Learn 35 Effective Blog Post Optimization Tips

Do you want to be more proficient at blog post optimization?

Are you frustrated that your blog has become like a barren land without any visitor?

It's no secret anymore that long blog posts perform better in search engines. 

But, that's only possible if you have optimized your long-form blog post properly. 

Optimizing your blog post isn't an easy thing to do, but surely it's a smart thing to do. If you want your blog post to emerge as a winner for the targeted keyword, you need to learn these blog post optimization strategies. 

When you come up with a great idea, please write a blog post about it, and publish it. 

Do you believe that you're done after hitting that publish button? 

No, you are not. You need to build an engaged audience base around your content, increase your blog traffic, and offer value. The only way to achieve that is by optimizing your blog post. 

You have to optimize your blog post for better visibility. You wouldn't like that your blog post dies down silently and fail to deliver any results. 

That was not the reason you ended up sipping 8 cups of coffee to write that blog post. 

Get serious about blog post optimization from right this moment. 

Blog Post Optimization Is Very Important

Blog post optimization is very important for your blog's success. Most bloggers think that heaving a fancy headline and adding some cool images is a job well done. 

But they couldn't be any more wrong. 

The biggest hurdle for a blogger when it comes to blog post optimization is executing the right strategies. 

The process starts by writing a quality article and ends by optimizing your blog post for better ranking. 

As a blogger myself, I am always in search of creative ways to boost my search traffic. In this post, I will share 35 strategies I have been personally using to optimize my blog posts over the years.

I decided to divide these strategies into different categories for ease of implementation and understanding. 

Blog post optimization can be divided into six categories, and those categories are: 

1. Keyword
2. Content
3. Usability
4. Link Building
5. Social Signal
6. Analytics

Now, let's dive into each category to learn the blog post optimization strategies. 

Keyword 

Take your time to find the most relevant keyword for your blog post. It should be specific and have low competition. 

Long-tail or question-related keywords are best to focus on when writing a blog post that will rank higher.

We all are well aware that our blog posts need to be focused on one main keyword. 

But not enough bloggers try to focus their blog posts on long-tail keywords. 

Long-tail keywords can be very specific and cater to a small audience group to bring you targeted traffic. 

Yes! It would be best if you had the right tool for it. 

When I mentioned the right tool, you must have thought about Google Keyword Planner.

But, I believe that keyword planner is more suited for people who run advertisements on Google, not for bloggers. 

That's why I would highly recommend not using Keyword Planner to optimize your blog post for SEO.

The tool I use is SEMrush, and I have been using it for more than a year. 

The information you get from the Keyword magic tool is really helpful and can help you outline your complete blog posts. 

You can find the LSI and relevant keywords to include in your blog post to boost the chance of your blog post ranking. 

SEMrush is a paid tool. However, you can sign up for a trial to see how it can help you optimize your blog post and rank better in search engines. 

But, if you are starting and looking for a free alternative, you don't need to look further. 

Google Keyword Suggestions

Google itself gives you lots of keyword ideas at the end of every search result page. We all know this section as, Related Searches.

You get highly relevant suggestions based on your main keyword. 

Search for your main keyword, scroll to the bottom, and you'll find suggested keywords on the search result page. 

Write the main keyword, LSI keywords, and question-based keywords you plan to use in your blog post. 

After you have got the list of keywords, you can finalize them based on your preference. 

I highly recommend following this recipe when you are writing an optimized blog post. 

• 1- Focused Keyword 
• 2 – LSI Keywords
• 1 or 2 – Question Focused Keywords 

Now, let's get down to the keyword-focused blog post optimization strategies that will drastically increase your chances of getting a higher rank in search engines. 

Keyword Focused Blog Post Optimization Strategies

• Write a catchy blog post title, and include your main keyword in the title. (#hack: Include numbers or proven words to make your blog post title more effective.)
• Include your main keyword in the first paragraph. (#hack: Ask a question that has your main keyword in it.)
• Include your LSI keyword in the second paragraph of your blog post. 
• Use your main keyword in the subheading of your blog post at least once.
• Keep your blog post URL short and simple. (#hack: I recommend you should use your main keyword as the URL for your blog post.)
• Use the final list of your keywords as tags for your blog post. 
• Forget about keyword frequency because its a highly subjective topic. Use your judgment to decide the keyword frequency based on the length of your blog post. (#Hack: 3-4 times for 1000-1200 word long post, 6-8 times for 1500-2500 word long post.)
• Don't forget about using LSI keywords in your blog post frequently. (#hack: Use it where it makes sense.)
• Include LSI keywords in the subheadings of your blog post.

Content

Quality! 

I am sure you must have heard that word as a blogger like thousands of times. So, I won't repeat the same jargon once again. 

But, I'd like to add something that would change your perspective on blog post optimization completely. 

Writing a quality blog post is not enough anymore to rank higher in search engines. 

Even if you have written the best blog post in your niche, you still need to optimize your blog post and promote it. Please make no mistake about it. 

If you have not optimized your blog post, forget about getting a higher rank in search engines. It will never get the exposure it deserves. 

 Do you want to rank higher on Google and other search engines? 

 First, you have to do things right. 

Here are content focus optimization strategies that will help you get higher rankings in search engines. 

