SEO keywords you need to know in 2021
SEO keywords in 2021- What You need to know are part of the relevant thing you need to know as a blogger in other to improve and perfect your blogging skills.
People start out blogging; thinking it’s as simple as clicking, “Add New Post,” type a few paragraphs and click “Publish.” Then they hopelessly wait for views, comments, and tweets. No one comes. No one comments. No one tweets. The goodness is that this post provides you with SEO keywords in 2021 – What you need to know.
SEO Blog Post Publishing Steps
We have been able to list out 10 most popular SEO blog post publishing steps that bloggers tend to forget. SEO keywords in 2021 – What you need to know about SEO Blog Post Publishing Steps are clearly stated below:
- Keyword Research
Before I write a single word, I figure out if it’s something that people are asking about. And if they are, I want to know if the internet is already saturated with that type of content.
To figure this out, I use SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool – I look up the words I believe people would search for to find the post I plan on writing. Using this tool I can see how much traffic a search term gets and what the competition looks like.
- Fine-Tuning the Headline
Here’s my formula for crafting headlines for list posts: [#][keyword][ curiosity-capturing phrase].
For title tag SEO, your goal is to place the keyword as near to the front of the headline as possible: Top 10 Motivational YouTube Videos for Entrepreneurs
20 Great Google Chrome Extensions for Online Entrepreneurs
20 Best Designed Pricing Comparison Tables
For that last one, I switched the keyword with the curiosity phrase because “Best Designed” was another phrase that people tack on to the base keyword.
- Post Slug
The post slug is what shows up after the domain for every post or page.
When you type a headline, WordPress generates the post slug by placing every word in the headline into the slug. This clutters it up with lots of small words.
Instead, change your post slug to your primary keyword.
Default: CodedPortal.com /10-seo-blog-post-publishing-steps-that-most-bloggers-forget/
Ideal: CodedPortal.com/seo-blog-post-publishing-steps/
- 4. Images
We all know that images grab your attention, break up the content, and supplement your ideas. But they also add great SEO benefits, as long as you follow these steps:
Save your images as [keyword-phrase.png] before you upload them to your site.
Add alt text as [keyword phrase].
Add title tag as [keyword phrase].
These rules apply to your featured image and the images within your posts. For the images within the content, however, use other similar and relevant keywords.
- External Linking – [Plus Build Backlinks]
Most people understand the benefits of building backlinks to your website and how it benefits SEO.
But less frequently mentioned is external links to other websites. Your goal should be to provide the most complete resource for your reader and one way to do that is by providing useful external links that readers can follow up for further information. Look for opportunities to link to other bloggers.
As Neil Patel says:
Did you know that an external links going out to these high authority sites can boost your SEO? When search engines crawl your site and see a link and follow it to CNN or Huffington Post, they weight it as a positive. The trick is to find organic ways to link to these sites, like I did in this post.
Linking to other sites is also a good way to build relationships with other bloggers.
Bloggers notice and appreciate backlinks. They are also more likely to share your content on social media.
- Relevant Videos
Google understands that adding a video to a blog post makes it a more complete resource. If they haven’t already boosted blog posts with videos, they will eventually. [See how we added a video above]
If blogging is a big portion of your business, start making videos for your posts, upload them to your channel, and embed them in the actual post.
If you’re still dabbling in blogging, consider embedding other peoples’ videos in your posts – just like we are doing below…
Perfect WordPress SEO Setup (Increase Speed, Traffic + Best Plugins)
- Subheads
Similar to images, subheadings break up the content and make blog posts easier to read. They also have big-time SEO benefits.
When a search engine robot hits a page, it reads the headline/title tag first. Then it reads the H2, H3, and H4 tags.
When you add subheadings to your content, proper HTML is:
<h2>Subhead Level 1</h2>
<h3>Subhead Level 2</h3>
<h4>Subhead Level 3</h3>
Note: The headline/title tag should be automatically wrapped in <h1></h1>.
Stop simply bolding and italicizing your subheads.
- Interlinking
Another important step that most people forget is interlinking between your blog posts.
Before you publish a new post, read through it and try to find two-three related articles with your blog that you can link to.
This keeps both readers and search spiders on your site longer. (and lowers your bounce rate)
- Meta Data
Whether or not Google still looks at Meta keywords is up for debate, but the Meta description is definitely still used.
In a search result, your Meta description often shows up as the little blurb beneath the blue link. In writing your Meta description, you need to keep three things in mind:
It needs to be fewer than 155 characters so Google will display the whole description.
It needs to include your keywords because Google bolds them in search results.
It should be an actual sentence from the post because people look for that sentence once they arrive.
I always summarize the post with the keywords in the last sentence of the introduction and use that as the Meta description.
- A Call to Action
The final step is the call-to-action. As with any piece of marketing material, a blog post should be designed to get someone to do something.
Here are a few popular calls to action:
Comment – You can encourage people to comment by ending the post with a thought-provoking question or simply asking them to let you know what they think.
Share – “If you liked this post, tweet it out.”
Implement – I believe the best result of any blog post is for a reader to take your advice and implement it.
Essentials SEO Bloggers Should Know About
Rather than looking for short-cuts to SEO success. More bloggers should read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Getting a website to rank consistently requires effort and commitment. Google’s guidelines are a good place to start.
The SEO Essentials includes:
Keyword Research and On-page optimization: On-page optimizing is the work you do to rank a page higher in the search engines. It includes both the content and HTML source code (Meta tags).
Link building (Off-page SEO): Off-page SEO refers to links and external signals (such as Social Signals – number of shares in social media)
Quality Content: Quality content is content that helps people. It answers questions; it entertains people; it tells people how to do something. It is content that Google considers useful.
