• Services
  • About
  • Work
  • Ideas
  • Contact
hello@bearcontent.co.uk
Client Photo Galleries
Bear ContentBear Content
Bear ContentBear Content
  • Services
  • About
  • Work
  • Ideas
  • Contact

SEO checklist to implement in just 5 minutes (to get your blog content found by Google)

15/05/2021 Posted by Martin Bamford Ideas

In this blog post, a highly effective 8-point SEO checklist to apply to every blog post you write to get your content found by Google.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Philosophical questions aside, a similar principle applies to posting blog content on your website. If you publish a blog and no one is around to read it, was it worth writing in the first place?

Anyone who writes blog content for their website needs to ensure it is found.

There are several ways of improving the discoverability of your blog posts; you can share them with your network on social media, include links in emails to your clients, or run paid online adverts.

But Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a must for improving the chances that Google (other search engines are available) will share your blog post with its users when they type in a relevant search term.

8 SEO checklist items to consider

SEO is about making it easy for search engines to present your content in response to a keyword search about your content.

If your business sells accessories for pink kittens, and you write blogs on the subject, you want Google to send people your way when they search for ‘pink kitten accessories’. (Editor: Please make sure this blog post doesn’t rank for pink kitten accessories).

So, how can you ensure that your blog posts rank for the relevant keyword or phrase? There’s an SEO checklist for that!

Before we enter the SEO checklist

Before I dive into the 8 SEO checklist items I believe you should be ticking off each time you publish a blog, a few critical points to consider.

Firstly, optimising an individual blog post is unlikely to get you incredible results in isolation.

I’m a huge advocate of building a ‘long tail’ of blog content, each targeting a specific keyword or keyphrase. You might not win big from one of these blog posts, but a small amount of traffic driven to a large amount of content is a winning strategy for sure.

Secondly, please take some time to get your site in good order before investing time in optimising individual blog posts.

You need to make sure your website loads quickly, is secure (HTTPS?), and is easy to navigate.

Do this simple website maintenance before diving into my SEO checklist to get much better results.

With that said, here we go.

1 – Start with the right keywords!

The perfect SEO keywords for your blog post are a) relevant to your business, b) searched for in sufficient quantity to make the effort worthwhile, and c) with a low level of competition from other blog posts targeting the same keywords.

A useful tool here is Google Keyword Planner. While designed for building Google Ads, this free tools offers valuable insight when planning keywords.

Click on Get Search Volume and Forecasts, enter one or more of your keywords, and click Get Started.

The results will show you the average monthly searches along with the competition for your keywords.

For the search term ‘SEO checklist’, we see there are 1k-10k monthly searches (on average) and ‘medium’ competition.

The Holy Grail here is a high search volume (100k plus) and a ‘low’ competition level, but I’ll happily settle for at least a thousand searches a month and medium competition for a relevant keyword.

2 – Choose the right title

Your chosen keywords should feature in the title of your blog post, preferably at the start.

Resist the temptation to make the title of your blog post your keywords alone.

While you want the title to be attractive to the search engines, it’s arguably more important that website visitors and social media followers are suitably motivated to click through to read more.

We use various tools to come up with ideas for blog post titles, but our favourite harnesses the power of AI to write titles.

The title of this blog post? It was written by AI.

3 – Write at least 300 words

Search engines are extremely unlikely to rank your blog content if it is too short.

300 words seems to be the lower end of what Google and others will consider before presenting your blog content in their search results.

Why are more words better when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation?

The more you write, the more words you give the search engines to understand your content better.

Please don’t write more for the sake of it. Only add more words if they genuinely add to the understanding of your subject.

4 – Make your slug your keyphrase

What’s a slug?? The words that appear after your website address, with a hyphen between them. That’s your slug.

In the case of this blog post, where we are optimising for SEO checklist, the slug becomes /seo-checklist.

5 – Add an optimised image

I’ve always considered this a bit of a sneaky SEO tactic, but it seems to be well tolerated by the search engines.

