• Is there anything like a SEO-friendly blog?
• What should be the ideal length of your blogs for SEO?
• Is there anything like a perfect blog?
• What are the ways to search engine optimize your blog content?

Let’s start with some basic questions and find all the answers.

What is a perfect blog?

Is there anything like a perfect blog? At Digital Success, we define any blog that can garner a high readership and engagement as perfect, well maybe not perfect but excellent. The success of content depends on several personalized factors. If you have a strategy and stick to the plan, you can almost attain perfection. Our intended audience has access to several blogs each day and if they read average content, chances are that they will abandon your blog.

We’d like to define any blog that gets a high number of leads as a perfect blog.

What can a perfect blog do for you?

We already told you what a perfect blog can do for you. It can get you leads and increase your revenue. Writing engaging blogs, in general, can help you immensely.

• It can help your enterprise be perceived as a thought leader
• It can help you establish authority
• It can help you establish a rapport with your readers (who may or may not convert to your customers)
• It can help you establish your brand, brand story and USP
• It’s an excellent opportunity to brag about your expertise
• It helps you stay ahead of the curve
• It’s free PR
• Most importantly, search engines rank websites that update their content regularly (ensure that you use relevant keywords and publish engaging content)

Key features of a perfect blog (and tips to make the blog content search engine optimized)

• Craft a great headline (one that has some business relevant keywords too)
• Conduct a keyword research before writing the blog. Including relevant keywords in the headline and blog content can help you with the rankings
• Meta description describes the HTML attribute that provide information about the content of the page. It’s the short description that you see on SERP as a preview to what the page is about. The meta description should be as compelling as the blog for readers to click on it and read (meta description should ideally be around 155 characters)
• Your blog images must be interesting and intriguing. You must ensure that you can legally use and distribute the image(s) that you use in the blogs
• Ensure that the introduction covers what the blog is about. Make it crisp and ensure that it’s an extension of your heading and summary for the rest of the blog
• Break down your blog into sub-headings that are coherent
• Whenever you mention numbers, write numerals rather than words. It’s a good practice to attract user attention
• You must remember to conclude the blog. It doesn’t have to be lengthy but a quick recap of the entire blog. Imagine if somebody doesn’t read the entire blog then what are the most important points that you must cover in the conclusion
• Include a call to action or a CTA. At the end of the blog, what do you expect the reader to do? Provide a link to another web page or form so that they can connect with you for further discussions
• Ensure that your blog is mobile-friendly. Google will display mobile-friendly websites higher to the ones that are not. Just check if your blog pages are responsive
• If you wish to maximize your blog impact, just keep yourself abreast with all the changes that happen. Subscribe to all the updates on Google’s official blog

How long should your blog post be to rank on search engines?

It’s a best practice to write long blog posts to get a high search engine ranking. If you have a blog post that is more than 1000 words, chances are that it will have an improved ranking. If the blog post has a length of over 2000 words, chances of getting ranked on the 1^st page are much higher.

There is no need for keyword stuffing and you can intelligently and skillfully insert keywords across the blog content. You can include more images, more sub-headings, and more links to make the blog content more engaging.

The blog content must be easy to read, insightful and must have an option of being shared on social media channels. The blog content must be structured with short paragraphs communicating a clear message. You must avoid complicated vocabulary and use of passive voice.

There can be exceptions to this.

• At times if you write on a trending topic, that does not meet the wordcount requirement, it can get popular.
• If influencers endorse your blog, chances are that your blog post can get popular irrespective of the length.
• If the blog has quality content, readers will like the research and analysis that has gone into it. More importantly, it must have an important takeaway

How often should you publish a blog post to rank on search engines?

Weekly.

You will hear a lot of people suggest that you publish your blogs weekly. Blogging is at the heart of content marketing and you must ensure that you publish the blogs frequently and consistently (fix a day to publish the content). Consistency can nurture a discipline, deadline and set the expectation of the readers. You must commit to a sustainable blog calendar.

We have learnt that corporate blogging is like a marathon. The expectations of different readers are different for every industry and the type of business that you’re doing. Identifying your readers and being able to understand their preferences is the key to a successful blogging initiative.

Promote your blog

You must have your blog at all the right places so that it gets visible to the interested readers. Share it on social media channels right after you publish it. You can also submit on business relevant blog directories and other relevant websites. It will give you increased exposure and enhance your domain authority.

Conclusion

Writing high-quality and engaging content is a tough task. There might be situations where you have industry’s best experts but ones who are unable to articulate. If the experts can articulate, they may not be able to incorporate the SEO best practices so that your blog gets noticed or ranked. If you think you have great content but no expertise to promote it or in case you don’t have content at all and wish to start a corporate blog, we’re right here with our content marketing expertise and ears.

Image Source: https://image.freepik.com/free-vector/computer-with-folders-and-books_1223-14.jpg