Writing a blog post without SEO is like organising an art exhibition in the dark: the paintings might be outstanding, but… nobody’s going to see them!

Worried because search engine optimisation sounds too technical? Don’t be.

Learning how to optimise your blog for SEO isn’t that different from writing for human readers, especially when you follow Sookio’s blog SEO checklist.

1. Find the right keywords

Every blog post is a new website page and, as such, should target a main long-tail keyword (three words or more) as well as a few variations to avoid sounding repetitive, like ‘best benefits of caffeine’ and ‘best caffeine benefits’.

Once you’ve decided on a topic, you can find the right keywords with tools like:

Google Keyword Planner
Ubersuggest
LongTailPro
Moz Keyword Explorer

Finally, because LSI keywords—which you can obtain through websites such as LSIGraph—are semantically linked to your main one, they’ll help search engines better understand your article.

For instance, they’ll show them whether you’re talking about Amazon as in the rainforest or the e-commerce giant.

2. Write the blog post for your audience

SEO copywriting shouldn’t make you stray away from your initial purpose: writing an article that brings value to your target audience.

Without worrying about blog post SEO just yet, focus on writing to entertain or educate them on a specific topic, answer their questions, or solve their pain points.

For example, People Tree, a fair-trade fashion pioneer, gave their eco-conscious customers actionable tips on caring for one of the most sustainable fabrics.

3. Create a hierarchical heading structure

Your target audience hasn’t got time for huge blocks of text! Take UX and readability into account by dividing your draft into:

A brief introduction with a more or less explicit promise as to what you’re going to cover
A body following a hierarchical heading structure (e.g. H1, H2, H3, H2, H3, H3, etc.)
A conclusion tying back to the opening and offering an unmissable CTA (what should the reader do next?).

4. Implement blog post SEO by adding your keywords correctly

SEO blog writing should not mean stuffing your article with so many keywords that it becomes painful to read: neither human readers nor search engines actually like that.

Instead, follow the best SEO practices for blogs by placing your main long-tail keyword and its variations strategically:

Within the first 100-150 words if it feels natural
In your headings
A few times within the actual text (try aiming for a 1-2% keyword density, which is an average of once every 100-200 words)

Last couple of paragraphs
Title
URL

Meta description

While the last point isn’t a direct ranking factor, it’ll result in your keyword appearing in bold in the snippet, helping you stand out.

5. Add internal and external links

Is there another blog post that delves into a topic you’ve touched on? A product of yours that you’ve mentioned? Or an external website with some relevant research that backs up your stats? Link to them!

Internal or inbound links help search engines better understand your sitemap, whereas external or outbound links build authority and inspire trust.

6. Add some pictures

Including some relevant pictures will make your blog post visually appealing and easier to scan, or you could even simplify some points by turning them into shareable infographics.

For example, this blog by Homegrounds repurposed the core of their recipe into a more immediate graphic element.

Just remember to:

Resize your pictures (around 1500-2500 pixels in width) and compress them on websites like TinyJPG to keep your page loading time short;
Add some descriptive text through alt-tags, including your keywords whenever possible.

Blog post SEO isn’t actually as hard as you thought, right? As long as you follow our blog SEO checklist and the right SEO blog writing practices, your virtual exhibition will no longer stay in the dark.

And if you’re eager to get into the swing of things even further, read our SEO tips to help your site rank.

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How to optimise a blog post for SEO: 6-step blog SEO checklist