11 Actionable Blog SEO Tips to Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

The first step in any SEO strategy is to choose keywords to target. If you optimize your website content for a specific and lengthy keyword phrase – known as a long tail keyword – you’ll have less competition from other pages. Keep in mind, though, that the more niche the keyword is, the less search volume it will have. This means that – even if you’re at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for that keyword – it might not bring much traffic to your website.

On the other hand, shorter, more generic keywords with a high search volume – known as short tail keywords – tend to have more competition. While ranking highly for these search terms will gain you a lot of traffic, it’s more challenging to get the top spot.

Match Users’ Search Intent

Aside from the competition and search volume of your keyword, you need to consider the relevance of the keyword to your target audience. Relevant keywords will encourage the people you want to attract to stay on your blog posts and site for longer and take desirable actions!

To choose relevant keywords, you need to consider the search intent of your target audience: why are they searching? For blogs, users are typically looking for informational content. In this instance, it’s good to find keyword phrases that include “what is…” or “how to…” and shape your blog content around these.

Finding Your Keywords

Finding keywords that tick all your boxes is a balancing act, which is why it’s important to be intentional with your choices and carry out proper keyword research. For example, if you target keywords that have:

• High relevancy, high competition, and high traffic, you’ll end up with high-value traffic, which is very difficult to secure
• High relevancy, low competition, and low traffic, and you’ll have high-value traffic, but very little of it!

There are plenty of free SEO tools you can use to find your keywords – I’d recommend Google’s Keyword Planner, but most tools have a similar interface. Simply type a relevant phrase into the search bar, and you’ll see a list of related keywords alongside their search data. The key data you’ll want to pay attention to is the search volume (often presented as “volume”) and the level of competition (also worded as “keyword difficulty”).

More in-depth tools like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool will provide you with information on the search intent, which will help you find keywords that target people wanting to buy, or those simply looking for information.

Backlinks are formed when another site includes links pointing to your pages.

The simplest way to understand the importance of backlinks is to think of them as a vote of confidence. When another page links to your blog, it’s effectively telling Google: “I’m linking to this page because its content is great.”

This is why being proactive about getting backlinks to your blog posts can be a smart idea. Here are some top tips and ideas for how to do this:

• Approach other websites and blogs about guest posting on their website, so you can include a backlink in your post
• Collaborate with influencers and industry experts to grow your reach
• Engage in content promotion and outreach strategies, sharing your blog content with other publications so they can write about and link back to it
• Participate in online forums and naturally link back to your website

Internal links are links on your blog pages that link to your other blog posts or other parts of your website. Google has an index of website pages that it uses to produce search results, and to find and sort the content of its index, it relies on links. Internal links will not only make it easier for Google to find your content, but also to recognise the “themes” your site covers and connections between your pages – all of which raises the chance of your blog posts appearing in the SERPs.

Internal linking is a vital SEO practice, since it helps search engines to understand your content.

From your site visitors’ perspective, internal links will encourage them to stay on your site for longer – especially when they’re actively trying to expand their knowledge on a topic. They’ll also improve your site’s navigation and introduce users to pages they may not have come across from a search query.

The clickable text that leads to another page is called anchor text, and it can have a direct impact on your SEO. To optimize your anchor text, ensure:

• It’s clear, concise, and descriptive of the page it leads to
• It includes a keyword that the page it leads to is targeting
• All links maintain a consistent anchor text style

Metadata can simply be described as data about data. Your blog metadata is all the data that is usually automated behind the scenes when you create a new post. Search engines use metadata to build a picture about the relevancy and key themes of your content.

This means that it isn’t just what’s written on your blog that impacts how you rank on search engines. You can also edit the metadata for each blogpost to make sure it’s optimized for search. Let’s explore the kinds of metadata (known as meta tags) that you should focus on.

Meta Title

Your meta title appears on the SERP as a blue link. While it may seem similar to your H1 (the title of your blog post), the two titles serve different purposes and should be unique from each other.

