Blog Post SEO Tips: 5 Elements That Boost Rankings

Posted By: Kristi H  • Business Blogging
While there are tons of SEO optimization methods that can be implemented for websites, here are the ones that are a must have for your business blog if you want it to rank well for keywords and be visited by those who come across it in search results.

1. Blog Post Title Tag

Be sure to include an up to 60 character title tag () for not only your blog’s homepage, but for each and every post that includes your post’s main keywords.
This is important not just for SEO, but also for social media sharing of your post, as the post’s title is generally what gets tweeted, shared on Facebook walls, bookmarked, etc.

So make those 60 characters count, as that will be the first impression of your post in search results and on social networks.

2. Blog Post Meta Description

Though it is often debated about in terms of whether it is still important, I still always suggest that the blog’s homepage as well as individual posts have a great 160 character meta description ().

This is usually the description that will show up in search results as well as the description for your post when shared via Facebook and social bookmarking networks. It should, like the title tag, include your post’s main keywords and should be written as a sentence – the description should not be just a 170 character stuffing of keywords.
Self-Hosted WordPress Tip: To be able to enter your Title and Meta Description for each post, you need to have a SEO friendly WordPress theme such as Thesis or plugins such as the Platinum SEO Pack or All in One SEO Pack. Then just look for the Title and Description fields when you are writing and editing your blog post.

3. Blog Post URL

 

Along with the TITLE tag, the blog post URL should be optimized with your post’s main keywords to help boost them in search results.

As you can see from the below results for our link building expert interview series, the keywords that were searched for are bolded in both the title and blog URL which means the URL is noticed by Google. It also makes the listings stand out even more.
Self-Hosted WordPress Tip: Be sure when you start out your blog that you change the Permalinks (in your Admin Dashboard under the Settings) to include the post name using /%postname%/ in the custom structure.

You can learn more about custom structure tags for your blog post URL’s in the WordPress Codex.
Also, you can use the SEO Slugs plugin to automatically remove a, an, the and other unimportant words from your post’s URL which will leave only the keyword rich words behind.

4. Blog Post Images and Attributes

Images can be an important part of your blog post, as many people will be attracted to a post simply because of the image. It can also help you demonstrate your topic more thoroughly as well as break up the text in a post to make it easier to read.
When you add images to your post (your-keyword-image.jpg” ALT=”Your Keyword Image Description” TITLE=”Your Keyword Image Description” />), there are three ways you can boost your SEO optimization including:

• Image File Name – Be sure to have a descriptve, keyword rich file name for your image.
• Descriptive ALT Attribute – The ALT tag, which should also have your post’s keywords if possible, needs to be a concise description of the image. This is also the text that comes up if the image doesn’t load correctly on your blog post or is heard when a visually impaired reader using a screen visits your post.
• Descriptive TITLE Attribute – this one may not have much weight in SEO value, but allows you to inlcude your keywords (either the same as the ALT text or different ones) and shows as a tooltip when someone hovers over your image in certain browsers. The combination of the above elements will help your post images rank in Google Image Results…
  
  

As well as additional areas of Google search, such as the news results, which will also help the result stand out from the others no matter where it ends up in the top 10 listings…

5. Blog Post Header Tags

How important are your header tags (

Keyword Rich Heading

and

Keyword Rich Heading

)? First of all, they make your article easier to read by breaking the content up into easily scannable sections.

They also can help your post rank for specific keyword phrases and terms within search results.

As you can see from the above search result based on the header in this post, you also need to make sure the first bit of text after the header supports the keywords mentioned to get readers to want to click on the post to learn more.

Your Best Blog Post SEO Tips

These are some of the top optimization elements that I have seen lead to better search engine results positioning. What are some elements you include in your blog posts to ensure better rankings?