Writing an effective blog post that targets the correct keywords can be a real problem for many online businesses. Balancing the needs of what your users need in a blog post while trying to use the same content to rank for a particular keyword can lead to content that is both stale and ineffective for your business in the long term.
Sometimes it is worth slowing down your content creation efforts to stop and think about how to get the most out of your content while simultaneously writing posts that will help you rank for the keywords you are targeting. Here are a couple of tips that can help you create blog posts that are loved not only by search engines, but by readers as well.
Find the Right Keyword Balance
While it is tempting to try and stuff keywords into your blog content with as many iterations as you can, this can be less helpful than you might think. From a user perspective, having a word more than three times can be a bit tiring. Not only does it make what you're saying less interesting for the user, but it is also disruptive to their reading experience.
For example, if you were to sit down to read a book and saw the word online marketing 15 times on a single page, you'd have real questions about the education level and writing proficiency of the author. This doesn't change for readers on the internet, and should not be forgotten.
While you can hypothetically have a keyword on a website up to 15 times according to most best practice guides before a red flag is raised, making content that is tailored for your audience should come first. Ultimately it is people that will provide you the best link equity and by creating content that they want to read while also trying to satisfy Google's crawlbots your content will provide the best overall results.
Contextualize the Keyword
While it is a bit rudimentary, sometimes the best approach to take when trying to incorporate a particular keyword into a blog post is to try and contextualize it once you've written the rest of the content. This means that ideally you would take the time to map out a blog post in a way that is aimed to bring value to your users first and foremost and worry about adding the keyword to the mix only after the post could feasibly be published. Afterwards, take the keyword that you are trying to rank for and try to add it to the content that is already there so that it doesn't disrupt the reading experience of your audience.
Tools Can Help
One of the best tools for figuring out whether or not your blog content is as effective as possible is to use a page grader tool like Moz's Page Grader. By taking the time to run this tool on your blog content you can see what you can do to further optimize your post for search engines. This includes things like title tags, tags, bolded text, keyword usage, and other Search Engine Optimization indicators.
This can be particularly useful if you first write your blog content with the audience in mind and then take the time to go back over it to see how effective it is for SEO purposes and edit accordingly. By taking the time to write your content this way, you'll be sure to get the most out of your content for both real people and search engines.
Remember...
Blog content should read fluidly even when your content is targeting a specific set of keywords. While writing for SEO can be a valuable tool, often it is the content that captures the imagination of real people and makes them want to link back to your content that provides the most SEO value for you and your business.
Just as an example, here is how this post was graded when we optimized it for the word "keyword". Granted, this term is a lot easier to optimize for than something more obscure, but did you notice as you read?
What tactics do you use to write blog posts that are easy to read but also effectively target the keywords you're going after? Let us know in the comments section below or by tweeting us @BFMweb
