what they’re searching for on Google (There’s no use writing about a topic your audience isn’t looking for in search queries.)
• Which topics and keywords make the most sense for your business to go after
• What types of content to produce, such as interviews with how-to guides, listicles, expert interviews, storytelling features, infographics, ebooks, etc.

What you’re really aiming for with your content strategy is to make sure you’re finding that sweet spot between content that your audience would love and content that your competitors aren’t providing.

A good content strategy is never a final thing but a work in progress continually refined over time as one studies the results of one’s content. It is often filled with hypotheses and tests. I like to revisit mine every six months or so, and definitely at least every year.

When you have a content strategy in place, you can take advantage of these benefits:

• It’s much easier and faster to generate topics and write briefs.
• You don’t have to spend as much time getting approvals on topics or final content
• You know exactly what metrics to track
• Your articles will perform better because you’re addressing the needs of your target audience
• It’s easier to tie your content marketing results to your overall business strategy

While crafting a strategy might seem overwhelming, don’t let yourself get intimated. I know you can do it! Read ”How to Perform a DIY Content Strategy for Your Blog” for a step-by-step guide to crafting a content strategy that will help you grow your business.

2. Let your brief do the heavy lifting

Simply put, a well-written brief will change your content life. I even use a truncated brief myself for this very blog right here, even though, as of now I’m the only content contributor. This helps me write much more efficiently and ensures that at the end of the article, I won’t need to make significant edits to optimize it for SEO. 

When you have a team of writers, mastering your briefs is a must. After all, this is what a well-prepared brief can get you in a team setting:

• It sets the expectations clearly for everyone.
• It signals to the writers that you care about quality.
• It results in better content.
• It can save you HOURS of editing.
• Depending on the scope of your project, it can save you hundreds to thousands on a project. 🤑

Check out 17 Ingredients of a Killer Content Brief and download our free content brief template to take your brief writing to the next level.

3. Use an editorial guide

One of the best investments you can make in your blog is taking the time (and it doesn’t have to be that much time) to put together a centralized document that summarizes the style preferences and other requirements for your publication.

Here are some of the advantages to be gained from a thoughtful, clearly written editorial guide for your blog:

• It saves time onboarding new freelancers, employees, and agencies.
• It ensures consistency throughout your blog.
• It saves editors and managers time.
• It allows your brand to put its best face forward with every piece of content you publish, no matter who produces it.
• In short, you’ll save everyone a ton of time and effort. 

In your guide, aim to lay out the following. You can keep it in a simple, view-only Google Doc.  

• Audience and purpose 
• Tone and voice
• Spelling and grammar preferences
• How to use sources and links
• Word count guidelines
• Formatting preferences
• SEO best practices
• Submission guidelines

4. Clearly define roles and responsibilities

Got too many cooks in the content kitchen? Or not enough cooks? If you’re looking for efficiency, it’s important to have all the necessary roles filled, but make sure they’re also clearly defined. 

Here’s an example of a great content team structure that’s worked for me in the past.

• Content manager who oversees the content team and strategy
• Freelance writers who are veteran content creators
• Two editors well-trained in your editorial guidelines
• Marketing coordinator who manages the calendar and uploads and publishes content

You may want your writers to collect images or you may ask your editors to. Your marketing coordinator should also be adept at selecting and resizing imagery. Team members can also wear multiple hats. For example, your marketing coordinator may also do some of the editing.

5. Outsource 

Don’t have the resources to staff up your content team with the roles above? Consider hiring freelance or agency help part-time to manage your content production and/or write and edit your content. For example, at C-POP, we have turnkey packages available where we essentially act as your entire content team — defining your strategy, managing your content calendar, producing content, and even publishing articles to your blog. This can be a great solution if you’re not ready to hire full-time in-house help. Reach out to our team with your content production needs.

Source: Kissflow

6. Create a defined workflow for your unique team

One of the best ways to smooth out any content workflow is to, well, define it. Don’t underestimate the power of clearly diagramming your content creation process from beginning to end. This workflow will vary for every content team depending on your team structure and preferences, so take the time to work out which steps work for you.

