Do you have a blog? Do this to improve your SEO positioning

by Gerardo Sánchez July 25, 2022

The best way to position a blog is to generate articles or notes with original, relevant and current content for your target audience. For these circumstances we recommend following SEO actions focused on content, however there are technical actions to consider.

But first of all, let's remember basic fundamentals:

What is SEO?

SEO comes from Search Engine Optimization, which means search engine optimization. This method is free, that is, you do not pay to obtain a position in the ranking and it is long-term. It is done through optimization techniques that are done on a web page so that it is visible in search engines and users can find the website.

SEO is essential to achieve:

Quality organic traffic to our blog
Visibility and diffusion in search engines
Improve the Positioning of the page through the generated user queries
User interaction with content to generate conversions (leads)
Brand presence

The elements to focus on for the positioning of the blog originate from the theme, that is, what topic we are going to write about:

Choosing a theme based on keywords that are trending or relevant to the brand sector or segment is essential.

TIP: A tool that can guide you to know what to write about is Google Trends , this free tool from the Google search engine and helps us identify topics or words related to the blog's market niche.

*We recommend adding an image/video as a visual break from the text.

Elements involved in SEO positioning

After the topic, we must focus on more technical elements to evaluate the SEO positioning of the blog, these elements are in the following list:

Web architecture
Metadata
Content
Images and/or Videos
Internal Links
Site speed

Each one has its own elements that represent a link to guarantee ideal positioning, where if we do it properly as a whole it will represent an increase in organic metrics. Next, we will briefly review each element, emphasizing a content-oriented element:

Web architecture

It represents how our blog is structured, organized and distributed. It specifically influences:

Directories: Categories and subcategories
Friendly URLs
Canonical
Internal links

One of the elements that is related to the content is the “URL”. To make a Friendly URL we need:

relevant keywords. To know what keywords to use, we suggest you think about how you would search for your own content on the Internet?
Lowercase
Middle hyphens to separate keywords. *This is because if you use underscores, the search engine interprets the keywords as one.
An extension that is between a range of 90 to 115 characters.

Avoid:

Keyword stuffing: Repeating the same word several times
Stop Keywords: empty words or words that do not have a search level such as prepositions, articles, etc.
Capital letters
Special characters and accents
Spaces
Repeated routes
Diagonals

Metadata

Metadata gives us visibility on the results pages to user queries. It is the most important part of how to attract the user to the website, that is, the first impression they have of the site, where they decide if they should click. To do this, you need to draw their attention:

Therefore, we will focus on two elements mainly:

Title link
Description

Title Link

The Link Title is the title of a search engine result that links to a web page.

It involves elements such as:

Meta title.
Header h1.

To optimize the meta title we recommend:

Length: 55 to 60 characters .
Include keywords.
Add the name of the site or brand.

With the above we can guarantee better performance for the meta title, so we will provide an example:

Optimized title: Optimize your blog to improve your SEO positioning | MHA Consulting

Extension: 59 characters .
Keywords: SEO positioning
Site Name: MHA Consulting

*Optimizing the h1 header, we will see later in the headings section.

Description

The meta description is a brief description of the content of the page. In some cases it can be used as a rich snippet (a rich snippet is a special field with more attractive elements and a privileged position displayed in the SERPs).

The elements to evaluate are:

Length: 156 to 160 characters is approximately equal to 32 words.
Value Attribute: some data or word that differentiates them from the competition in SERPS.

With the above we can guarantee better performance for the meta description, so we will provide an example:

Optimized description: Learn how to optimize your blog with SEO elements with this practical guide. Where we also give you tips with tools that will help you do it.

Extension: 151
Main Keyword at the beginning of the meta description: how to optimize your blog with SEO elements
Keywords by semantics or long tail: SEO, guide, tips, tools.
Value Attribute: tips with tools.

TIP: To view the metadata as it would be reflected in the search engine, we recommend using Higher Visibility , which helps you measure the url, title and description extension in pixels.

