The SEO value of blog is rich with many benefits that can help your website immensely, investing in SEO content is a wise investment that doesn’t cost a fortune. When it comes to long-form content like blog posts, the writers and the promoters need to be super conscious about its user-friendliness as well as search engine friendliness. It is a fact that the content used to go extended on sharing valuable information with the beneficiaries in detail, but if not handled correctly, it will become void of that actual value you wanted to deliver.
Long Form Blog Content:
Most of the blogs are aware that long-form content is the best approach to make your website stand out. Along with making the content lengthy, it needs to be informative also. If you can nail the delicate balance between length and depth, your content can naturally drag tons of traffic and thousands of enthusiastic followers.
Don’t get excited about this comment and merely start to produce long-form content. The formula for creating long article equals to getting thousands of followers is not that easy. Even many of those who write super long and in-depth articles, still not gaining the volume of traffic as they want. It is because they are not considering some of the fundamental aspects of SEO, which are essentials for long-form blog content.
It is, of course, a bit difficult to put in focused effort into developing long content alongside remembering all the SEO value and work accordingly. For those who are planning to accomplish it for better results, here we compile the top 5 must haves for long-form content to reap optimum SEO value. These tips will help you to have greater visibility, drag more traffic, and ultimately get the content page rank better.
SEO Essentials to Practice for Long-Form Content:
Best of all, you can feel relaxed that these steps as we discuss below are not so hard to practice at all. Even if you are a total novice to SEO value, it is easy to understand these non-technical steps and easily follow it. So, start with your next blog post (of course long form), grab a cup of coffee, and be all set to transform your content to score on search engines. Here it is.
1. Proper Keyword Research:
Always, doing essential keyword research to find the best matching to your offerings and industry is the first step in terms of any SEO efforts, and so as in case of long-form blogs too. Ensure that the keywords are specific to the topic you discuss and when it comes to long-form posts, it is ideal to go for keywords with a lower competition level. As per the SEO Experts Miami, tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush may be of help.
2. Considering Long-Tail Keywords:
Long-tail keywords are super specific keywords, which are easier to get ranked and more focused on targeted traffic. It is a fact that not enough blog posts and sites are using long-tail keywords. So, it sets limitless opportunities for bloggers. To find ideal long-tail keywords, you can try the “searches related to *product name/*service/*industry)” in Google.
3. H1 Tag:
H1 tag is the first things the users vis-à-vis the search engines are seeing at the first point of going through your blog post. In case of blog content, h1 tags are usually the blog title. Choosing the most appropriate h1 tag can make a difference in the performance of the page. It is noted that the most fine-tuned h1 tags tend to attract up to 80% extra organic traffic in a week when compared to those have random h1 tags.
As per expert advice, an ideal h1 tag should have the following properties:
- Keyword (long tail)
- Short and precise, ideally 20-70 characters)
- Truly representing the content to give the users an overview of what the content is all about.
4. Use Helpful Subheadings:
An essential tip: Don’t be crazy about keyword with subheadings as you did with the main heading.
It may not be a big issue with the actual readers even when you use keywords at different places if it is done naturally, but search engines may identify it as keyword stuffing if the crawlers sniff focus keywords plastered at many various spots in the blog.
So, you can just help readers navigate appropriately through the content with appropriate subheadings. The purpose of subheadings should be to efficiently break up your long-form article to easy to follow chunks.
5. Optimizing the URL:
Similar to the header, it is also essential to optimize your blog URL to reach the followers efficiently. Cleaners and shorter URLs offer a better user/search engine experience. It is ideal to ensure that the URL contains the keyword, to be precise long-tail keywords. When it comes to a log, a URL may also reflect the content title as the tail-end extension of the URL.
Some other tips are to include quality outbound / inbound links, usage of LSI keywords, appropriate title tag, meta description, ensuring responsiveness, conducting a site speed check with the content, optimizing the text body for the target keyword, ensuring limited/appropriate keyword density, and focusing on user intent.
Author Bio: Simon Berkley is a traditional marketer turned SEO specialist, who is now working as a freelancer for many major consumer corporate. He used to write articles to help other SEO Experts Miami and many blogs.