SEO and Meta Tags: Meta tags (metadata) provide information about your webpage within the HTML. While they do not display it on the page, the search engines can read them. Examples of Meta tags include the <title> and <description>.
You should treat the Meta description as an advert for your webpage. Make it something people will want to click on while including your main keyword/s.
There is some argument if Meta descriptions are still a ranking factor in Google, but that is not why I use a Meta description. I use the Meta description to attract clicks and visitors to my website.
One thing most people no longer bother with is Meta keyword tags. In the past, it was frequently used to spam search engines and I understand Google ignores it.
Good Technical SEO: A lot of first-time bloggers find technical SEO confusing.
In short, technical SEO includes: making a website fast, secure, (HTTPS) easy to crawl, and understandable to search engines.
It also includes regular removal of dead links, (use a Plugin for that) creating an XML sitemap, and if you are an international business using Hreflang tags.
Hreflang tags solve duplicate content problems. For example, if you have a US and UK site showing the same content, Google will know the content is written for a different region. This is not something that most bloggers need to worry about, but it is something you should be aware of if you are using a country-specific domain extension.
Modern SEO Essentials: Like we said, the basics don’t change. But, how you implement the basics has changed. The above processes have become more complex and tricky to implement.
Modern Link-building Techniques: When I started out webmasters exchanged links, and that seemed to work. Not anymore.
Hang around with SEO people long enough and you will hear them discuss various link-building strategies – often in hushed tones!
You will hear about “Shotgun Skyscraper outreach” and “Broken link building” and “Content repurposing/syndication”
If you are serious about SEO, you will need to understand these terms. I recommend this paid training.
Keyword Research Today
You need to understand and master all of these keywords:
- Niche keywords
- Short Tail keywords
- Long-Tail Keywords
- Keyword synonyms
- Phrase Match Keywords
- Broad Match Keywords
- Branded Keywords
- Negative Keywords
- Exact Match Keywords
Plus, my favorite type of keyword: Money Keywords.
With bloggers, “Money keywords” are keywords that match the offer you are promoting.
As an example, let’s say you rank for “white goods product + model number” the chances are high anyone landing on your page is looking to purchase that product.
It is one thing to be good at SEO and content creation, but another to rank for money keywords.
Quality Content Creation Today
When writing use the E-A-T formula.
Expertise, authority, and trust [EAT]
All your content should build on your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. That is how you get your website to stand out from the crowd.
As mentioned earlier… Quality content is content that helps people. It answers questions; it entertains people; it tells people how to do something. It is content that Google considers useful. A long-term SEO strategy is vital. That starts with quality content.
Whatever you do, don’t indulge in black-hat SEO or even grey-hat SEO. Neither of these approaches is sustainable long term. Sure you may get some short-term rankings, but it is not a question of “if” you will get penalized but “when” you get penalized.
If you plan to build a long term business asset that you can sell one day, you will only want to use white-hat SEO strategies.
Beware Thin Content: Thin content pages are pages with low word counts. Often they will be of little value to visitors and have a high bounce rate.
Thin content pages include: pages with duplicate content, automatically generated content, copy and pasted affiliate content, and scraped content.
If you have a webpage with hundreds rather than thousands of words it is likely your content will be classed as “thin content”.
Sometimes the blogger had a good idea but failed to implement it well. If you are not ranking, look at your content and the word count and ask yourself, “What can I do to improve this blog post?” Actually, do that with every post, even the ones that rank fine.
You don’t write a blog post and forget. You write a blog post and improve! Don’t write words for the sake of word count. Make every word you use, COUNT! Your content must be easy to read and follow. I aim for a 2000 minimum word count, but occasionally when appropriate the word count will be closer to 1000 words.
Note: Pages like your contact page and category pages will be “thin” and that is OK.
Link Building on Steroids!
Q: How do you get high domain authority (DA) websites to link to your content?
A: Become a source for a site called Help A Reporter. [HARO]
SEO Tip, websites that answer questions rank well. With HARO, the journalists come to you, with their questions.
Reporters are looking for answers on a wide range of subjects all the time. Almost certainly they will be asking questions in your niche.
Of course, your answer will not always be selected and you won’t always get a link back, but this is a numbers game. Answer enough and you will get those links. What is more, you might even be able to say… as featured in [name of media].
It is easy to sign up and become a source, but I recommend you get some training on how to use HARO effectively.
Once again, our friends at Authority Hacker cover this in their training. HARO is just one of the traffic blueprints they cover. (There are 10 HARO lessons / videos in total)
Note: DA is a ranking metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a site will rank on a scale of 1 – 100. Sites like Apple, YouTube, and Google rank at 100, but generally anything above 50 is very good.
HARO is short for Help a Reporter Out. Refresh & Update content On A Regular Basis
The content becomes stale, goes out of date. Who wants to read about 2011 Stats in 2020?
I admit I am not as good at keeping on top of “content refreshment” as I should be. It is easy when pages rank well, to think you need not bother.
If your content is dated or badly written, people will not stay on your page and your bounce rate will be high.
High bounce rates mean the visitor did not find what they were looking for and they have a bad user experience (and that is a ranking factor).
Recently I have put more effort into updating older blog posts and I can already see a significant improvement in the bounce rate.
Just as Wikipedia is constantly updating its content, you should be updating your articles.
Successful SEO requires discipline. Don’t expect to do SEO for a month and achieve amazing results. It doesn’t work like that.
SEO requires a multifaceted approach. This includes link building; on-page SEO and great technical SEO.
Don’t let anyone convince you there are short-cuts. There are none. There is just best-practice.
It is commitment and discipline that matters most.
If there was only one SEO Tip, I could give, it would be this: Create content that answers to your visitors questions.
CodedPortal wishes you huge blogging success.
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