In a content workflow:

• The content creation process is broken down into a chronological series of sub-tasks.
• Each step is clearly defined and assigned to an owner.

This makes it easy to track projects as they move through your workflow in a Google sheet or content management software.

Source: Asana.com

7. Use the right project management system for your team 

No matter the size of your team or scope of your content endeavors, utilizing a digital project management system is a must for staying organized and efficient, especially if you work in a hybrid environment or utilize content resources both inside and outside of your organization.

Ask content managers which project management system they prefer, and you’re sure to get a different answer from everyone you ask. The top choices tend to be Asana, Clickup, Zoko, Wrike, and Trello. I recommend Asana, which I’ve used in the past and offers a robust, free version, but I hear great things about these other programs.

A worthy content management software program offers the following in one centralized place:

• A calendar layout as well as options for other views such as timelines and Gantt charts
• Project file storage allowing easy access to all team members
• The ability to assign tasks to owners and make status updates to keep the team up to date on progress
• Customizable and automated workflows
• Automated email notifications regarding project updates

On the other hand, sometimes simpler is better. Don’t underestimate the value of a well-laid-out Google Sheet, which is currently my preference. 

Conclusion

Establishing a content workflow can take some time, but by taking the steps above, you’ll soon have a content production machine on your hands. And remember, if you need any help with your content creation —  anything from producing the content to managing your content production — don’t hesitate to contact our team.

Want to know what it really takes to get your content to the top of Google? This SEO content writing checklist contains our favorite organic content must-haves all in one place. 

This checklist is great if:

• You’re new to writing SEO-friendly blog posts and looking for a guide as you get started
• You want to brush up on some SEO best practices
• You want to optimize existing content for SEO on your blog

Don’t forget to share it with your content writers, editors, and other content team members to make sure your published content is hitting all these points. 

SEO Content Writing Checklist

Before you hit publish, make sure your blog article crosses off all these boxes:

Keywords

The days of keyword stuffing are behind us, but keywords still play a vital role in helping you 1) identify high-traffic topics and 2) drive the right audience to your content. The trick is to be savvy about the keywords you’re targeting and to incorporate them naturally. 

• Contains the primary keyword in the H1 (title) and in at least one H2 (secondary header)
• Contains secondary keywords at least a couple times in the H2s and H3s (secondary and tertiary headers)
• Contains your primary keyword within the first 100–150 words of your article
• Answers at least one relevant People Also Ask question or other featured snippet if available
• Contains at least one LSI keyword (Use LSIGraph.com to find LSI keywords.)
• Avoids “keyword stuffing” and uses keywords naturally 

Content

Creating content that performs well is actually simple: Create the best content out there for the keywords your targeting, and clicks and top rankings will follow.

• Provides answers to a problem or pain point that your target audience struggles with
• Includes actionable tips
• Is informative rather than salesy (Opt for an educational tone and save the sales copy for the final paragraph or calls to action.)
• One-ups the competition (Check out the top-ranking articles under your primary keyword for ideas on how to provide content that will stand out. For example, interview experts, provide visuals such as infographics, sprinkle in “Pro Tip” boxes, or include a downloadable PDF to go above and beyond.)
• Includes at least one call to action driving users to the next logical step of their journey
• Lays out content in a user-friendly format (lots of subheads, bolded key phrases, and bullet points)
• Has a readability score of 60 or higher

Links

Links are a vital SEO ingredient. When you use them well, you can significantly increase engagement on your site, signaling to Google that your content is valuable to readers.

• Contains links to several authoritative websites with a domain authority of 40+ 
• Contains 2-5 internal links to relevant pages on your site (other blog articles as well as product and service pages) using keyword-rich anchor text (The text that you hyperlink should contain keywords or words that are relevant to your topic.)

Imagery 

Imagery is a great way to keep eyeballs on your page, increasing time on site and engagement. They’re also a helpful aid for communicating information to your readers.