Content Focused Blog Post Optimization Strategies

• Before you write a single word, assign a goal to your blog post.
• Blog post outline! Don't write long paragraphs because it makes visitors feel burdened, and they might skip your blog post. Write short and crisp paragraphs. Remember, you are writing for people to reach a wider audience through search engines. It's not the other way around. 
• Write for humans! Use simple words, keep the reader engaged and curious throughout the blog post. 
•  Explain complex topics with bullet points to make your blog post look visually appealing and engaging for the reader. 
• Avoid writing a long paragraph because the visitor will feel burdened to read the article. 
• Make your blog post look visually appealing because visitors scroll through a blog post before they start to read.
•  The quality blog post is the emperor. But focus on creating 900 – 1200 words long post blog posts frequently. We can win some battles by having a bigger army. To beat the blogs that have too many posts and started years before you, you need to create a good response post. 
• Create at least 1 Infographics based on your blog post topic

Usability

It is very important to concentrate on the usability factors, as well as aesthetics. 

If your blog layout, user experience, load time is not user-friendly, then forget about ranking higher in search engines. 

Usability factors help you sustain the growth you are trying to bring by optimizing your blog. 

Improving the usability of your blog is a must for every blogger who dreams of creating a high authority blog in the targeted niche. The more visitors find your blog easy to navigate and consume content, the higher the chances of better ranking and building a loyal audience base. 

Here are usability-focused optimization strategies that will help you get higher rankings in search engines. 

• Readability: One of the most important aspects of a blog is readability. If your readers cannot read your blog post due to bad design, they will never come back to your blog. 
• Load Time: Ensure your blog is loading fast enough for the readers in the targeted demographics because a slow loading page makes user bounce to another site. 
• Call To Action: Don't get to aggressive with conversions and list building. Focus on adding value to your content and make it easier for people to buy from you or subscribe to your list. 
• Focus On Mobile Optimized Design: Most visitors use their mobile devices to read blogs and consume content. 
• Easy Navigation: Provide easy option visitors. 
• Compress your images and videos for faster speed. (Use JPEG or WebP images)

Link Building 

As a blogger, you are already aware of the importance of a good backlink. Therefore, I don't need to preach to you about how important backlinks are and how important they are in your blog's success. 

There are hundreds of ways that you can build backlinks for your blog. But some approaches are crucial and important, still, get ignored by bloggers because of the simple nature of these strategies. 

• You should interlink your relevant blog posts more frequently. (Add at least one interlink in your every blog post.) 
• Use your main or LSI keywords for interlinking your articles. 
•  Focus on getting backlinks from authority sites or blogs. (DropMyLink & SEMrush can help you a lot in the link building) 
•  You should keep your blog post URLs short and, if possible, use your main keyword as the URL. 
• Use SEMrush tools to scrape the blog's backlink that's ranking first for your targeted keyword and try to replicate some.

Social Signals

Social signals are human interactions your blog has on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

I believe social signals play a huge role in boosting your blog post ranking in search engines. 

Your focus should be getting as many social signals for your fresh blog posts as possible to make them go viral. 

The higher social interaction on your new blog post will boost the ranking in search engines directly or indirectly. 

By social signals, I mean: 

• Number of people like your blog page
• Number of people like your later blog post on Social Media
• Several people comment on your FB post.
• Number of tweets & mentions

All these interactions somehow communicate with search engines to relate the importance and popularity of the content on their platform. 

Your goal should be getting more social interactions for your blog and content that you publish on all popular social media platforms. 

Here're some tips that can help you get more social signals:

• Set up your blog for social share by adding meta details and default social share image
• Add social sharing buttons to your blog post, and entice people to share your blog post
• Join relevant Facebook communities, and try to actively contribute to the community
• Join Relevant Pinterest group boards 
• Publish your latest blog post to all the major social media platforms and run ads engagement-based ads with a $10 budget.
• Ask your friends, followers to share your blog post link
• After you post your latest blog post, make sure you ask a question or add a caption that requires people to respond or engage with the post.

Data & Analytics

How do we solve a problem?

We all can agree with the simplest answer: “By gathering more information about the problem.”

The same can be said when it comes to optimizing your blog posts for better rankings. 

You'd not like to base all your decision on hunches and gut feeling. You need concrete data, information about what went wrong, how it went wrong so that you can work on the fix. 

How do you get all these analytical data?

Set up tracking and data tools. 

Few tools I would recommend are:

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster 
• Rank Math WordPress SEO plugin
• W3 Cache Or LightSpeed Plugin

These tools will help you know your visitors and make calculated decisions to enhance the user experience. 

You can track your best-performing content and keep an eye on traffic to modify your marketing efforts to get the best result possible. 

Another important benefit is that the data will help you optimize your blog more effectively. 

With these tools, you won't have to guess anything. Instead, few clicks will help you figure out what went wrong and what you should do to fix it. 

Conclusion: 

There's no silver bullet to get your blog post ranked in the top 10 search results. Instead, it's about consistently doing the right things and optimizing every blog post for a specific keyword. 

Creating long-quality blog posts and optimize them for your blog audience. That's the best shot you can make to get a higher rank in search engines. 

It would help if you implemented the above strategies over and over. 

The overnight ranking is just a pipe dream, so don't waste your energy and effort going after it. 

Don't just write your content for the sake of publishing it. Instead, write your content with a specific goal in mind. Then, optimize and promote the content to achieve that goal. 

Sounds simple! Right? 

Honestly, it is simple if you are dedicated and committed to your blog.

How do you optimize every blog post?