Google places a lot of importance on the wording of this title when ranking its search results, and it’s also one of the first snippets of information searchers see about your page, so it’s important to get it right. To avoid your meta title getting cut off in the SERPs, it should be between 30 and 60 characters. 

Keep it concise and compelling to encourage users to click through, but don’t overexaggerate or use clickbait – inaccurate titles will hinder your reputation and shorten the amount of time users spend on your pages.

Your primary keyword should be included as near to the start as possible, since Google puts more weight on the beginning of your title when ranking. If you can include your secondary keyword towards the middle of your title – great! But don’t force it in unnaturally – this will be considered keyword stuffing.

Meta Descriptions

Your meta description appears underneath the meta title on the search results page, and gives users an idea of what your page is about. To make sure it all shows in full, keep it between 120 and 160 characters.

When writing meta descriptions, follow the same rules as with meta titles: frontload your keywords. You’ll have more room to play with here, so try to include multiple long tail keywords that your blog post is targeting.

Adapt Your Metadata For Social Media

Metadata will also show when you, or others, share your blog posts on another platform, such as X or Facebook.

A key difference is that social media users won’t be coming across your blog through related search results. Instead, they may see it while passively scrolling through their news feed or viewing your account. To maximize your traffic from these sources, I’d recommend tailoring a unique social media appearance for your blog posts.

SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and Rank Math will allow you to add separate meta titles, images, and descriptions specifically for social media.

Would you buy from a website that you don’t trust? Probably not. Would you regularly return to a blog that Google warns you is not secure? Probably not!

But it’s a two-way street – as well as keeping visitors on your blog, you also don’t want to put your website at risk of malicious hacks and malware. Securing your website is a crucial step to protect yourself and encourage your readers to trust your site.

The first step is to get an SSL certificate. This certificate basically shows those who visit your website who owns the site, offering transparency and further developing trust. It also highlights the fact that there is a secure connection between their personal device and the website, which is especially beneficial in ecommerce settings.

Search engines such as Google value transparency, and will give a little boost to your site’s rankings if it has an SSL certificate.

Writing compelling blog posts is a hard skill to master, so if you’ve got that down, you’re half way there. But on average, a user only tends to stay on a blog post for 52 seconds, so to keep your audience engaged, you have to make your writing as readable as possible. 

That means saying goodbye to large chunks of content and hello to tables, images, bolding, bullet points, and headers. This doesn’t mean you have to reduce or simplify your content, just reformat it in a way that will make it easy to read or scan.

Including a range of images will enhance your blog’s readability and overall user experience, but if you don’t optimize those pictures correctly, they can actually have the opposite effect.

According to our website load-time statistics, images count for 55.9% of a website’s page size, so using lots of large, high-quality images can drastically slow down page load times. Search engines can penalize you for this, because it creates a poor visitor experience.

You can optimize images for web performance by compressing the images you use, which will help speed up load times, and, therefore, positively impact how your blog posts place in Google’s search results.

When adding images to your blog posts, remember to:

1. Use images that are highly relevant to your content and add value
2. Use image file names and titles to tell search engines exactly what an image is
3. Use image alt descriptions to further describe an image and add context – these are also used by screen readers, meaning they make your website more accessible to those using them

Duplicating content is a common SEO mistake that can confuse search engines and hugely hinder your website pages’ visibility – and that goes for your blog posts too. Duplicating content on your own website is a form of what’s known as cannibalization (targeting the same keywords with two or more pages).

There are three main reasons why it’s a no-go:

1. Search engines don’t know which content was the original and should be included in their indices
2. Search engines don’t know whether to direct the link metrics to one page or split it between the multiple versions
3. Search engines don’t know which version to rank in search results

As duplicate content tends to confuse search engines, when it occurs, it will typically damage the rankings of all versions.