• Incorporates a picture, illustration, screen shot, embedded video, or other imagery at least every 500 words to break up the text
• Avoids photography with a “stock” feel
• Images have been resized so they don’t negatively impact site speed (Reduce the size as much as possible, aiming for under 100 KB if possible, without compromising the quality.)
• Image file names contain keywords

The Technical Stuff

Don’t let the technical stuff scare you away. These SEO ranking factors are easy for even non-tech-savvy people to address.

• Contains the primary keyword in your URL
• Uses a shorter URL, which according to backlinko performs best
• Title tag contains the primary keyword, ideally as close to the beginning of the title as possible
• Meta description contains the primary keyword and a secondary keyword if possible
• Title tag and meta description are written to compel your target audience to click
• You’ve added descriptive alt text for all images

Customize Your Checklist

Does your content meet all the guidelines above? Congrats! You’re ready to publish. 

Make sure to check in regularly to see how your content performs and look for patterns in your best-performing content. For instance, you might find that your highest-ranking articles are all longer than 1500 words or they contain embedded videos. Whatever you note, add that to your checklist so you can customize it over time to your unique blog.

And remember, if you need any SEO writing help, our team is here to help. Contact us today to learn more.

So you did your research, picked a great topic your audience will be dying to know about, carefully selected your keywords, and wrote an engaging blog post that thoroughly covers everything your readers need to know about the subject. You would think that would be enough, right?

Well actually … there are a couple more items to cross off your content writing checklist: the meta title and meta description. 

Not only are they essential for making sure your content ranks high, but you can also drive more traffic to already existing content just by tweaking these — making them a quick and easy SEO blog optimization hack.

Yet I find these two must-haves are often overlooked by content creators or tossed off to an SEO agency to pump out without careful consideration. 

Seeing as how they’re only two of the most important factors for search rankings on Google, I’d like to urge you to pay closer attention to them. Here are a few tips on how to become a metadata-writing pro.

First let’s start with some definitions …

What Is Metadata?

The meta title (aka title tag) and meta description both fall under the category of meta data — which can be defined in short as “data about data.” Metadata essentially provides information about your content, making it easier to find on search engines. While there are other types of metadata, we can cover them another time. 

In this post, I’m going to focus on just the meta title and meta description because these tend to fall under the jurisdiction of an SEO copywriter or editor as part of the content creation process.  

What Is a SERP Snippet?

Together, the meta title and meta description make up what’s called your SERP snippet. You can preview your snippet inside your Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress or use a SERP preview tool like this one from Mangools.

How Do You Write a Good Meta Title?

First let’s start with the meta title. A meta title, also known as a title tag, is the HTML code that determines the title for your page when it turns up in search results or on social media.

Having a clickable title tag is one of the most important SEO ranking factors, vital for attracting the right users to your article and helping Google understand what your content is about.

Make sure your meta title:

• Is no longer than 60 characters or 600 pixels (Google SERPs usually display the first 50 to 60 characters or 600 pixels of a title tag)
• Includes your primary keyword ideally at the beginning or close to the beginning of your title 
• Is actionable (use words like “How to,” “Step-by Step Guide,” and “Expert Tips,” etc.)
• Contains “power words” such as “exclusive” or double them up as in “ridiculously simple” (This might feel silly, but trust me, these words are ridiculously powerful.)

And remember that title tags are measured in terms of pixels rather than characters, which means that you’ll want to go with a colon or vertical slash  ( | ) rather than a hyphen so you can maximize that space.

I highly recommend Moz’s nifty title tag preview tool if you want to play around with title length.

Check out some more great tips on writing meta titles from Blog Tyrant.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Meta Descriptions But Were Afraid to Ask

What is a meta description?

Meta descriptions are the 160-character summaries that tell you what the content is about on a web page. The more accurate and enticing they are, the more likely you are to rank higher for your targeted keywords and the more likely people are to click on your listing.

How do you write a good meta description?

To write a good meta description, keep in mind that you’re writing for two audiences — Google’s algorithm and your ideal customer. 

Make sure to frontload or at least include your primary keyword (and, if you’re feeling froggy, a secondary keyword too) to signal to Google that your content is relevant. But you also need to make the copy enticing so that humans want to click on it. 

