Blog SEO tips of 2023 [How to best optimize blog posts]

Looking for blog SEO tips on how to rank blog posts better?

OnlineBusinessConsulting wrote the best ways to SEO optimize blog post content for beginners and others who need help with their article optimization.

These are advanced blog post SEO strategies and best practices I have used to improve and rank content for us and our clients.

13 blog SEO tips on How to best optimize blog posts to rank higher in 2023

Blog SEO is like any other search engine optimization, you have to do it right and regularly to get results.

So whether you're a beginner or someone who has been blogging for a while, the ideas in this article will help boost your blog's search engines ranking to get traffic and make money.

You just started your make money from home online journey by choosing blogging as the way to do it.

Good choice! Blogging for income is one of the most lucrative web-based business startups today.

However, to enjoy the financial reward, one of the top things and steps you need to take first is to write awesome blog posts and SEO them exceptionally well.

So let's help you do that with the below-proven SEO best practices and tactics.

1. Increase your site speed

One way that helps increase ranking to page one on search engines is to optimize blog content page loading speed.

It is one of the best practices you want to do asap.

This is because both Google and Bing have confirmed that they use page speed as one of their ranking factors.

How to do it:

First, use GTMatrix and Google PageSpeed Insight to test your blog post pages to find speed issues to improve.

Secondly, read our tutorial and guides on how to speed up website loading time, see:

• Increase website speed
• Optimize WordPress for speed

2. SEO the first 100 words well

One SEO on blog tactic used by pros is spending a lot of time writing the first 100 words of their article and using their target keywords and key terms in the right places.

How to do this:

You want to naturally include your targeted keywords, keyphrase terms, and their search intent a few times in the first 100-word of your weblog post.

For example, let's say that your blog post title is "how to speed up a slow computer," you would mention "speeding up a computer" one to two times.

Also, use that searcher's goal which would be"make a computer load faster" at least one time.

3. Spend time on Title & Header tags

An SEO step that a lot of people ignore is their blog's Title, Title tags, and Headers improvement.

Ignoring this is a big mistake. To move your blog posts higher on search engines, you have to optimize them creatively.

I spend a lot of time(1 to 2 hours) coming up with Title tags that combine both low and high-competitive keyword terms.

How to do it

Title tags

Spend time writing readers and SEO-friendly Titles.

Do this by researching related keywords terms and include them in your blog post Title.

Only include words in the Title tag that people are searching for. Do keyword research to make sure that people put a word term next to the main keyword before adding it to your Title.

For example, if you want to rank for online business ideas, create your title to be "Best profitable small online business ideas". This is because, in the U.S alone, profitable online business-320, best online businesses-4400, small online business idea-800, best online businesses to start-3600, and online business ideas-18,000 has search volumes.

And some of the search volumes have low competition. So by combining them naturally for readers and SEO you can rank for so many keywords fasters(especially the low competitive key phrases). Plus the click-through rate will be high.

Header tags

Sprinkle synonyms of your targeted keyword terms naturally on your post Header tags. For example, if your post is about "How to stay fit," use in shape, remain, ways naturally on some of your post headers( H1, H2, H3, etc).

4. Boost ranking with synonyms

Another blog search engine optimization best practice you need to apply is to optimize synonyms.

Not optimizing the synonyms of your blog-targeted keyword terms is a big mistake that will cost you a lot of traffic.

When done correctly, you can rank your keyword term synonyms faster. That is why it is important to include them in your content. So don't ignore this tip.

Our advice on How to do this step:

Let's say you are writing about "how to purchase a car," include buy, ways, automobile, etc, naturally throughout your content.

Basically, find the synonyms for the terms how, buy, and car. Include them in the headers and paragraphs too.

5. Use natural language

The way people search online has changed over the years. People use natural language now instead of just search terms so improve your blog search engine ranking by including how people speak naturally.

For example, people also use, "how do I(you) get to LA," instead of "getting to LA."

6. Optimize users intent

If someone searches for pizza restaurants online, that person's goal is mostly to eat pizza, order a pizza, etc. This is called user intent.

Here's how it works:

If you have an article post titled "how to fix a slow phone," ask your self, what is a person searching for that want to accomplish?

Write them down and do a search on Google to see if the page 1 results are similar to the main term results when you looked it up "how to fix a slow phone."

Include those intents in your blog post paragraphs and headers naturally.

When you properly SEO people's aim, you will rank for more keywords and phrases faster as most people are not optimizing them yet.

7. The blog URL optimization step

Another blog SEO technique that is often neglected by both experienced and beginner bloggers is URL optimization.

Not doing this is a big mistake.

How to do it:

Always include some keyword terms in your post URL to help users and searches to better understand what a post is about.

To do this, type the keyword you are trying to rank on Google and check the URL of the top results on page one.

It is one of the easiest SEO best practices you can apply.

8. Use internal linking for better crawling

Internal linking is one of the most important ways to optimize your blog for SEO.

When you interlink important posts through website menu navigation, body content, sidebars, and footers, you allow search engine crawlers to find your content faster.

This will lead to quicker indexing and increase your ranking.

9. Short descriptive anchor-texts

Utilize anchor texts properly when interlinking.

As I mentioned before, internal linking helps search engines to find your other important pages. But you have to do it right.

Tip:

User shorter descriptive anchors text(try to keep them between 3 to 4 words)

10. Avoid over-optimizing external-link anchors

An SEO technique that is often abused is the over-optimization of anchor texts pointing to a post.

This will hurt a post's search engine optimization performance so avoid keyword stuffing your anchor.

Our pro advice is to use variations of your post title key terms including synonyms and search intent. For example, if your post title is "shop for a car online," try using these anchors:

• purchasing online
• buying cars from the internet
• online vehicle shopping
• car buyers
• the blog post URL
• your blog name

Also, search online for why people buy automobiles online and include those as those too.

Important

External anchor-text include both anchor links from your website and other websites.

11. Don't forget font, text spaces, design optimization

With Google including users' experience as part of their algorithm, you need to optimize design elements like font size, text spaces, etc.

This search engine optimization step might look minor but your goal is to give your blog post the best chance of outranking other sites when everything is equal.

Tricks:

• On your website navigation menu, making sure that you keep links short and descriptive to fit in one line horizontally is recommended.
• Your navigation menu lists should also have enough space between them for better reading on mobile
• For paragraphs font-size go for 15 px to 18 px
• H1 and your Post Title should have larger font sizes than H2,H3, etc. H2 font size should be bigger than H3, H4, etc. Got the gist?
• Headers font sizes should always be bigger than paragraphs font sizes
• Always confirm that your design optimizations are responsive on mobile
• etc

12. Use SEO-friendly website platforms/themes

We always recommend that bloggers use WordPress with a simple theme for blogging.

This is because WordPress has a lot of SEO- friendly functionality that makes it easy for both beginners and experienced bloggers.

They took care of a lot of the basics.

13. Utilize tools to improve ranking

If you want to improve SEO on blog posts, you need to use tools.

It is a strategy that many pros use to get their content to dominate the first page.

You don't have to use all SEO tools but you need to be using some if you are serious about driving traffic to your blog posts .

The tools will help you in competitors analysis, see search term & phrases volume, external and internal link tasks, etc.

List of Blog SEO tools(Table)

Name	Description
SEM Rush	Great for keyword research, competitors analysis, etc
Perfmatters	A popular plugin that will help boost up your website speed
Advanced Database Cleaner	Great plugin to clean your site database to help increase speed
Google Trends	Great tool to help you find rising and top queries in various locations.
ScreamingFrog	Use to crawl your websites to find technical SEO issues to fix on your blog
Google Search Console	Help you submit your blog sitemap to Google, track links, keywords, etc

Go SEO your posts

Producing amazing blog content is not enough, you need to optimize them too if you want to get them to page one of the search engine result pages.

There are various ways to optimize your content to rank on page one. The blog SEO best practices and tips discussed above works.

So if you apply the tips properly - mobile, title, URL, anchor text, font size, natural language optimization, etc, we are positive that you should see some improvement in your content ranking.

Do you need help or have questions about any of the blog posts SEO optimization steps mentioned? Contact us!