thirteen Things We Learned from 10 Years of Writing search engine optimisation Friendly Blog Posts

Posted On Aug 31, 2021 By admin With Comments Off

We have written and optimized- for our own blog or other sheets- thousands of articles and SEO friendly blog positions within the last 10 years. What better practice to learn from past successes and mistakes? We’d like to share them with you , not just as a holiday gift, but mainly because sharing our insights with others is what manufactures us and the people around us greatest and most resilient.

Google’s the regulations and modernizes changed way too many times to be worth include and the contents columnists on this blog have changed a lot as well, trying to uncover Google’s mystery carton. We’ve lost load, mane, nerves, and fund in the process but guess us, we have learned a lot and most of the times the hard way.

So, we’re going to expose ourselves in a vulnerable difficulty; more, if such articles saves you from echoing some mistakes we did, we certify ourselves joyous.

Things we learned from writing SEO articles

The end of the year is usually a time to reminisce and reflect on the time that now passed and hopefully extract some extent of wisdom- no matter how small-scale- to take into the new time. For many of us, 2021 will be different, since we’ve likely had to go through this exercise a lot earlier than the end of the year.

So, we decided to look even further back, in hopes that the lessons we find will speak to something greater than the general terribleness of this year.

We’ve run an SEO blog for ten years now. And we’ve learned one or two things along the way. Here are 13 of them( yes 13, in 2020 ):

Optimize Everything from URLs to Conclusions Don’t Assume Anything! Check Grammar, Facts, Quotes Being Consistent Is Difficult. It’s Also the Key to Success Originality Is Good, but so Is Content Update Google Algorithms Come and Go, Quality Content Stays Creativity Is A Lot of Hard Work Questions Are More Handy than Answers Forget Academic Writing Solve Your Readers’ Problems , not Your Dilemmas The Title of the Article Will Influence Its Performance Write Less but Write Better Write Less, Promote More Stick to Your Principles

Optimize Everything from URLs to Inferences

I know, you already got this: you know that you need to have well optimized content, meaning that you need to use your targeted keyword within the title formerly and the body content at least ten experiences and Google will have no other select than rank your content. And if it doesn’t, well, we all know that Google sucks so, it’s their fault.

Of course, this is an exaggeration. But it has a grain of truth in it.

As search marketing changed, “were having” evolved as well as learned what both our readers and Google expect from us.

We all know that optimized material is the key to success. But optimization shouldn’t stop at the body of the content. You was necessary to optimize 😛 TAGEND

The Title The URL The Meta Description The Slug The Images The Internal Links The Outbound Links The Text Length The Article Main Image

We used to overlook some of these components. Or, at least we did not give them the claim relevance. This is how we culminated up with URLs like this: https :// cognitiveseo.com/ blog/ 26/ the-best-link-building-blogs-experts-and-their-tutorials-from-2 011/ or with three articles published one after another having the names: How to Get Links, How to Earn Links and How to Acquire Links.

You’ll find plenty of material on this blog on how to optimize all of those prompted above, so we won’t insist too much here. But here are some resources you are able to find useful 😛 TAGEND

SEO Writing for Copywriters

Internal Linking Strategy

Title& URL Influence on Rankings Research

Link Building Campaigns

How to Write SEO Friendly Titles

Don’t Assume Anything! Check Grammar, Facts, Quotes

Do you know what Euripides and my manager have in common? They are both stuck in my psyche echoing this sentence: Question everything!

While this might be an self-evident one, take a sincerity test: when was the last meter you double or triple checked a well-known fact? Even the basic ones like: cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis or Eskimos have dozens of words for blizzard. You know this, so you use them in your content without checking them again.

Whether it’s a well-known SEO fact, a very famous quote or an self-evident grammar regulate, double check it.

Some time ago we published an article that talked about Wikipedia and whether pushing can be made on the large-hearted encyclopedia’s locate. And as an example, we offered Gibraltar.