Here are some great tips for writing meta descriptions from the venerable Neil Patel:

1. Include a CTA in your meta descriptions like “learn more” or “click here.”
2. Add words that describe the value of your content such as “best,” “new,” or even “updated for 2021.”
3. A/B test your meta descriptions. 
4. Experiment with character length. If you go over 160 characters, you’ll find that your meta description will be automatically truncated by Google, but this might possibly entice readers to click more. You’ll never know unless you try!
5. Make your meta descriptions unique and interesting. Try clickbait titles or incorporate eye-catching words like “shocking” or “life-changing.” (Just be sure your content can deliver on what your headline promises.)

If you have anything extra special on your page such as a free download of any kind — an ebook, checklist, or guide, for example — you’ll definitely want to mention that. Everybody loves freebies.

Meta description example

Here’s a good example of a meta description. 

Notice that keyword phrase right up front: “Disney World vacations.” Also, notice the savings extravaganza — 100% off your flight and up to 42% off select hotels (sign me up!). Finally, that truncated sentence, which ends with an ellipsis. Brilliant. Expedia knows how to get a girl to click!

(Can you tell that I’m sooo ready for our annual trip to Disneyworld?)

But doesn’t Google just rewrite your meta description anyway?

So you’ve heard. It’s true: According to SearchEngineJournal, Google rewrites meta descriptions over 70% of the time. Does that mean you should still bother writing one? Absolutely! After all, this means that 30% of the time, Google will be using the meta description you write for your page.

You’ve spent a lot of time and/or budget creating a well-written article and the world needs your expertise. Don’t leave it up to Google to get your clicks for you. Your meta description still has a 3 out of 10 shot of getting displayed, so make it count!

Your Homework

Ready for an easy way to optimize your blog content? I want you to take a look at your best-performing content and lowest performers and see if you notice any patterns with regard to your meta title and meta description. These insights can help you craft more effectives ones moving forward.

Next, pass these best practices onto your copywriters and editors, and have them take care of these instead of your SEO agency partner (unless they have great copywriters writing your metadata, which isn’t usually the case).

And as always, if you need any help with optimizing your SEO content, feel free to reach out.

Looking to increase SEO rankings? One of the easiest strategies is to optimize the content you already have at your disposal — whether you’ve already published it or not. All it takes is brushing up on your SEO content writing skills, and a little time.

In this article, I’ve laid out some steps for optimizing your content for SEO. Whenever I optimize existing content for a client, this is the process I follow.

So whether you’re new to SEO content writing and looking for some best practices before you begin, or you’re a veteran content publisher looking to improve the content you’ve already posted, you can follow these steps below.

Step 1: Study insights to arrive at a content optimization strategy

The first step of any content optimization process is to see what’s been successful on your blog or website so far. The insights you gain during this research can be used to create a content optimization strategy to help you systematically optimize the rest of your content.

Use Google Analytics to check out the number of user sessions, average time spent on page, bounce rate, and conversions. This will help you find which content to start with (start with the strongest-performing content first) and also give you ideas on how to update other content.

The key here is to find what your best-performing articles have in common. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do they have more imagery than other articles?
• Do they include a video?
• Are the headlines or meta descriptions “grabbier”? Are they shorter or longer?
• How is the quality or readability of the writing?
• How many internal links are included?
• Is there a clear CTA?

Take note of what you find in these top performers and make sure to implement these as best practices for the rest of your content!

Step 2: Reconsider your topic and angle  

With the article in front of you, before you get started on any other optimizations, ask yourself if the topic or angle itself is optimum. You can do this by putting yourself in the shoes of your reader and determining if it’s truly valuable or engaging content. 

Additionally, do some Google research on the subject and take a look at the results. You may find that your topic is too generic, unoriginal, muddied, or not very relevant for your brand. Or perhaps a million other brands have tackled the same topic and the highest performing content seems hard to compete with. If this is the case, see if you can approach the topic from a different angle. 

Perhaps the topic itself is good, but there’s a missed opportunity to educate readers about your brand’s solutions (in a non-salesy way of course). In this case, you’ll want to add a bit more content or rework it a bit.

