Most businesses don’t optimize blog posts.  Here are 7 things you can do to optimize a blog post so you can improve your ranking and attract more visitors.

Most businesses don’t optimize blog posts and therefore miss out on ranking and, by extension, organic traffic opportunities.  The good news is that there are 7 simple steps you can take to optimize a blog post so that you can improve your ranking and attract more visitors.

Step 1: Identify your keywords

Identify the keywords you are going to use in the blog post.  Once you have identified the keywords you want to use, write your blog post around these keywords.

Something to remember: while it is important to write the post around the keywords you have identified, you don’t want to stuff the post with the keywords.  You want to make sure your post is easy (and enjoyable) to read and doesn’t sound spammy.

Step 2: Optimize your title

Keep the title of your blog post under 60 characters.  Include your keywords in the title.

Step 3: Optimize your meta description

Your meta description doesn’t impact search results.  However, your meta description can improve click through rates (that is, it can increase the number of people who actually click on your link versus someone else’s).

When you write your meta description write it in a conversional (not spammy) manner and be sure to include your keywords.  In short, think about what would attract your target reader to your blog post, and write it here.  Try to keep your meta description to between 150 and 160 words.

Step 4: Optimize your heading

Using your keywords in the heading provides an SEO benefit and informs your visitor what your blog post is about.  Be sure to not just use a keyword phrase, instead use additional content around the keyword.

Step 5: Optimize the body of the post

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing use the keywords in the body of your post as a ranking signal.  That being said, don’t go overboard with using your keywords in the body of your content because too many occurrences of your keywords can be viewed as keyword stuffing.  Keyword stuffing can lead to search engines giving you a penalty and drop your organic rankings.  Additionally, no one wants to read a blog post that reads like spam.

The short and sweet: use your keywords, but don’t go overboard, and always remember to write first to your audience and then search engines.

Step 6: Optimize images

Image search is becoming more popular.  Write a SEO friendly title for your images.  It doesn’t hurt to also write a description that explains the blog post itself.

Step 7: Optimize the URL

When you use your blog title as the URL extension you can improve your click through rate.

If you haven’t optimized your blog posts in the past, the good news is that you can go back and optimize them.