We were super excited about the essay and we thought it would arouse a great deal of squabbles. And it did. Yet, the apple of discord wasn’t whether you can inject advertising, but whether Gibraltar is a country or not. It is a territory quarrelled between UK and Spain, we knew that, but we assumed that if it has its own capital and money, it must be a country. Well, it’s not and we had to stop and moderate the comments slouse due to this issue. We modified the screenshot and changed “country” into “territory” but, too little too late.

gibraltar country

We likewise had our share of” grammar dishonor” from our useds. Some more years ago, we published a few cases patches( that we acquired were written accurately from a grammar point of view) and we got some emails from our readers that weren’t so flattering.

We had wasted so much time in doing experiment, documenting and reading a lot, and what parties noticed first were the grammar mistakes.

Of course, we were proud enough to assume that we knew grammar, and that it wasn’t what should have mattered first. But a few cases emails from our customers later, we decided to collaborate with an English teacher. And that was one of the best decisions we made.

When it comes to grammar, things are a bit tricky, we are familiar. If your first language is not English, chances are you’ll need someone to look over your content. At least in the beginning, to give you some advice. Even if you’re one of those who becomes overboard when redressing grammar mistakes, a fresh look is always a good idea.

Because you want your sections, your search, your blog to become an authority in your market, and this would be almost impossible with typos or wording corrects in your classic.

If someone else is checking your work, that doesn’t construct you less of a content columnist or copywriter. It will do you a better one.

Being Consistent Is Difficult. It’s Also the Key to Success

Ever wondered why so many TV registers which go on forever sooner or later have a significant drop in quality?

Coming up with a good idea can happen to any of us. Coming up with a good thought every week for years and times? That takes more than creativity.

It takes hard work and punish and accepting the fact that some weeks it’s going to be a lot harder than others. But the important thing is to keep going and restrain wanting to put out good work. Things aren’t always going to be in a straight line. Difficult ages are followed by better ones. And sometimes the best honors come after a period of struggling and pushing through.

Do you determine the screenshot below? It’s a pretty nice growth, isn’t it? It’s a screenshot of cognitiveSEO’s visibility taken away from our Site Explorer.

The chart below examinations this good because what the hell is did two things 😛 TAGEND

We published constantly( we published at least once a week) We optimized everything referred to in this previous section, from URLs to conclusions.

cognitiveseo increase

( I be recognized that I gaze at the following chart from time to time when my incitement is gone, or I stall too much .)

Yes, we also worked our Content Optimizer a good deal and it use great for us. But we were consistent the majority of members of all.

We published regularly and we optimized everything for each and every article, be it an in-depth research or a short case study.

And it did been paid.

Originality Is Good, but so Is Content Update

Coming up with original ideas is no doubt key to progress. But so is updating existing ones, despite being less glamorous.

Gaining knowledge tends to happen in small-time and uncertain steps, rather than in leaps and bounds. Part of the process is refining and testing existing lore. Which is why we’ve often opted to update commodities and research rather than start from scratch.

And it turned out to be a very good decision. We even concluded an article on how material optimization increased our SEO visibility big time.

The results are summed up in the chart below.

Keyword rankings after optimization

You surely have articles that are not relevant anymore. Or investigate you’ve worked so hard on, but now it is not bringing anything in terms of traffic.

Instead of giving them decomposed, try to resuscitate them, if it stimulates ability. You’ll prevail more traffic and improve your overall blog quality.

Worst case scenario, this strategy won’t bring you much more traffic but at least you’ll have your blog articles up to date.

Google Algorithms Come and Go, Quality Content Stays

This is similar to the one knock wonder music bands.

We all remember the musical thump, we sing it at birthday gatherings for a period of time, hitherto we probably won’t buy the album just for that tune.

Same thing may happen to your material. If you want your books to be addressed your blog/ firebrand/ call as regards the topic and put you in the trustworthy material list, make a habit out of deliver quality.

As the saying moves, we are what we frequently do.

Excellence is not an act, but a habit.

You’ve written a blog post and you have thousands of shares and gratitudes? That’s a great. Yet, that one-time performance won’t maintain you on the top for long. To the contrary, once you’ve set the bar high, you need to keep up with it to have killer content.