When you add an image or featured image to your blog post, include your chosen keywords as the a) file name, b) image title, c) alt tag (the part that helps visually impaired readers access your content via a screen reader), and d) the image descriptions.

First and foremost, you need to use relevant alt tags for your image that are descriptive of the image itself – especially if you use multiple images in a blog post.

But including your chosen keywords, where appropriate, can be a huge help as you tick off the items on your SEO checklist.

6 – Include the keywords in your blog post!

When search engines ‘read’ the content of your blog post, they are looking for the number of times your keywords appear.

Depending on the word count of your blog post, you might need to include your keywords on multiple occasions.

Getting the right keyword density is a case of including your keywords as 0.5% to 3% of your word count.

For example, for a 1,000-word blog post, be sure to include your keywords between 5 and 30 times.

Take care not to over optimise by including your keywords too often, especially in shorter word count blogs, where this mistake is easily made.

7 – Optimise your meta tags

Meta tags are the items of code ‘read’ by search engines and often displayed in search results to give prospective readers a flavour of what you are about to cover.

Your meta description doesn’t necessarily drive better search engine optimisation, but it can help improve your ‘click-through rate’ when search engines present your blog post as a result.

The better your click-through rate, the more likely search engines will display your blog as one of the first results.

Keep your meta description to a maximum of 155 characters. A tactic I like to use, which seems to improve the click-through rate, offers an incomplete meta description, finishing with a…

Curiosity drives clicks!

8 – Add some outbound links

Where appropriate, include links to external websites.

Linking to external sources helps improve your blog post’s credibility, so include at least one outbound link to anything relevant you reference.

What’s missing from this SEO checklist?

In writing this blog post, I’m conscious that SEO is a huge area and constantly changing too.

The 8-point SEO checklist shared here works incredibly well based on my personal experience and would be a significant enhancement for any blog post where little attention was previously paid to SEO.

But what else would you add? What SEO best practices to you include each time you write a blog post?

Would you like a free download PDF checklist for handy reference? Click on the image below!

Your SEO Checklist from Bear Content

Related Posts:

  • Simple website mistakes you can fix in a few minutes
    Simple website mistakes you can fix in a few minutes
  • 5 essential website SEO elements
    5 essential website SEO elements
  • Don't Waste Your Time or Money: Get the Most Value Out of Your Content Marketing
    Don't Waste Your Time or Money: Get the Most Value Out of…
Share

About Martin Bamford

Martin Bamford is Founder and CEO of Bear Content. Martin is an award-winning Chartered Financial Planner and documentary film maker, and a best-selling author. He's hosted more than 1,000 podcast episodes and is an avid YouTuber, as well as being a Certified Professional Photographer and CAA-licensed drone operator.

Contact Us

We're currently offline. Send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Send Message
Do you need some digital content? Let's chat!
Bear Content Logo
  • Services
  • About
  • Work
  • Ideas
  • Contact

Bear Content is a trading style of Bamford Media Ltd.

Trademark Surrey Hills

Our Latest Ideas.

  • How I Got 500,000 Podcast Downloads: My 5 Top Tips Revealed
  • Why Visual Content Marketing Is More Important Than Ever
  • Why you should stop measuring social media success by likes
  • Don’t Waste Your Time or Money: Get the Most Value Out of Your Content Marketing
  • 6 Platinum Jubilee Content Marketing Tips For Small Businesses: Make Your Marketing Jubilant

book a call.

We would love to help you with the creation of compelling content that will engage your audience, build trust, drive traffic and generate leads.

You can schedule a 30-minute Zoom call in Martin’s calendar here.

badge

get in touch.

  • Bear Content
  • Sundial House, 20 High Street, Cranleigh, Surrey, GU6 8AE
  • 01483 904092
  • hello@bearcontent.co.uk
  • www.bearcontent.co.uk

© 2022 · Bear Content.

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT