How To Make Sure Your Blog Stands Out

Investing time and money in your website’s blog is all well and good but that doesn’t mean much if it gets little traction. So, it’s essential you make sure each piece of content you create stands out. This article outlines some of the ways you can optimise your blog to increase traffic and ensure it ranks better with leading search engines.

Stand out to Google

Like with most website content, your goal is probably to create blog posts that Google will rank highly. This means they can’t be your run-of-the-mill posts.

To stand out from competing blogs, make sure your posts include as much unique content as possible. This can be anything from accurate statistics to opinions and quotes that you’ve collected yourself. This will make your blog stand out as an authority and mean Google is more likely to feature it highly in the search results.

Google also appreciates blogs that are written with readability in mind. Freelance SEO consultant Amine Dahimene says, “to make your blog as readable as possible, each post should contain over 350 words, be written in correct English and most of your sentences should be under 20 words. Longer words and complicated sentence structures will make a blog harder to read, so avoid these where possible.”

Optimising your blog using alt descriptions on your images and including keywords in your meta titles and meta descriptions will also encourage Google to rank your blog.

Position your blog as an authority

This is a great tip if you’re just starting out on your blog as you can really focus it on a specific sector or audience. By ensuring each blog post is as focused as possible from the get-go, you really position it as an authority on your chosen topic.

If your blog has been around a while, that isn’t to say it’s impossible to rank well. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. With traffic already heading towards your site, Google is aware of its presence and it won’t necessarily take as long to gain traction. Ensure your content strategy includes posts that are relevant to your site and choose specific keywords that you want to rank for.

How long should a blog post be?

Well, the easy answer is that a blog should be as long as necessary to include all the relevant information. A bare minimum of 350 words tends to be the industry standard, but there isn’t a definitive maximum length. Its length will depend on what you’re writing about and how many words you need to put your point across. Of course, the more words and information you include, the more likely Google is to notice it.

Saying that, you should always keep in mind that quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. Don’t create 2,000-word blog posts if you can say it more concisely, as you’ll likely be repeating yourself and readers will be unimpressed. Adding alt information and making sure your blog is readable is just as important as its length, so don’t forget those.

Include strong imagery

Featuring strong imagery in your blog posts will make it more engaging and easier to read. Graphics come in particularly useful as you can use them to elaborate on written content. For example, including a pie chart or a Venn diagram to help emphasise your point.

If possible, create your own images and graphics rather than recycling ones you’ve found online. Adding this unique content makes your blog stand out even further, plus Google will be very impressed.

It’s also important to make sure each image is optimised for Google by including alt descriptions that clearly describe the image’s contents. This will increase your chances of the photos being included in Google Images results too.

Whilst Google should be kept in mind when it comes to images, don’t forget the user. Ensure your images aren’t too large otherwise they’ll make the blog slow to load and ensure they aren’t too tall, otherwise they’ll take over the whole page.

Photos courtesy of depositphotos.com