If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time at all, you know that blog visibility is essential. Simply put, your content isn’t an effective marketing tool if no one sees it. 

Too often, blogs get lost in the content black hole that is the internet. An optimized blog post will give your brand increased visibility, drive traffic to your website, and build your online credibility. What’s more is that a blog is an excellent vehicle for conversion.

Here are 7 essential tips to optimize your blog posts and increase blog visibility:

1. Attention grabbing title
2. Key phrase density
3. Improve readability score
4. Write a web excerpt
5. Include a meta description
6. Prepare your featured image
7. Internal and external link distribution

1. WRITING A TITLE THAT DELIVERS

Your blog title is responsible for grabbing attention and enticing people to read your post. The most effective titles are captivating, SEO friendly, and capable of providing a ton of value to your target audience.

Take a look at these types of attractive titles that the internet loves!

• How to guides
• Listicles
• Where, what, why
• X…vs…Y
• Mistakes to avoid

The more specific you are, the better.

But, no matter how fascinating your title is, you must ensure that your content delivers on the promise you have stated. This is going to keep people reading and coming back. Afterall, what’s the point of writing a blog if it isn’t going to build your reputation and grow your business?

2. KEY PHRASE DENSITY

Set a focus keyphrase for each blog post; this is what you want to rank for. Yes, it should be researched, however, placement and density, in my opinion, is far more important.

First, you want to make sure that each blog post has its own unique keyphrase. Using the same keyphrases in multiple blog posts will hinder your ability to rank because it will be perceived as duplicate content.

Now you need to ensure you keyphrase is present in the following places:

• Title
• The first sentence
• Meta description and alt text
• At least three other times in your post (this is known as keyphrase density)

3. IMPROVE READABILITY SCORE

I could (and probably will) write a post solely on readability as there’s a bit of skill to this. Take these three thing into account and you’re off to a good start:

• The best performing blog posts are between 500 and 1000 words in length.
• Use subheadings to break up content into digestible sections. Each section should be no more than 300 words.
• Don’t start two consecutive sentences with the same word.

4. WRITE A WEB EXCERPT

Not to be confused with a meta description. We’ll get to that next. Web excerpts are technically optional, but not if you want to improve your blog visibility. A web excerpt plays a big role in the blog page as a whole on your website. 

Each blog post has its own unique url. It looks something like this: https://nicolamarrison.com/2022/03/28/13-words-to-avoid-in-your-digital-marketing/ 

All of your blog posts live on a web page, like a library. This is where people can browse through all of your amazing content and can even search categories and specific tags. That page may look something like this: https://nicolamarrison.com/blog/

Now we can see how a web excerpt comes into play. It’s a few lines that summarize what each post is about. Without a web excerpt, your blog page will display the whole post! Imagine you have 50 posts. Who is going to scroll 50 posts worth of content on one page? That’s right, no one.

5. INCLUDE A META DESCRIPTION

These are the short snippets of text that appear in search results, and they are very important. They help search engines, like Google, match appropriate keywords so that it can deliver the content the user has requested. The content of these two or three lines will be read, this time by a human, who will decipher whether or not this is a page they want to visit.

Take your meta description seriously (just like your title)! Use your keyphrase and aim for a general length between 130-155 characters. There’s a tendency these days to fill meta descriptions with keywords just for the sake of satisfying the algorithms. Yet this is such a waste of conversion potential. Your meta description is a golden opportunity to connect with your ideal audience on an emotional level – use it to inspire and spark a reaction, without missing the point of your blog post.

6. PREPARE YOUR FEATURED IMAGE

Images can help readers better understand your content and become more familiar with you as a brand. Brand identity is first and foremost, visual. The use of a feature image will help your post attract more attention on social media and make it more shareable, thus, increasing your visibility.

Original photos are encouraged, but that might not always be possible. That’s ok too. You can use stock photos. I do! Pexels is my go-to for free stock photos and I use Social Squares for paid images.

Pssst…don’t forget to include an alt text!

7. LINK ETIQUETTE

Links are words that act as hypertext to take the reader to a different page on the internet.

Naturally, you want to keep your readers engaged on your own site. These are internal links. But you should also link out to other websites. I know, I know, you’ve worked so hard to get someone onto your website why would you send them away? Don’t worry, they’ll come back if you’re posting – and sharing – high quality content that they’re interested in.

TIP: Set outbound links to open in a new window.

Here’s a cheeky tip if you’re struggling with external links – add a call to action to follow you on social media, which reminds me…are you following @cupsofcopy?

Aim for one external link and two internal links in each blog post to increase your blog visibility.

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Remember, blogging isn’t just about writing great content ­— if no one is able to find your content, you might as well be writing in your diary. It’s important to ensure that you cover all the aspects of SEO and social media in a way that easily allows people to find your content.