If you’ve been blogging for a while, you might be wondering how to get your posts to rank higher on Google. High-ranking blog posts will not only boost your authority but they will also make it easier for potential clients and customers to find you online.
The truth is that writing high-ranking blog posts might seem hard but in reality, it’s not that difficult. It’s all about following best blogging practices and making sure to implement them for each blog post you publish.
How to Write High-Ranking Blog Posts In this post, I’ll share my best tips for writing high-ranking blog posts that will work for any industry so you can use them to improve your search engine rank.
Start With Topic And Keyword Research Before you sit down to write your blog post, you need to figure out what you want to talk about. It’s all too easy to get overwhelmed and go off topic. Knowing what you want to talk about, allows you to stay focused on your topic.
A few ideas to come up with topics for your blog posts include:
Using Google Trends to find out what people are searching for or what’s currently trending Searching websites like Quora to see what questions people are asking related to your topic Paying attention to People also ask and Related search terms on the Search Engine Results Pages Using Google Ads’ Keyword Planner to come up with relevant keywords to target in your blog posts For example, let’s say you want to promote cooking utensils to make affiliate commissions. A few terms you might consider include cooking, baking, and microwaving. After researching those topics, you might find out that cooking and baking are more popular while microwaving doesn’t generate as much interest.
Generally, you should go for less competitive keywords like baking because it would be easier to rank. Start small and target one or two keywords at a time before trying to add more keywords to your blog posts. However, keep a list of relevant keywords to add later on as it’s always good to have a variety of keywords.
Decide on Reader’s Intent Once you have your list of topics and keywords, you need to decide on your reader’s intent. This will help you structure and write your blog post in the most appropriate way.
There are 4 main types of reader intent :
Informational intent — in this case, readers want more information about a particular topic. They want to know more about it or they have a specific question in mind and are looking for answers. Their search term could be “benefits of using cast iron skillet”.Navigational intent — people browsing the Internet with navigational intent are looking for a person, business or brand. They just need a little help getting to their website but they know what or who they’re looking for ie. “Lodge Cast Iron”Transactional intent — users with this intent are typically ready to make a purchase. They are probably searching for the best deal on the product they want to buy. Their search term could be “12-inch Lodge cast iron skillet”Commercial/investigating intent — people with this intent are typically not yet ready to buy but they are thinking about making a purchase in the near future. They’re using the Internet to research their options and they need more convincing before making a purchase. For example, their search term could be “what is the best cast iron skillet?” With that in mind, your content needs to satisfy the user intent so this is another question that should be at the top of your mind when you sit down to write your blog posts.
Decide on Content Type In most cases, people will read your blog post because it benefits them. In other words, your blog posts need to share valuable information, answer their questions, or teach them something. There are a few content types you can use to meet their needs:
How-to posts that show them how to do something List posts that share useful resources or products Reviews that share an honest opinion about a certain product, service or brand Video content that takes them behind the scenes or shows them how to achieve something Infographics that present information in a manner that’s easy to understand Interviews with experts in the industry Whichever content type or format you choose, be sure to cite relevant sources to backup your claim and research your topic carefully. People are looking for useful and relevant information with substance. In addition to that, search engines also love content that’s authoritative and satisfies the needs of your readers.
Create an Outline Creating an outline helps you stay focused on your topic and ensures you’re covering all the necessary information. Let’s stick with our cooking example to show you how this could work.
Let’s say the topic of your article is the benefits of using a cast iron skillet. Your opening paragraph should introduce the topic and then transition into the main topic. You could talk about why using a cast iron skillet is beneficial and then mention how to care for a cast iron skillet as well as how to prepare your cast iron skillet before first use.
Toward the end, you could mention cast iron skillet alternatives and link to similar articles — perhaps an article about ceramic skillets or even an article listing the best cast iron skillets.
How to Structure a Blog Post You’ve got your topic, you’ve done your keyword research, you know what the reader intent is, you’ve decided on a content type for your blog post, and you’ve prepared an outline. Now let’s get to the good stuff and talk about how to actually structure a high-ranking blog post.