You’ll probably have spotted that SERPs don’t just present a list of webpages. To help users find the best answers efficiently, search engines highlight information in a number of formats. If your blog posts are featured in these elements, they’ll be pushed to the top of the SERP, which will increase your click through rate (CTR) and add authority to your blog.

Sounds good? Here are the two SERP features you should be aware of when blogging:

Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is an excerpt from a webpage that appears right at the top of the SERP and includes a link to the source below. When a user clicks on the link, they’ll automatically be taken to the part of the page the featured excerpt appears on. On average, featured snippets receive 35.1% of all clicks on the SERPs.

Featured snippets commonly appear in four ways:

• Tables
• Paragraphs
• Lists
• Videos

AI Overviews

In 2024, AI Overviews were thrown into the mix. These AI-generated summaries pull from multiple sources across the web to answer queries in a digestible and direct manner. When they appear (in around 30% of searches), they show above featured snippets and take up a considerable amount of the SERP. A 2025 study has shown that the first cited article in an AIO has a CTR of 38.9% and the second is 29.5%, which are on par with the first organic search result.

How to Appear In SERP Features

Snippets and AI Overviews appear most often on the SERPs of informational queries, which means that your blog posts will be a strong candidate!

Here are my top tips for the best chance at appearing in SERP features:

• Add structured data, also known as schema markup, to tell Google what your blog posts are about and encourage it to rank them in relevant queries. Our guide to ecommerce schema will show you what this is and how to implement it, although you’ll only need to focus on article schema for blogging!
• Write in a clear and professional manner: Google uses snippets to provide accurate answers to its searches, so it won’t include any opinion-based text.

This is one blog SEO tip you’re probably doing already – encouraging engagement on your blog! But did you know that engagement with your content will help boost your search engine rankings too? This is achieved in several different ways, ranging from user comments adding additional context, all the way through to the knock-on impact of engaged users being more likely to share or link to your content.

Here are some tips for promoting engagement with your blog content:

• Optimize your website navigation to make it easier for visitors to find relevant content
• Encourage comments and discussion on your blog posts
• Offer content suggestions that are related and relevant
• Ensure fast and responsive website performance

Search engines like Google love fresh content. Why? Because they want to serve their users with the best and most relevant information. So, it stands to reason that the more up to date your information is, the more likely Google is to rank it highly.

Let’s put it this way. If you are looking for a how-to guide on that frustrating new bit of HR software you just purchased, would you want a walk through that was published in the last few weeks, or one that was created back in 2014?

The older blog post may not cover all of the software’s most recent features, and may contain advice that is no longer considered best practice. Whereas the newer post is more likely to offer advice that’s up to date and relevant.

Fresh content doesn’t just mean publishing new blog posts all the time (although you should certainly do this). It also means going back to old, popular blog posts and updating them in-line with new information such as stats, discoveries, changing trends, and best practices. We walk you through website updates in our dedicated guide.

When you update your blog posts, be sure to nod towards the old information when possible. This demonstrates that you’ve built knowledge over time, which Google loves! For example, instead of simply changing the opening hours of a wine bar you reviewed, you should say something along the lines of: “Il Vino reduced its opening hours from three days per week to two days per week in November. You’ll now be able to visit from 14:00 to 21:00 on Friday and Saturday.”

When reviewing your content, you will also want to ensure that any broken links are fixed, since this can impact your search engine rankings. Using a free tool such as Broken Link Checker can help you quickly and easily check your website for broken links.

Whether you’re considering starting a blog or want to improve the one you’ve already got, blog SEO can help you to connect with a wider audience. With the search landscape changing and AI on the rise, it’s important to focus on creating content that can be featured in AI Overviews.

If you’re wondering whether Google still cares about blogs in 2025, the answer is yes. AI Overviews bring new challenges when it comes to getting your blog noticed in the SERPs, but if you follow my 11 blog SEO tips, you’ll be able to improve your blog’s visibility and connect with new readers.