For example, if your article is on making your office safe for employees and your product is a hybrid work management software program that offers a temperature-check feature, add a section on the importance of checking temperatures at the office entrance. This will allow you to place a link or CTA driving readers to your product page.

Step 3: Keyword research

Now that you’ve confirmed you’ve got a solid topic or angle, it’s time to start with the very foundation of SEO optimization: selecting your keywords.

What are keywords?

According to Moz, “Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called ‘search queries.’”

How to find keywords for your blog article

1. Use a keyword research tool. I’ve used Semrush and Brightedge in the past with success, but my current favorite is Uber Suggest by the SEO guru himself, Neil Patel. This tool is extremely affordable and perfect for smaller businesses.
2. Enter in some phrases you think someone might enter into Google if they were looking for the content in your article. This step is all about evaluating search intent – that is, what the user would be looking for when they type in those phrases. 
3. Select long tail keywords with low to medium difficulty. 

According to Brightedge, “A long tail keyword is a phrase that is generally made from three to five words. Since these keywords are more specific than generic terms, they allow you to target niche demographics. These keywords are also less competitive than generic keywords … With long tail keywords, you are able to attract more high-quality traffic to your website which is more likely to lead to conversions.” 

Long tail keywords, especially ones with low to medium difficulty (which means they’re less competitive to rank for) tend to have lower traffic than other keywords, but they’re more likely to attract the right reader for your article and they’re usually a lot easier to rank high for compared to super-high-traffic keywords.”

You don’t have to eliminate “head terms” – the higher-volume generic keywords with higher competition — from your list. Keep a couple as secondary or LSI keywords, and gradually over time, as your domain authority increases, you will find that you will rank higher for these. 

4. Focus on one single primary keyword if possible, or two at the most. 
5. Select two or three secondary keywords that are related to the primary keyword. 
6. Choose a few LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, which are terms related to the main keyword that search engines use to understand the content on a page more deeply. 

You can find these in the drop-down menu that populates as suggested searches when you enter the primary keyword into the search bar. They will be bolded. They are useful for giving you ideas on what to include, and they give Google’s algorithm more context around your topic so they understand that you’re covering it thoroughly.

Step 4: Optimize the title tag and meta description for SEO

Now it’s time to take a look at one of the most important factors in SEO rankings, your SERP snippet — which includes both your title tag (aka meta title) and meta description. 

You can preview your snippet inside your Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress or use a SERP preview tool like this one from Mangools.

How to optimize title tags for SEO

An SEO title tag, also known as a meta title, is the HTML code that determines the title for your page when it turns up in search results or on social media. It doesn’t have to be the same as the title on the page itself.

Having a clickable title tag is one of the most important SEO ranking factors, vital for attracting the right users to your article and helping Google understand what your content is about.

Make sure your meta title:

• Includes your primary keyword ideally at the beginning or close to the beginning of your title 
• Is actionable (use words like “How to,” “Step-by Step Guide,” and “Expert Tips,” etc.)
• Contains “power words” such as “exclusive” or double them up as in “ridiculously simple”

Check out some more great tips on writing meta titles from Blog Tyrant.

How to optimize meta descriptions for SEO

Meta descriptions are the 160-character summaries that tell you what the content is about on a web page. The more accurate and enticing they are, the more likely you are to rank higher for targeted keywords and the more likely users are to click on your page.

Here are some great tips for writing meta descriptions from the venerable Neil Patel:

1. Include a CTA in your meta descriptions like “learn more” or “click here.”
2. Add words that describe the value of your content such as “best,” “new,” or even “updated for 2021.”
3. A/B test your meta descriptions. 
4. Experiment with character length.
5. Make your meta descriptions unique and interesting. Try clickbait titles or incorporate eye-catching words like “shocking” or “life-changing.” (Just be sure your content can deliver on what your headline promises.) 

Step 5: Internal linking 

Internal linking is an essential part of SEO optimization. Not only does it signal to your reader that you have some exceptionally relevant content that’s so good they should check it out asap, but it also signals to search engines that the content you’re linking to is some pretty hot stuff. This can improve that page’s rankings.