This graph shows how longer articles perform better than shorter articles: Credit Backlinko Just like essays you wrote in high school, your blog needs a structure. In other words, it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Typically speaking your blog post should follow this general structure:
Intro – introduce your topic and hook the reader so they want to know more and read the rest of the article. This part of your blog post should be around 100-200 words. Don’t drag it out, otherwise you risk losing the reader’s interest.Main Topic – now it’s time to get into the main topic. Use an H2 to introduce this section. You’ll want between 500-1000 words minimum and 10,000 words maximum here. This allows you to talk about your topic in-depth and cover all the necessary information.Break up the main topic with smaller sections – they serve as a backup to the main topic and should be introduced with an H3. Aim for 100-300 words in each smaller section. Outro – finally, it’s time for the big finish. Use this to sum up what you talked about and invite readers to take action. This should be less than 100 words and you can use this section to interlink other articles on the same or related topic. Write Longer Content In a study done by Backlinko (an authority in the SEO industry), they found that longer content ranks better in the search engines than short blog posts. Aim for at least 1000 words in your blog posts and try to include information that your readers will find helpful as well as relevant.
Optimize Your Blog Post Images Images included in your blog post will not only make your articles more appealing but they will also enhance your content and help you convey your story better. They will make your blog posts more memorable as research shows that people remember visual content better.
However, don’t simply upload an image and insert it into your blog post. Make sure to include alt text for each image in your blog post. This will help search engines understand what the image is about and consequently understand your article better.
In addition to that, by adding alt text, you’ll increase the chances of those images appearing in Google results for your chosen keywords.
You’ll also want to name your image descriptively instead of using a generic name like IMG487198754.jpg. This is another way to optimize your images for SEO and improve your website search engine rank.
Use Keywords Smartly All the keyword research you’ve done previously would be pointless if you didn’t actually use your keywords. However, you have to be smart about how you use them. A few tips to keep in mind include:
Opt for long tail keywords — long tail keywords typically have less competition which means they are easier to rank for. For example, there are approximately 52,200,000 results for the term “cast iron skillet”. Compare that to “cast iron skillet recipes” which has only 29,000,000 results. Add your keywords to the title — adding your keywords to the title will help Google and other search engines to crawl your blog posts faster.Use your keywords in the first 100 words of your blog post — the sooner in the post your keywords appear, the easier it is for Google to determine if your blog post is relevant or not. Avoid Keyword Stuffing While you should use keywords in your blog posts the smart way, don’t keyword stuff. Let’s say for example you would like to rank for how to cook an egg. Your article should include various ways on how to cook an egg and also how long to cook an egg.
However, avoid going overboard and including sentences such as “In this post, I’ll teach you how to cook an egg fast, and I’ll also show you how to cook an egg slow, then I’ll show you how to cook an egg with a pan”.
This is called keyword stuffing and Google doesn’t like it. Your keyword should appear no more than 3% of the time in your article. This is known as keyword density and if it exceeds more than 4-5%, there is a small chance your article could be penalized by Google.
In other words, your article will get de-indexed and lose the ranking dramatically. In the end, it will be hard to get that article to rank again for your chosen keywords.
Interlink Other Articles And Add Outbound Links As mentioned earlier, you’ll want to back your argument or the topic of your article with relevant sources and facts. The easiest way to do that is to add outbound links to authoritative sources of information. Outbound links are links that lead to other websites on the internet. You could link to research, case studies, statistics, and other quality websites in your niche.
You’ll also want to link to other articles on your blog. This is known as interlinking and it helps your readers understand your topic better. It also increases the chances of them sticking around and reading more blog posts.
As a result, your bounce rate decreases while the dwell time increases which signals to Google that your website is a relevant and quality resource.
For example, if you were writing about cooking you could interlink articles about top 10 pans to cook with.
Ask Questions and Than Answer Them Have you ever typed in a question in the google search result and noticed the tab ” People Also Ask” ? This is a section that is generated by the google algorithm and bloggers purposely add these into their blog posts to help users find a quick solution to the problem. By adding in questions in your blog posts, this will help increase the odds of creating generated snippets that link back to your blog post. Here is an Example:
Make sure to always add questions in your blog posts and than answer those questions to help users find the content they are looking for.
Install Yoast SEO Plugin Or RankMath Now let’s make one thing clear: using Yoast SEO plugin won’t magically improve your search engine rank. However, it will help you ensure that your blog posts are optimized for the search engines.
Yoast SEO plugin serves as a checklist that reminds you of all the steps you need to go through to ensure your blog post is well-researched and optimized for the search engines. It’s like a game where the aim is to turn the dot green.
Rankmath plugin is also a good alternative to yoast. I do have a full tutorial on how to use the rankmath plugin
Final Thoughts Writing high-ranking blog posts seems daunting but all it takes is following a few best practices and researching your topic well. Use the tips in this article to up your blogging game and get to the top in Google. Good luck!
Kasi Mavuri
Very Good Information about new Beginners on this Article, i will have follow as per your Instructions.
Thanks,
KasiMavuri
Aslam Ansari
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