So you’ve been writing blog articles for your small business for a while now, but you aren’t quite seeing the results you’d like. This is usually down to some simple tweaks that you can make to improve your blog’s SEO and drive more organic traffic.

Here are some simple blog SEO fixes that you can start implementing from today.

1. Write Longer Blog Articles
2. Use Headings And Subheadings In Your Blog Articles
3. Keywords For The Win
4. Content Pillars For Blog Writing
5. Add Images (and optimise them)
6. Write Different Types Of Article
7. Add Hyperlinks
8. Image Optimisation
9. Sharing Is Caring
10. Summing Up

Write Longer Blog Articles

According to research, the ideal blog post length for SEO is 2300 words. Of course, this does not mean that you need to be writing 2300 words every time you post. I mean, you’re a business owner, not a full time blog writer! You have better things to be doing with your time. If you had to create 2300 words every week, that’s the same as a dissertation every month!

But it does mean that you want to aim to have some posts this length, preferably on the most relevant topics for your brand.

If you can create most of your articles at around the 1000 word mark, you’re laughing. Of course, use your keywords and write about relevant topics for your niche.

Then pick a few subjects to dive deeper with. Get up close and personal with the topic and show Google that you are the expert. Write the best quality, most informative post that has ever been written on this topic and show Google who’s boss. This will give you plenty of opportunities to go to town with those keywords (be sure not to stuff them though, they must ready naturally).

Give your readers some real value with your longer blog posts. These longer-form blog posts are also known as cornerstone content. They help you become an authority in your niche by adding value, building trust and using those oh-so-sexy keywords. And boy, do we (and Google) love keywords.

As with so much in life, the more you give, the better results you’ll see. So go ahead and write your ultimate guide to something important to your customers.

*** I’m going to interrupt your reading here just to add a shameless plug, because, well, a girl’s got to eat. Did you know I offer an affordable blog writing service for your small business? If you don’t want to spend your time writing but you’d like to increase your brand website’s organic traffic, then I’m your gal. You can get back to learning now***

Use Headings And Subheadings In Your Blog Articles

Headings and subheadings make your blog posts easier to read, they keep you on track, they show your reader exactly what is in the post and they show Google the structure of your blog post.

H1 is your main title, you get one of these. Include your main keyword/s in here.

H2 headings are the main points of your blog post. Again, make them SEO friendly with plenty of keywords.

H3 and H4 are subheadings. These are a nice way to break up your points into manageable chunks. Again, keywords, keywords, keywords.

People don’t like to read a wall of text. Break your information up into bitesize chunks of 2-3 lines each. Notice how I’ve written each point under a heading or subheading and broken them down into smaller paragraphs. That’s no accident.

I also have some single line paragraphs like this.

It breaks up the text and makes it easier to read.

You can also use bullet points and numbered lists within your blog articles, but still follow the heading and subheading format for SEO wins. For example, if you’re writing a blog article with 101 blog format ideas, definitely use bullet points or numbers, but group points together under subheadings like ‘Listicles’ and ‘Storytelling’. This helps your reader to navigate your blog and quickly find the information they need but it also makes the search algorithms happy.

You may or may not have spotted the hand table of contents I’ve added to the top of this blog post for easy navigation and accessibility. It’s worth doing this if you can.

Keywords For The Win

Include those all important keywords for SEO wins. You need to be thinking about the topics your ideal audience is searching for and targeting those keywords.

Ideally, you don’t want several of your own pages competing against each other with an identical set of keywords. Try to stick to one main keyword per page, otherwise you can confuse Google and this can negatively impact on how your website ranks.

There are a many different types of keywords and they serve different purposes, here are just a few:

• Brand Keywords- These are your brand name and words specifically linked to your business and products. They help people find your brand when they know that you are exactly the brand they need. My brand keyword would be ‘The Makers Hub’.
• Non-branded Keywords- Not containing your brand name, but these keywords help audiences by telling people what you do. My non-branded keywords could include ‘Etsy support’, ‘blog writing services’ and ‘small business support’.
• Location Keywords- These are super helpful if you are targeting audiences in specific locations. For example, ‘Blog Writers in Cornwall’. Admittedly, if you are an online-only business and don’t want people rocking up at your private workshop, then you don’t really need to worry about these too much. If you want to target customers in a particular area though, then you need to think about these.
• Root Keywords- A single word that is a broader topic. This article’s root keywords would be ‘Blog’, “SEO’ and ‘Keywords’. Sprinkle these generously into your blog posts to help with your SEO.
• Short-Tail Keywords– 1-3 words, containing the root keywords. For example, ‘Blog writing’, ‘SEO for blogs’ or ‘Keyword types’. Again, use these as much as you can, but still making sure they read naturally.
• Long-Tail Keywords- Phrases of 3+ words that make up specific search terms and include your root keyword. These are the ones you want to be focussing on because these are where the magic happens. Examples of long-tail keywords might include, ‘how to use long-tail keywords in blog posts’ or ‘SEO best practices for blog writing’. These can feature in the main body of your text, or they could form the outline for your content as your headings and subheadings.
• Keywords by Intent- Different keywords target audiences with different intents. Keywords like “shop gifts online” and “order personalised bags” have a transactional intent. Transactional means looking to make a purchase now. Other keyword intents include informational (seeking information), navigational (navigating to a specific webpage) and commercial (looking to make a purchase in the near future).