Here are some tips for optimizing your internal linking:

• Go deep or go home: Avoid linking to main, surface-level pages and try to find articles or web pages deep within the architecture of your website.
• Link only to pages that are a natural fit and will truly make sense to the reader in the context of the article.
• Make sure the anchor text is keyword-rich and contains at least a couple of words – no single-word hyperlinks and no hyperlinking “here” or “this.”
• Link to older blog articles as well as product and service pages.
• Don’t be afraid to add more internal links, even a lot more, to your article. I was taught by old hat SEOs to stick to 3 to 5 per blog post, but when you look at the content marketers who are dominating Google, like Neil, you may find as many as dozens of internal links. As long as the links are relevant and point to high-quality content, and you don’t overdo it – by distracting readers with a sea of blue in your articles – it’s worth testing out higher numbers of internal links.  

Check out this primer on internal linking to study up on more best practices.

Step 6: Improve readability

Above you’ll find a very common sight in the sidebar of WordPress after I upload an article – a good SEO score but a readability score that needs improvement (as a literature major, I have a tendency to get a bit wordy). But if I can improve my own readability, so can you.

What is a readability score?

A readability score is a rating that tells you how easy or difficult it is to read your content. It’s based on the Flesch-Kincaid test of readability and you can find it in various tools including – what I use — the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. 

The higher the score, the easier it is to read your text. Most usability experts agree that you should aim for a readability score of 60, which amounts to an eighth-grade education, or higher.

How do you improve readability?

If your content doesn’t pass the readability test, here are some ways to improve readability:

• Stick to shorter, simpler words when you can, eliminating jargon unless absolutely necessary for the audience you’re targeting.
• Shorten your sentences. Try to aim for 20 to 25 words per sentence. Break up sentences that contain multiple ideas, and get rid of unnecessary modifiers.
• Break up larger paragraphs into smaller ones of just one to three sentences.
• Break up copy into bullet points when applicable.

Step 7: Add value and uniqueness

Content marketing is all about bringing as much value to your community as possible in the form of content. Now’s the time to shove all the extra value you can into the nooks and crannies of your SEO article. 

Here are some ideas of what you can add to make your article stand out: 

• “Pro Tips” boxes throughout the article with extra-special golden nuggets of wisdom.
• More images or videos to break up the text
• A free download, such as a checklist, workbook, or e-book that’s relevant to your topic
• Some expert quotes to set your article apart from ordinary listicles

This is where competitor research can really come in handy. Take a look at what’s ranking at the top for the primary keyword you’re targeting and determine how you can one-up the cream of the crop.

Step 8: Edit according to your insights and content optimization strategy

Remember the work you did all the way back in step 1? This is where you revisit the best practices you uncovered when you researched your best-performing content. If you haven’t yet addressed these key differentiators in the previous steps, now it’s time to incorporate them into your optimized content.

Step 9: Add relevant calls to action

Looking to improve conversion or want to keep your users engaged on your site? Make sure you’ve included at least one CTA. In an average-length blog post, there’s usually room for at least two. I like to include one in the middle and one at the very end. If I’m dealing with a get-a-quote-now-type CTA, I like to box it up visually so it’s completely separate from the rest of the blog article, or I save it for the very last line.

There are two types of CTAs:

• Engagement CTAs: Read more relevant articles like this one
• Sales CTAs: Learn about our services or get a quote now

You can fit them in stand-alone boxes (which is best in the middle of an article) or you can save them for the end. 

Here are some examples: 

This article from the PODS for Business Blog squeezes in a relevant article link right smack in the middle to increase engagement on the website.

Source: PODS for Business Blog

This article from the Unbounce Blog saves a subtle sales pitch for the very last sentence:

Source: Unbounce Blog

Refining SEO content is a continual process

Whether you’re new to SEO or have been doing it a while, there’s always something you can do to optimize your content for SEO. I regularly revisit past articles to update them, and I’ll likely be refreshing this one multiple times before you even read it. If you follow these nine steps above every time you’re in optimization mode, you’ll be sure to add some extra SEO power to your content.

Need some help with optimizing your content for SEO? We’d love to help. Reach out to our team today so we can learn more about your needs.