For some, writing for SEO purposes and writing to attract and captivate your audience may seem like two conflicting goals. If you are writing an SEO-friendly blog post, the keywords you want to be searched for should be in a very prominent place. But, over-using keywords can severely hamper the readability of your text, which you don’t want to do.

Our professional SEO copywriters have listed some tips on writing readable and SEO-friendly blog posts, and strengthen the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness for your website.

Key writing tips for good blog posts

Think before you write

Think carefully about the message of your piece. What do you want to tell your readers or which central question do you want to answer? What’s the purpose of your article? And what do you want your readers to do at the end of the page? Write down the answers to these questions before you begin.

Devise a structure for your blog post

Start your post by creating a clear structure. Every post should have:

• some sort of introduction (in which you introduce your topic);
• a body (in which the main message is written);
• a conclusion (which should summarize the most important ideas or draw a conclusion).

Use paragraphs

Everybody uses paragraphs, but not everybody uses them well. Don’t start each new sentence on a new line, just because it looks nice. There should be a logical reason for starting a new paragraph. Each paragraph should have its idea or subject. Ask yourself what the main idea of each paragraph is. You should be able to summarize that main idea in only one sentence. If you need more sentences, you need to use more paragraphs.

Use headings

Headings structure the whole page, so use them wisely. They’re important not just for readability, but for SEO as well. Headings also help Google to grasp the main topics of a long post and therefore can help in your ranking. If you want people to find their way through your articles, you should use subheadings to lead people, help them scan your page, and clarify the structure of your articles. Make sure you use your keywords in some of the subheadings, but not in each and every one of them, as it will make the text clunky and unnatural, which will put people off reading further.

Use signal words

Signal words help people to scan through your text and grasp the main ideas. Let’s say, for example, that there are three reasons for people to buy your product. You should use signal words like: ‘first of all’; ‘secondly’ and ‘finally’. Also, words like ‘nevertheless’, ‘surely’ and ‘indeed’ give a clear signal to your readers. Readers will instantly get that a conclusion will follow after words like ‘consequently’, ’so’ or ‘for this reason’. Signal words are, therefore, very important to add structure to your text.

Let other people read your post

Before publishing your post, let someone else read it first. Ask them whether they understand the main concept of your post and invite them to correct any typos and grammatical errors.

Link to influential websites

As you build out your blog post, don’t be afraid to link to other articles or blogs. Linking to applicable and reputable websites not only offers blog readers additional reading material to expand their knowledge, but it also shows Google and other search engines that you’ve done your research. And the blogger or writer may even return the favor and link to your site.

Nothing strengthens a blog post like hard-to-argue-with, research-backed statistics from influential websites. Compelling stats help you build a more convincing and concrete argument that will get your readers thinking (especially when they’re from trustworthy sites they know and love).

Add content regularly

Regularly adding new blog posts to your website tells Google that your website is alive. If it’s not an active website, Google will crawl it less often, and this might negatively affect your rankings. But don’t just post for the sake of posting. Make sure you post high-quality content: informative, well-written articles that fit people’s search intent.

Find professional SEO copywriters to help

For typical businesses, it is very hard to write quality SEO blog post in-house without experienced professionals. Our Melbourne search engine optimization helps Victorian businesses to improve search engine ranking and gain more leads from inbound marketing. Call 03 8512 9918 or email [email protected] for a free SEO consultation.