And yes, Google Updates are a draconian actuality. Yet, we have thousands of books, consumers, consumers, and it rarely happened for very good quality content to be penalized.

We’re not saying that it didn’t happen. Unfortunately, we’ve seen good quality being penalized. Yet, take this as a avoidance step.

If a polouse stopped you in traffic, would you be super confident that you “ve done nothing” wrong, or would you feel a bit panicked as you know you probably broke a few guidelines here and there?

Same with material and modernizes. I know, it’s waaaaaaay easier said than done, but try to write content in such manner, that if a quality update dads out, you won’t feel that scared.

But don’t give our name for granted. Here’s what Google says about what you should do when they update their algorithm.

google update recommendations

Creativity Is A Lot of Hard Work

The famed American television and radio host Larry King used to say to his audience a highly funny fib about his father.

He says that his father, of Ukrainian origins, came to the US thinking that America was the greatest land of all, where even the streets were paved with amber. Nonetheless, shortly after arriving, “his fathers” recognized three things 😛 TAGEND

The streets weren’t paved with amber. The streets weren’t paved at all. He was the one to pave the streets.

There’s a perilous cliche about imagination being the sort of lightning in a bottle phenomenon, young hip innovatives abiding late at night and coming up with wild doctrines out of thin air. And that’s … clearly a more exciting version than world.

But the truth is that so many times creativity is time and composure and incremental progress.

And it’s a collaborative struggle more than it is an individual one. Ultimately, you discover there is truth in the proverb that spontaneous things take a lot of preparation.

Don’t pressure yourself in being imaginative 100% of the time. You is likely to be creative most of the time, without even noticing.

And we know it’s easier said than done but even if you don’t feel like, write the show. Just start, and the rest will follow.

Larry’s King father was a great man, we’re sure of it. Yet, as inspirational as these success narrations are, this is what they tend to remain: stories.

Of course , not all of them. Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Questions Are More Useful than Answer

We’ve asked a lot of questions along its first year and we haven’t always been able to answer all of them.

Understanding the right question to ask is, more often than not, the more challenging task.

Getting access to large amounts of data is no longer a serious problem. What to do with the data will principally remain one for years to come.

So, whenever you want to perform research, or elaborate further on some stats, delight remember: it’s not just that statistical interpretation and analysis requires a certain skillset. There are also strategic and sometimes even ethical selects to be made about how to enclose the research results or even what to look at in the first place.

Over the years, we have performed investigate on billions of data points. And no, there is no exaggeration now. Literally billions of data points.

Each and every time we started having a question in thought we wanted to get an answer for; yet, approximately each and every time we realized along the way that we had asked the wrong question.

Of course, this is the beauty of research. But don’t be too proud when performing research. Even if your computer blocks after tens of Excel documents open, even though they are your stats application slams, never ignore the other questions that will pop up from the research.

Take from instance this research on the infuence of Title and URLs on positions. The initial strategy was to analyze a few hundred article deeds and see if and how a claim can influence rankings.

We intention up analyzing 35 k keywords in both Titles and URLs because we realized that what we should actually look for is the importance of a keyword’s occurrence in a title, URL, realm, subdomain and URI.

And as you can see in the chart below, in some cases, that huge amount of analyzed data told us…well…nothing relevant. Yet, it was still worth detect it.

title research cognitivveseo

Forget Academic Writing

We’re going to keep this short. When we talk about academic writing, we don’t consequently planned scientific articles.

But there’s a certain rigor to that writing which might not appeal to the general audience. This is not to say you should dumb things down.

There’s a simple, two-step approach for making this happen 😛 TAGEND

Read what you’ve written out loud. If some parts don’t sound like something you’d say to a friend in real life, then change it.

Solve Your Readers’ Difficulties , not Your Dilemmas

A lot of content comes from wanting to share experience. You know anything most other people- even those in your discipline- might not know. You are provoked about that and just wanted to spawn them aware of your recently gained profundity. The important thing to remember is that the focus should stay on sharing and not on you as the source of wisdom. That’s not to say your opinions have no place in your writing, on the contrary.

