Many of our readers asked us for tips on optimizing blogs posts for SEO so that they could rank higher in search results.

SEO optimization is best done when your content is being created. However, you can always improve old articles.

Because it allows you to get more visitors to your site, blog SEO is essential. You can optimize your blog posts to SEO.

This article will give you our top blog SEO tips. These are the same tips we use to get millions of people to our blogs via search engines.

1. Proper Keyword Research is Essential to Plan Your Content

Many people who are just starting out write about topics that they think their readers would be interested.

Blind guesses are not the best option, especially when you have keyword research that will help you find exactly what your users are searching for.

SEO professionals and content creators use keyword research. This allows you to identify topics that your users are most interested in using search engine data.

These keywords can be used to plan your content strategy. This will help you to write on topics people actually want, and is a great way to get new post ideas .

We recommend keyword research tools such as SEMRush. These tools provide detailed keyword data, competitive analysis, keyword position tracking, as well as tons of other useful features.

You should check out the SEO Writing Assistant tool if you use SEMRush. It allows you to find LSI keywords and related keywords, readability and language tone, as well as average article length.

2. Search for Semantic Keywords to Match Your Focus Keyword

Once you’ve done keyword research and found keyword ideas, it’s time to choose one with the highest search volume.

This will be your focus keyword. This is the search term that users are most likely searching for.

You can adjust the focus keyword for your All-in-One SEO plugin. This will allow you to determine how effective you used it in your article.

Next, find the Latent Semantic Indexing keywords. These are searches that relate to your focus keyword.

You can find them by simply entering your focus keyword into Google Search. Scroll down to the bottom to see the results. You’ll see them listed under related searches’.

These keywords should be included in your content to ensure that users have complete information.

It is important to not try to include them in your content. It would be strange for your users. Search engines can detect keyword stuffing.

3. Create a blog post title that is effective

Search engine rankings are highly dependent on the title of your blog post.

A well-written blog title will make your article more relevant to the search query. It also encourages search engines to show your article in their results.

Your focus keyword can be used in the title to make your blog post more SEO-friendly.

We recommend that your headline is catchy and clickable, in addition to adding your focus keyword. Click-through rate (CTR), is an important aspect of SEO.

There are many ways to create headlines that are effective. EMV, or emotional marketing value, is the one that works.

This formula suggests using power terms that elicit specific emotions in your audience.

The MonsterInsights plugin comes with a built in headline analyzer tool.This helps in tracking your headline score from the WordPress admin area. You can also get real-time tips on how to improve your title to increase click-through rates.

You can also use other online tools like IsItWP, which allows you to calculate your title’s EMV score.

4. Make internal linking a habit

After you’ve blogged for some time, you’ll have enough content to share with users. You can also send older posts to new readers via internal linking.

Internal linking is a great way for you to establish a context relationship between your old and new posts. You can also pass on relevant link juice from older articles.

WordPress makes it simple to search for old posts from within the post editor. Select the text you wish to link, then click the link button.

Below your chosen words will be a pop-up. To search for older articles you wish to link, type.

Internal linking is a good way to ensure that your on-page SEO is strong and that older articles get new links.

Many beginners make the error of linking to older posts via 1-way internal linking. To get maximum benefits, you can and should edit your older posts in order to link to new articles.

5. Upload Images and Videos to your Blog Posts

Engaging content is often ranked higher by search engines in search results. Videos and images are more engaging than text.

Images should be placed between paragraphs in your blog posts.

You need to be aware of image copyrights when adding images. Many beginners use images from other websites to add to their sites. This can lead you into legal trouble if you don’t have the proper permissions.

You don’t have to worry, there are many places where you can search for royalty-free images that you can use in your blog posts. To create captivating graphics, you can use your original photos or websites such as Canva.

Optimize your images for search engine optimization. For more information, see our tutorial on optimizing images for search engines.

Videos are more engaging than images. Slideshows, vlogs and other formats can be used to convert blog posts into video.

You should not post videos directly to your blog posts. Your shared hosting server is not able to handle videos. WordPress is not optimized for it.

Uploading videos to YouTube is a good idea. It is the second most used search engine and the second-largest social media platform after Facebook.

6. Utilize a meta description into your blog post.

Meta description is an HTML tag you can add to any page. It is used to give a brief description of your article to search engines and other crawlers.

SEO experts think that the meta description tag is no longer relevant. Many others disagree. WPBeginner recommends using the meta description to describe all your posts.

A meta description is a way to explain more about an article. It is also displayed on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

You now know that meta descriptions will be renad by people, so make sure it is useful.

For search purposes, you should also make sure to mention your focus keyword at least once in your meta description. Meta Description has a limit of 155 characters

You should not exceed this limit, or your meta description may be cut to 155 characters. Also, you want to use the focus keyword sooner in your meta description than later.

You will need to scroll to the AIOSEO metabox on your post edit screen to add meta description .

7. Make it easier to read your articles

Search engines consider readability an important factor. Search engines rank articles that are easy to read more often than those that are difficult to understand.

Mobile and computer screens are not the best platforms for reading.

Most users only scan through articles. Studies have shown that most users only spend a fraction of a second deciding whether to leave a page or stay.

This is a short time to persuade the user to scroll on. You can improve readability to make it easier for users to scan through an article quickly.

Reading shorter sentences, paragraphs, punctuation and headings can help improve readability. To make text easier to read, we recommend using images and white space around it.

The All in One SEO plugin will analyze your readability and make suggestions in the analysis section.

You can also use tools such as Grammarly to quickly check your grammar and spelling. You can also get suggestions for improving the readability of your articles.

8. To organize content, use tags and categories

You can organize your content using tags and categories.

Many WordPress beginners end up incorrectly using them.

Your website can be thought of as a book. Categories would be the table and tags the index.

You can use categories to organize your content into the major topics covered on your blog. The topics covered in a blog post are called tags.

9. Try to be the Featured Snippet of The Search Result

Google has worked hard to respond as quickly as possible to user questions. Google has introduced the feature result, or answer box, as part of their efforts to help users.

This is the search result highlighted that appears at the top. Google actually creates a custom snippet of the article’s content that highlights the section that it believes is the answer to the user’s query.

Advanced Web Ranking research shows that Answer boxes have a 32.3% CTR. They are therefore crucial for your SEO strategy.

Google does not provide any specific instructions on how to pick the featured search snippet. Google recommends that you improve your content to provide the information users seek.

WPBeginner has created some helpful tips based upon our research to help you appear on Google answer boxes for your blog posts.

10. Complementary Blog Posts

Search engines love detailed articles. As part of content planning, we asked that you gather semantically related keywords (LSI Keywords).

These keywords will give you an idea about the different user searches for that topic. You can make your article more informative, useful, and comprehensive by including these keywords.

Use headings and subheadings for keywords. Try to cover as much ground and as many topics as possible.

Another tip for creating complete content, aside from LSI keywords is to type your desired keyword then switch to Image Search. There will be topic bubbles that contain a variety keywords.

These are important to include in your content so that you have the best content.

11. Optimize Older Blog Posts

A lot of beginners forget to optimize a blog post once it is published. You don’t have to stop optimizing your blog post for SEO after it has been published.

These are the things you should do after publishing your blog article:

• Promote it on social media. This task can be automated by using IFTTT. You can share your content .
• You can add internal links to your blog posts after you publish them. This will give your articles more link juice and make it easier for users to find them.
• Track search rankings – After optimizing a post for SEO, how can you track its search rankings? For more information, see our guide on tracking search rankings for blog posts.

Optimizing old posts is a good idea to keep your rankings up.

We hope you found this article helpful in optimizing your blog posts for SEO. Want more ways to promote your content in SEO? You can read our article about how to increase traffic to your blog posts and our comparison of the best email marketing services that will connect you with your readers.