Content

As we had mentioned at the beginning, content is the king of blog optimization, extensive content that clarifies and informs all the user's doubts regarding the topic is an instant plus for the search engine robot and therefore for the interest of the Internet user. .

To create quality content we recommend following the following:

General data

Length: 300 words or more depending on the topic and complexity of the content.
Headings: Remember that headings serve as a hierarchy for the content and indicate to the search engine robot the length of the note.

-They must be less than 70 characters long and their structure is similar to the following:

<H1>Title of the note or article</H1>

-There is only one h1

-It is the main theme

<H2>Subtitle</H2>
<H3>Structure of the note to highlight</H3>

Content style

Bold: Main and semantic keywords highlighted once.
Italics: Neologisms, Anglicisms, etc.
“Underlined”: Quotes or book titles with quotation marks.

First paragraph

Main keyword at the beginning of the paragraph.
Sense of Information according to the inverted pyramid. From most to least relevant.
Answers questions: who?, what?, when?, why? and how? - Basic idea of the content.

Second paragraph onwards

Keywords by semantics from the 2nd paragraph onwards, synonyms of the main keywords can be used.
Second paragraph: Development of the first paragraph, provides details and expands aspects.
Third Paragraph onwards: Data is provided in descending order of importance.
Last Paragraph: Closing with secondary idea.

TIP: To create content on a specific topic, we recommend avoiding:

Auto-generated content (which does not make sense to the reader, but contains keywords, translated texts without manual review, copy paste from one or more sites)
worthless content
Cloaking - Content hidden from users but visible to the robot.

*We recommend adding an image/video as a visual break from the text.

Images and/or Videos

Adding multimedia, in this case images or videos, encourages user interaction, causing them to stay on the page longer.

To do this, the images and videos must meet certain standards, in this case they are:

File name: Same optimization as URL.
Weight: Image weight less than 100 KB, in video it is recommended that it be an embed to avoid slowing down the site.
Title, description and/or legend: It is recommended to use keywords referring to the image in relation to the content where it is being placed.

ALT attribute

There is an element focused on images known as the alt attribute. The alt attribute improves accessibility for people with visual disabilities; in turn, if the image is broken within the content, the image description appears as text.

For the alt attribute, it is recommended to use keywords that describe said image, in terms of its length that does not exceed 100 characters.

Internal Links

Internal links have a primary function, it is to help the search engine find more pages related to the content within the website to add them to its index.

If a page does not have internal links it is known as an orphan page and therefore the search engine bot ignores its presence, therefore it is not added to the search engine index.

It is recommended that a link be added for every three paragraphs of content.

This link must:

Be active, that is, with a 2xx status, which means that it is available and in good communication with the site server.
The anchor text or also called anchor text must be consistent with the content of the link.
The link must contain DOFOLLOW, the reason is to convey your authority around the site pages.

It is recommended not to hide links to manipulate the ranking.

Site speed

Site speed is a great ranking factor, having a slow site causes a bad user experience. The user searches for immediate content that satisfies their need at that moment.

Therefore, the site must improve its speed so that your experience is optimal. We recommend performance tools that help provide guidance on critical elements that affect your performance.

PageSpeed Insights :

It is a free Google search tool that includes data from the Chrome User Experience (CrUX) report to show information about the actual performance of pages.

It is based on loads:

Good: Most of the performance best practices apply on that page. Has a score of 80 or higher.
Medium: This page is missing several common performance optimizations. It has a score between 60 and 79.
Low: That page is not optimized. It has a score between 0 and 59.

GTMETRIX:

It is a demo tool that performs detailed website analysis, allowing us to fully understand the blog loading process. It indicates the download time of each element involved in the site such as CSS, JS, HTML, etc., which allows detailed optimizations to be carried out, so that the user has the best possible experience with respect to speed.

Webpagetest:

This tool is for expert levels, because it is a performance testing website in this case for blogs, designed mainly for developers. Just setting it up consists of a large number of test locations to choose from, and in the default location, also a large variety of devices to use.

How you will see the optimization of a blog with SEO strategies goes beyond the content, however, we do not doubt that with these recommendations your site will improve considerably.