Content Pillars For Blog Writing

You probably use content pillars for your social media. If you don’t, then firstly, you should, and secondly, what have you been doing?!

Content pillars are a way of keeping your content relevant and on track. They are 3-4 broader terms that inspire, inform and guide your content. Mine are ‘blogging’, ‘SEO’, ‘small business life’ and ‘Etsy’.

Content pillars can also be a useful tool for blog writing. Pick 3-4 topics to write about, relevant to your small business niche. As tempting as it may be to simply write about whatever you fancy, that is not the best way to grow your organic traffic for your small business.

I use my content pillars to inform my social media, but I also use them to steer my blog in the right direction. If it ain’t on the list, it ain’t going in. You’ll see no blog articles regarding puppies, kittens or my handstand progress. They are not what you came here for, they would be a waste of my time writing them and your time reading them. Keep it relevant, people!

Add Images (and optimise them)

Stock images like the one you see above are a great way to break up your text and make your blog articles more user friendly.

But images do more than just make your blog articles look pretty. You can add alt text and captions to your images, giving you the chance to rank when someone searches in Google Images for your chosen keywords.

Try websites like Pexels and Unsplash for free stock images.

Write Different Types Of Article

There are different types of content for different purposes. We’ve already looked at cornerstone content- those longer articles of around 2300 words to show that you are the expert in this subject.

In case you’re wondering how long a 2300 word blog article is- this is it.

You also need seasonal content. This is, well, erm, exactly what you’d think it is. Content written for different seasonal events like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter, current trends etc. Aim to write these a couple of months in advance to give Google a chance to index your page in plenty of time. Don’t add the year to your title and make it something that you can update yearly. When you update these articles, don’t forget to update the ‘published on’ date to a recent date.

Evergreen content- This is content that works all year round. This could be the history of your chosen topic, a top tip, a complete guide to something or a frequently asked question.

Add Hyperlinks

A hyperlink is a link inside a blog article, directing readers to another webpage.

You can use hyperlinks to send readers to other pages on your own website, like this helpful article I created with 31 blog post ideas for small businesses. These are worth adding to your blog posts and your product pages.

In my product business, I sell first birthday cards so I have created a helpful article with first birthday messages. I have added internal hyperlinks on the products to direct customers to the blog, and I have added a link to the blog to direct people to the cards.

Hyperlinks can also take readers to other websites. This works particularly well for gift guides.

Why would you want to add hyperlinks to other pages? Because it adds value to your blog post, boosts your SEO and helps you rank higher in search engine results pages.

Image Optimisation

Add your alt text and image captions. Give your images an SEO-friendly title and fill in as much information as you can. Check out this article for more information about how to title your blog images.

While you’re at it, be sure to include a keyword in your image title, your alt text and your caption if you can. Remember though, it must read naturally and make sense to humans. It has to sound like a human wrote it, for other humans. If you just list off a load of random keywords then you can be penalized and find your visibility is lowered.

Sharing Is Caring

Create content that is super shareable. More shares equals more visibility.

What you want is something called a backlink. Back in the day, we all had a ‘links’ page on our website and we merrily swapped links with our small business buddies. We didn’t really know what we were doing or why, but it was simply the done thing. It’s not quite so easy these days and you cannot trick Google. So creating shareable blog posts are a great way to earn your backlinks.

More backlinks= better for your SEO.

Share the link to your blog articles on your social media channels, like, all of them. Please don’t use a Linktree type of jobbie though, these are bad news for your SEO. It is much better to direct viewers from social media straight to your webpage, cutting out the middle man if you can. Adding in that extra step can cause people to abandon their attempts and click away from your website.

Why? Because people are lazy. They don’t want to crack the code and work out which link to click for what they want. They want it simple and straightforward. You risk confusing audiences, or worse, making them so frustrated that they leave. There are a few ways to avoid this middleman scenario- use direct links on Facebook, Twitter (X) and Linkedin. For Instagram, you can use automated systems by Manychat or you can set up your own links page on your website- just make sure that you keep it up to date if you go down this route.

Send an email to your subscribers to let them know you’ve written a blog post that they’d probably be interested in. Share your blog post links when you’ve just written a post, but also share older seasonal posts as they become relevant again.

If you’ve added links to other small businesses in your blog post, send them a message to let them know. You never know, they might share your post link to their customers. This works well for gift guides and ideas for places to visit or things to do.

Encourage your readers to share your post with charming wordsmithery. “Did you find this post helpful? Why not give it a little share on Pinterest for us- you know you want to!”

Summing Up

Make these tiny SEO tweaks to your blog articles and you should start seeing the results you’ve been working hard to achieve. They may not sound like big changes, but trust me when I say that they will have a big impact on your organic website traffic.

Who knew SEO could be so easy-peasy?!

And if you found this blog article helpful, I would be ever-so grateful if you considered giving it a little share.

Well, you know, if you don’t ask, you don’t get and all that jazz…