How to Optimize Your Blog’s Next Article for Maximum Impact In Search Engines and Social Media

One of the reasons that I wrote my corporate blogging book a decade ago was to help the audience leverage blogging for search engine marketing. Search is still unlike any other medium because the search user is showing intent as they are seeking information or researching their next purchase.

Optimizing a blog and the content within each post is not as simple as just throwing some keywords into the mix… there are quite a few tips and tricks you can utilize to optimize the post and fully leverage every blog post.

Search Engine Optimization of Every Blog Post

I’m going to assume that your content management system is fully optimized and that your blog is both fast and responsive to mobile devices. Here are 10 elements that matter when your site is crawled and indexed by a search engine… as well as elements that will engage your reader:

1. Page Title – By far, the most important element of your page is the title tag. Learn how to optimize your title tags and you’ll increase the ranking and click-through rate to your blog posts in the search engine result pages (SERPs) significantly. Keep it under 70 characters. Be sure to also include a robust meta description for the page – under 156 characters.
2. Post Slug – the URL segment that represents your post is called a post slug and can be edited in most blogging platforms. Changing longer post slugs into short, keyword-centric slugs rather than having long, confusing post slugs will increase your click-through rate in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and make your content easier to share. Search engine users are getting far more verbose in their searches, so don’t be afraid to use how, what, who, where, when, and why in your slugs to enhance the slug.
3. Post Title – While your page title can be optimized for search, your post title in an h1 or h2 tag can be a compelling title that draws attention and attracts more clicks. By using a heading tag, you’re letting the search engine know it’s a critical section of the content. Some blogging platforms make the page title and post title the same. If they do, you don’t have an option. If they don’t, though, you can take advantage of both!
4. Sharing – enabling the ability for visitors to share your content will get you far more visitors than leaving it to chance. Each of the social sites has their own social sharing buttons that don’t require multiple steps or logins… make it easy to share your content and visitors will share it. If you’re on WordPress, you can also use a tool like Jetpack to automatically publish your articles out any number of social channels.
5. Visuals – a picture is worth a thousand words. Providing an image, an infographic, or video in your post feeds the senses and makes your content much more powerful. As your content is shared, images will be shared with it across social sites… choose your images wisely and always insert the alternative text with an optimized description. Utilizing a great post thumbnail and the appropriate social and feed plugins will increase the likelihood that people will click through when shared. 
6. Content – Keep your content as brief as possible to get your point across. Utilize bulleted points, subheadings, bold, and italicized text to help people scan the content easier and help search engines understand the keywords and phrases you wish to be found for. Learn how to utilize keywords effectively.
7. Author Profile – Having your author’s image, bio, and social media links provides a personal touch to your posts. People want to read posts from people… anonymity doesn’t serve the audience well on blogs. As well, author names build authority and social sharing of the information. If I read a great post, I often follow the individual on Twitter or connect with them on LinkedIn… where I read additional content that they publish.
8. Comments – Comments enhance the content on the page with additional relevant content. They also provide an opportunity for your audience to engage with your brand or company. We’ve abandoned most of the third-party plugins and opted in just for the WordPress default – which is integrated into their Mobile apps, making it easy to respond and approve. Comments do attract unwanted spam, so incorporating a tool like Akismet is recommended. Note: On some service sites, I have disabled comments where they just didn’t add value.
9. Call To Action – Now that you have the reader on your blog, what do you want them to do? Would you like them to subscribe? Register for a download? Attend a demonstration of your software? Optimization of your blog post isn’t complete unless you have a path for the reader to engage deeper with your company. For WordPress, we incorporate Gravity Forms throughout to capture leads, integrate them into CRM systems, and push alerts and autoresponses.
10. Categories and Tags – Sometimes search engine visitors click through but don’t find what they’re looking for. Having other posts listed that are relevant can provide deeper engagement with the visitor and avoid them bouncing. Have plenty of options for the visitor to stay and engage more! You can help this by ensuring you have a discreet amount of categories, trying to assign each post to a minimum of them. For tags, you’ll want to do the opposite – trying to add tags for keyword combinations that may drive people to the post. Tags don’t help with SEO in as much as internal search and related posts.

