Top 6 things Google will love you for when creating blog content
Here is a roundup of some of the best practices you can take when creating blog content that Google will love.
1. The longer the better...
The longer the copy, and the longer you can keep the reader engaged on the page for, the better! Between 800 - 1200 words as the ideal blog article length, based on experience. Any shorter and your content isn’t deemed informative enough.
2. Looks Matter!
How your words look on the page, as in how your article is structured, matters.
Research shows the average attention span is under 8 seconds. Which is less than that of a goldfish!
If you have large chunks of text, clumped together in clunky paragraphs, unfortunately people nowadays tend to disengage and just stop reading. Keep your paragraphs punchy, like I've done here and use lots of lovely line breaks between sentences.
3. Short. Snappy. Sentences
Sentence length is everything.
Whilst writing perfectly formed, grammatically flawless sentences with multiple participles and conjunctions is poetically awe-inspiring, Google doesn't like it! (See what we did there?) Compelling, not convoluted is the motto here. That means under 20 words.
4. Imagery helps blog content massively
When creating blog content, use of video and photography interspersed between text will help with points 1 and 2 above by increasing 'dwell time' (how long someone spends on the page/site).
And, if optimised properly, will help with SEO even more. This means using appropriate (keyword relevant) alt tags, ensuring that the format is JPEG 2000 or something equally as compressing, and using lots of brand-relevant colours so they 'POP'!
5. Keep your keywords in mind
Think of a word or phrase that you want the article to focus on, generally the term you believe people will have typed into Google to come across your article, and write it down.
Now write down a few more.
Use synonyms of the original term, associated phrases, and anything else you may feel relevant. As you've identified them, your brain will hopefully try and fit them into your piece in a way that flows. If you think about them after, it will be obvious. And if you need any help in this, just let us know.
6. Link your blog articles and your main pages up!
Adding internal links to your article, and associating your pages correctly is important.
A good example of this could be if you're writing an article comparing care protein powder (as an example). You're probably going to mention 'protein' at some point. And chances are, there's a page on the site called just that.
Hyperlinking the text here to that page shows Google exactly what's on that page and helps boost your rankings for that term. It'll also improve the original page, providing further info on the core subject matter and helping in ranking efforts.
