Guide to Search Engine Optimize (SEO) your blog content

Starting a blog is a common marketing strategy for companies, but it can be a significant investment (more if you want to improve your SEO with these articles😥!). Not only does it require qualified personnel and a lot of time, but it also takes a while to see results (don’t worry you won’t have to hire a SEO content specialist😜!)

If your goal is to attract traffic quickly, paid ads on other platforms may be a better option, even though they may sound more invasive and expensive. Writing a blog is not an easy task either; it involves a lot of research and analysis. However, it can be very helpful for organic website positioning in the long term, and if you decide to test this channel, we can help you with that 🤝!

Here we’ve compiled 6 steps to create valuable content, use the right keywords, and add quality links to help Google position your blog correctly 👊!

First, what’s SEO content?🤔

The theory tells us that it's creating content designed so that search engines, such as Google, will correctly position your content and it will appear in the first search positions.

But we must not forget one thing: we do not write for Google. We have to write for our target and find topics that interest them, and then our goal will be to see how to optimize this content so that Google understands it correctly and rewards us for it 😬.

That's why we want to share with you our strategy to optimize the articles you create, but let me insist, the content is written for people and based on their interests, let's not get obsessed with SEO and create content that doesn't mean anything to our audience.

The content is written for people and based on their interests, let's not get obsessed with SEO.

So, how do you SEO your content?

Step 0. Get to Know Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Step 1. Analyze the Keywords

Step 2. Look for related questions to the keyword

Step 3. Create your blog draft (with AI) and start writing

Step 4. Optimize Text and Expressions to make it easier to understand

Step 5. Introduce interesting Images and Links

Step 6. Final check and publish your article

Step 0. Get to Know Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) 🙋

Before you start thinking about your blog's strategy and topics, it's necessary to know your ICP.

Who are they? What are their pain points? What are they searching for online?

Collect information from your current customers to answer these questions, and divide your contacts into different groups based on their characteristics and buying habits. This information will help you define your buyer personas, which will be key to detecting relevant content for this target.

Check out our article about how to define your buyer personas.

Step 1. Analyze the Keywords 🔎

Once you have a clear profile of your target, understand their interests, and validate those interests, narrow down the topics you want to talk about and identify the subtopics that you want to address.

For example, in Gretel, we wanted to talk about 3 topics: Marketing, Data Analytics, and Startups. If we think about the topic “Marketing,” we could write about a lot of stuff. Here is where we need to decide which subtopics we want to focus on.

💨Small tip: It’s better that you start talking about the things you feel most comfortable with.

In the beginning, we chose to talk about:

• Marketing strategies
• Campaign measurement
• Marketing metrics

With this clear, we started Googling information about "marketing strategies" and identifying gaps that we could improve!

Once we have our topic defined, for example, “strategies for creating a blog,” we need to start analyzing the most searched keywords related to this topic. To identify these keywords, you can:

• Use Google and search for the term. Google will suggest related terms and questions that are searched for by other users. This is not 100% accurate, but if you don't want to use more tools, it’s a quick way of identifying these keywords.
• Use professional tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs (they both have a free version with 10 requests per day!). These tools let you make a list of keywords related to your article and analyze the volume of searches for those keywords. Also, you’ll be able to understand how difficult it is going to be to position your article in Google using those words and other content that is being indexed in Google using those keywords.

After finding and identifying the keywords and difficulty, it’s important to look at the content that contains that keyword and is actually shown in the top positions. Ask yourselves: What are they doing well? What could you improve upon?

Use this analysis to create content that is better than what's already out there!

We recommend you analyze:

1. The type of content positioned on the first page: articles, videos, ebooks, etc.
2. The size of the content. If it is a short video or a long article, etc.
3. Type of resources added. If they have videos, images, etc.

Step 2. Look for related questions to the keyword 💫

Google rewards articles that follow structured data. This can be done through a plug-in, but we must create an article with this structure in mind.

Detect relevant related content that you want to appear in your article and organize it in blocks so that Google scrapes this information and indexes it correctly.

For finding what content should you add to your post, you can find them with Google or Answerthepublic.

Google will show you related questions to a topic in a structured way:

Awerthepublic has a more visual analysis of the information:

And on Semrush you’ll have the questions related on a list:

Step 3. Create your blog draft (with AI) and start writing ✍️

Are you used to AI tools? They are amazing if you know how to use them correctly!

We recommend you start using tools such as Lex.AI, Jasper, or Copy.ai to draft your article and structure the information you have found.

Then start writing and developing the information in each block, thinking about the differentiated elements you want to add, such as images, videos, or a different summary.

Concentration mode on! And research!

Step 4. Optimize Text and Expressions to make it easier to understand 🧠

After finishing your draft, you need to optimize the text, expressions, and tone.

The first thing we recommend is analyzing whether you are using the right keywords. You can use tools such as Neuronwriter or SEO.ai. These tools suggest words and phrases found in your top-ranking competitors on Google.

The next step is to validate that your text is easy to read.

Use short paragraphs, subheadings, and bullet points to break up the text and make it more scannable. You can also use descriptive and relevant expressions to help search engines understand what your content is about.

Here, you can count on tools such as:

• Hemingway app: allows you to simplify sentences.
• Deeply: grammatically verifies expressions that don't sound quite right.
• Plagium: if you have used content from other sites, make sure it is not plagiarized!
• SEOquake: Validate the keyword density and that you have correctly inserted the HTML tags with this extension.
• Counter: extension that counts the words in your articles.
• Headline Analyzer: make your title attractive, but be careful; the title must contain the keywords we have analyzed in the beginning. Don't change the text too much!

It’s also key to optimize not only the text but also the title (H1), subtitles (H2), and the description of the page (Meta title and description). Also, remember to include your keywords in the SLUG (url).

Step 5. Introduce interesting Images and Links 🔗

Linkbuilding... who hasn't had nightmares about it 😅!

It's time to look for quality links that we can reference in our text, as well as videos or images that can add value.

Use relevant images throughout your article to break up the text and make it more visually appealing.

You can use images from other sources, always mentioning the source and providing a link, or you can create your own. Did you know that Canva allows you to create images with AI for free? (and they are pretty good) 👇

Canva AI image: [someone with a laptop watching ads]

To help you cite a source correctly, we leave you this guide on how to cite a blog following APA (American Psychological Association) guidelines.

Step 6. Final check and publish your article 🤘

Now that you have everything done, it's time for a last review!🙌

Reread your article from beginning to end and have it read by third-party readers.

Finish creating the descriptions of the article, information about the authors, or any other aspect that is relevant.

Then it’ll be ready to be published and shared! 😎

Conclusion

It is not easy to position your articles in Google, it takes time and a person to improve them and adapt them to the search engines, but with a few hours of investment, you can see considerable improvements in the organic traffic of your articles. Isn't that what all of us who write posts dream of? 🤗

Hope that you find this guide useful and let us know if we are missing any key steps or tools! 👂