But ever ask yourself these 3 questions 😛 TAGEND

Will this info help my books better understand the subject? Will this info help my books better apply this knowledge for doing something practical? Will this info help me examine cool but not add anything valuable to this piece?

If the answer to the first two questions is a resounding “Yes”, then you should definitely include that patch of information in your copy. If the answer to these questions is “No” and the only “Yes” comes from the third question, well … you’ve got yourself a pretty good conversation opener for the next party.

The Title of the Article Will Influence Its Performance

We’re not talking here exclusively about the fact that keywords used in the claims of your imitate have a high ranking importance. We’ve deported a study where it seems that keyword impression in the claim makes a clear difference between ranking 1st or 2nd. But also about the “catchiness” ingredient. And no, I am not talking about click bite designations, but about deeds that are relevant in your industry.

We’ve published so much, and some content cross-file success while some didn’t, but one thing is sure: if it has anything related to Google in the title, it’s going to perform pretty well.

When comparing any study, experiment, belief commodity that we’ve published to one that has ” Google” in the designation, chances are that the latter will get the most traffic, shares, links, etc.

So, you might be thinking: why don’t you contribute “Google” in all entitles? And now we come back to the previous phases mentioned here: we don’t want to do sound bait exclusively; we want to be relevant, to offer quality and respect for our readers.

When creating the name of your material, you should really belief things through, as the title must not be only relevant and beautiful but likewise SERP friendly.

Write Less but Write Better

I am sure you’ve noticed this as well for years: fluff content in most of the industries( specially digital sell ).

There seems to be very little focus on SEO, audiences, shifts, and how sections/ content will be helpful for the readers. All of these things is advisable to figured out BEFORE you write anything. It is obvious when something was written solely for an SEO goal ;P TAGEND

Without value, flub material isn’t going to help you even if you rank well for it.

There is no reason to create content so that you have it. You have to plan each part of content based on which gathering( s) you want to reach, what points you have for each part of content, how you will use it in social media to further your goals, and how you are hoping to rank.

This takes a lot of time and effort, but it is better than wasting time and resources on material that makes nothing to your company. Without evidence the ROI for your work, your work becomes expendable.

Write Less, Promote More

Don’t neglect content promotion. You might be overly focused on content marketing procedures. And that’s unquestionably a good investment!

However, a lot of content purveyors tend to skip the steps related to content promotion. We know, we did.

Without promotion, the majority of your work never reaches your targeted audience.

We recommend writing less and devoting more time to content promotion. Start your material hope by writing a list of canals and influencers that can help you contact more relevant customers and will allow you to start getting traffic and leads from each published affix.

promotional plan

source: multichannelmerchant.com

Stick to Your Principles

There will be many cases when you might be allured to write click-bait essays or write just for the sake of writing, without offering real value.

Because you’ll be looking at your opponents, and you’ll see that they might get results even with not-so-qualitative content. You’ll expend season, fund, and guts in well-documented experiments that will not always perform the way you demand. You will get angry, and you will swear you won’t devote another nighttime was just trying to introduce quality to the Internet world.

I am sure this happens to any content columnist at least once. Yet, if you do stick to your principles, if you do invest time and excellence in each and every article you write, it does pay off. These are not just empty words. Long duration try in material writing does pay off.

Don’t write anything you wouldn’t read.

There are no easy incomes, really. More, what matters at the end of the day is to have good long-term executions.

You might have read this article completely, or you’ve just browsed the main claims, saying to yourself: I knew that. Knowledge is strength. But what matters at the end of the day is what you do with that knowledge. All the actions you accomplish daily characterize who you are as a person, a marketer, or a business owner. So make sure your actions have an impact on something , no matter how large or small.

The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood once said that the internet is 95 percent porn and spam. So, let’s establish that 5% be damn good.

The post 13 Things We Learned from 10 Times of Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts saw first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics& Strategies.