Before I Publish Each Blog Post

The majority of these critical elements are all set up and automated with the installation and configuration of your blogging platform. Once I spend time on the content, I do go through some quick steps to optimize my posts, though:

1. Title – I try to connect with the reader and create a sense of curiosity so they click through. I speak directly to them with you or your!
2. Featured Image – I always try to find a unique and compelling image for the post. Images should reinforce the message visually. I’ve also added titles and branding to my featured images so the articles really pop when shared on social media, increasing click-through rates by over 30%!
3. Hierarchy – Visitors are scanning before they read, so I try to utilize subheadings, bulleted lists, numbered lists, block quotes, and images effectively so they can drill into the information they need.
4. Post Slug – I try to keep under 5 words and highly relevant to the topic. This makes sharing easier and the link more compelling.
5. Images – We always try to enhance the content with visuals that capture the visitor’s attention. I avoid non-sense stock photos and, instead, create or utilize strong visuals, including infographics, to get the point across. And, we always name the file using keywords and phrases as well as utilize good, accurate descriptions in the alt tags of the image. Alternative text is used by screenreaders for those with disabilities but it’s also indexed by search engines.
6. Videos – I search Youtube for professional videos to embed as a good portion of your audience will gravitate towards video. Video can be quite an undertaking… but it’s not always necessary to record your own if someone else has done a great job.
7. Internal Links – I always try to include links to internal relevant posts and pages within my site so the reader can drill down for more information.
8. References – Providing third-party statistics or quotes to include adds credibility to your content. I often go out and find the latest statistics or a quote from a well-known professional to support the content that I’m writing. And, of course, I will provide a link back to them.
9. Category – I try to only select 1 or 2. We do have some in-depth posts that cover more but I try to keep the target highly targeted.
10. Tags – I make mentions of people, brands, and product names that I’m writing about. Additionally, I’ll do research on keyword combinations people might use to search for the post. Tags help with displaying related topics as well as with internal searches of your site and shouldn’t be overlooked.
11. Title Tag – Different from your on-page heading is the actual title tag that will be displayed in search engine results (and on the browser tab). Utilizing the Rank Math plugin, I optimize the title tag for search results whereas my actual title is more engaging for readers.
12. Meta Description – That little description under the title and link to your post on a search engine results page can be controlled by a meta description. Take the time and write a really compelling description that drives curiosity and tells the search user why they should click through to your article.
13. Grammar and Spelling – There are few articles I publish that I don’t shake my head in embarrassment as I read days later or get a comment back from a reader on the stupid grammatical or spelling error I made. I try to verify every post with Grammarly to save myself… you should, too!

After I Publish Each Blog Post

1. Social Promotion – I promote the posts I write on every social media channel, personalizing the preview and tagging people, hashtags, or sites that I mention. If you are using a WordPress site, I’d highly recommend JetPack‘s paid services since it allows you to publish your blog posts automatically to virtually any social media site. FeedPress is another great service with integrated social media publishing, although it doesn’t have LinkedIn.
2. Email Promotion – Watching our clients struggle to keep up with publishing in every channel is something we continue to observe. With an RSS feed, your blog is the perfect medium to be shared through your email marketing. Some platforms like Mailchimp have RSS feed script integrations ready to go, others have scripts that you have to write yourself. We’ve developed custom WordPress plugins that deploy custom email content for clients who really want to tailor their integrations. And, JetPack also offers a subscription offering.
3. Updates – I’m constantly reviewing my analytics to identify the articles that rank well that I can enhance with additional content or better target in search rankings. This article, for instance, as been updated over a dozen times. Each time, I publish as new and repromote through each marketing channel. Since I don’t change the actual post slug (URL), it continues to improve in rank as it’s shared across sites.

Need Assistance With Improving Your Content’s Return on Investment?

If you’re producing a ton of content but simply aren’t seeing the results, feel free to contact my firm and we can help you to optimize your site for search, social media, and conversions so that you can maximize the impact of your content. We’ve helped many clients to better organize their content, redesign their site templates, and help to enhance the content, all the while measuring the impact of the content on their overall business strategy.

Contact Highbridge

Disclosure: I’m an affiliate for some of the services I’m promoting in this article and I’m including my affiliate links in them. I’m also a co-founder and partner in Highbridge.