It's now an established fact: to have a chance of reaching top search results, you need to create content.
However, the production of blog posts has exploded in recent years, with more than 17 articles published every second on WordPress alone!
Knowing that 75% of internet users don't go beyond the second page of search engines, your articles absolutely must rank well to be read.
To help you climb the SERP, here is the ultimate guide to writing SEO-optimized blog posts.
Take the time to analyze your keyword
To rank for a keyword requires some prior research, notably its level of competition, if you expect your article to reach the top of the SERPs!
Here are three tips that will help you assess the difficulty of your keywords:
- The command "allintitle :mpt clé": type this command into Google and observe the results. If you get fewer than 5,000 results, competition is low; between 5,000 and 10,000 it's moderate; beyond 10,000 you'll struggle to rank because competition is high.
- The SERP: do a Google search for your keyword. If the first page shows only authoritative sites, it's like you're going to fight Goliath…
- Google Ads: use the keyword research tool and analyze the average monthly search volume. Between 10K and 100K, competition will be tough!
Determine which blog post to write based on search intent
The very essence of search engines is to respond accurately to user queries.
So logically, if you want your blog post to appear at the top of the list, you must create content that matches the search intents of your prospects.
Here's the step-by-step process:
- Repeat your Google search with your keyword, but this time observe which content appears first.
- If the top three results show a tutorial, a guide, a comparative review… then you've found what type of content your audience wants to read on the topic!
- Videos and images appear in large numbers? Then your blog post will need to be very visual!
Then, also build your article structure according to the search intents:
- Analyze the structure of the top articles with the Web Developer extension (available on all browsers: Chrome, Firefox…) by clicking Information, then View Document Outline. Compare the Hn headings of the articles and incorporate recurring questions into your structure.
- In Google, note the Related searches and People also ask sections — they will help you create a blog outline that perfectly matches your audience's search intent!
Write for your audience
We can't say it enough, but writing SEO-optimized blog posts is good — the priority is to write for your reader!
All the more since Google favors quality content and you'll earn valuable points by writing excellent articles.
Here are some writing techniques:
Polish your title
Your headline is what will make users want to click on your article, so it's essential that it's captivating.
All the more because the more clicks you collect, the more Google will conclude that your article is interesting.
To write a catchy headline and pique your reader's interest:
- Be brief and concise (between 6 and 12 words).
- Be specific: your prospect should immediately know what your article is about.
- Grab your reader's attention with a positive hook that piques their curiosity and offers a solution to their problem. For example: "Discover X tips to write an irresistible headline."
- Use powerful words and play on emotional triggers: perfect, exceptional, incredible, bargain, solution, revolutionary…
- Favor headlines as questions or statements: "How to easily reach the top of the SERP in X steps?", "The X secrets to improve your organic SEO"…
- Don't forget your keyword!
Grab attention from the introduction
Your reader clicked your URL; now it's up to your introduction to make them want to read on!
There are several writing methods, including the P.A.S. formula: Problem, Agitation, Solution.
It's the most effective, because it reveals the article's content while stoking the reader's interest:
- Problem: start from an obvious point with a short, assertive sentence (a fact, a statistic, a quote… related to the article topic).
- Agitation: raise the issues caused by your topic.
- Solution: end your introduction by reiterating the main idea of the headline to reassure your readers that you have the solution to their problem.
To be effective, your introduction must be striking, but it should also remain short (no more than 10 lines).
Don't lose your reader along the way!
Both for your audience and for your SEO, your article must captivate from start to finish by offering the best possible user experience.
To keep your reader's attention as long as possible:
- Write short sentences.
- Use storytelling.
- Adapt the blog post's tone to your target audience.
- Ask your readers questions.
- Give concrete examples.
- Introduce dynamic transition sentences to make your writing more lively.
- Insert visuals (video, image, infographic…).
Work on your semantic field
To write SEO-optimized blog posts, it's essential to provide the algorithms with a broad semantic field and help them identify which query to rank for.
Here are some sites and tools that will help you expand your semantics:
1.fr : the site performs the semantic analysis of your article (or from a keyword) and suggests a list of secondary keywords necessary for better SEO.
YourTextGuru : the online service allows any content creator to benefit from a rich vocabulary and to identify the key expressions relevant to your positioning.
Antidote : the software dedicated to spell-checking will also provide you with a list of synonyms, co-occurrences and the lexical field of your keyword while correcting your spelling mistakes. A handy two-in-one!
Choose the right length for your blog posts
The question is recurring, and in content marketing you often hear conflicting opinions.
Short content tends to be singled out: not performing enough, too short to rank or to inform the reader…
Priority has been placed on long-form content, but each content length has its place in an effective content marketing strategy.
Long content, short content: what are we talking about?
To choose the right content length, let's start with a definition:
The short content : it is under 1,200 words, easy to write and consume, and only partially covers a single topic.
You often find it in news articles, brief blog posts, social media posts, infographics and emails.
The long-form content : it is therefore over 1,200 words and its subject is explored in depth. Its writing is exhaustive and requires time and research.
It is expected to convey detailed expertise on the topic covered.
It is recommended for detailed blog posts, guides and tutorials, white papers, the webinars and of course pillar pages.
Why does the word count of your article matter?
Now that you know the difference between short-form and long-form content, you will easily understand that they do not serve the same marketing objectives.
For example, if your content strategy aims to acquire backlinksyou should therefore focus on long-form content.
On the other hand, if your goal is to gain organic traffic, although long-form content is more likely to match users' queries, short-form content can very well outperform it if it precisely matches search intent.
This is often the case with product pages on e-commerce sites, which with fewer than 250 words rank at the top of the SERPs.
In fact, for an content marketing strategy effective one, the ideal is to find the right balance between the two writing formats.
To do this you must determine your prospects' needs at the current moment, based on several criteria:
- Your competitors: here you will need to do more and do better than the competition, which inevitably means well-researched, in-depth content.
- Answer search intent: as we saw earlier, the length and format of your article should be defined according to your audience's expectations.
- Your prospects' engagement: to decide which format to use, analyze the results of your previous writings. See which type of content generates the most conversions, the most social shares, the most interaction…
Optimize On-Page SEO
Your article is written, but the work doesn't stop there.
To gain good visibility for your website, increase your conversion rate and therefore have more potential customers, the technical part of SEO still needs to be fine-tuned:
- Your keyword must appear in the Title tag, in the meta description, in the URL and in your introduction.
- The alt attributes of your images must be optimized with your keyword for the featured image and your semantic field in the following ones.
- Your internal linking: include 3 to 5 internal links to related articles.
- Optimize your anchor text and avoid "click here"!
- Improve your web pages' loading speed.
- Write a short, compelling title tag.
- Polish your meta description.
- Respect the hierarchy of your HN tags..
- Include external links to authoritative sites.
Attract backlinks
Finally, all that's left is to attract inbound links (and attract them naturally! Google really dislikes buying links…).
Don't underestimate the importance of backlinks; they are one of the most important SEO ranking factors!
To obtain links, you can use Semrush'sbacklink analysis.
You just need to insert your competitors' URL and contact the sites that link to the article in question, then offer them your own content while promoting its merits.
Otherwise, if your strategy Inbound marketing is effective and your content is relevant, it should be shared on social networks and you should be able to naturally collect backlinks.
Our advice
You now have all the tips to write SEO-optimized blog posts! However, one last piece of advice: outsource their writing to Professional web writers to gain even more in quality!
