Here's a head start to getting your next blog post to rank
You've got a secret weapon to boost your rank hiding in plain sight: your blog.
No amount of onsite optimization, or even backlinks can match what a blog can do for your website.
Why?
Because having a regularly maintained blog means you'll have a steady stream of new content to keep your website fresh, provide new pages to earn backlinks, and show Google you are an authority in your industry. In a world oversaturated by content, quality content is king and your ability to produce quality content can push your site up to the top for your industry.
Creating high-quality content is intimidating though. Even if you're a seasoned writer getting to number one on Google, or even in the top 10, is a very tall order.
There's a simpler way to structure your posts so they can rank for any target keyword though! You can do a SERPs analysis. If it sounds technical hang in there, it's easy enough that anyone can do it with 30 minutes of prep before writing a post - SEO novices and pros alike.
What is a SERP analysis?
SERP is one of those mysterious acronyms that SEOs throw around, but it's extremely simple to do and highly effective in creating content that can crack the top 10 of Google.
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page, so a SERP analysis is nothing more than looking at the top results on Google for a term, and seeing what they have in common and how you can outrank them.
How to do a SERP analysis
Pick a keyword that you want to focus on for a blog post or landing page and run a quick Google search for it.
Take note of what gets returned:
-What ads are bought for the keyword? Which companies are buying them?
-What type of content is currently ranking? Is it blog posts or landing pages?
-Do the pages have videos, pdf downloads, or the ability to listen to the post on an audio recording?
-How long is the content that is ranking?
-Who is ranking? Any competitors? Any unexpected websites? Do they overlap with you in other ways (this is a great way to come up with new blog post ideas to match your competitors).
By taking note of what the successful pages are doing to rank, you'll have an idea of what kind of content you need to create in order to rank with them. Rather than writing a post blindly hoping it'll rank, you can build a plan of attack and structure your post in a way that it mirrors what Google has already deemed top-quality content.
Congrats! You've just done a SERP analysis.
Before you write your next blog post, do these 3 things
- Choose a keyword for the blog post, this is what your SERP analysis will be based on.
- Run a Google Search for the keyword and open the top 10-15 results, open them in new windows or add them to a spreadsheet to review later.
- Read those 10 results in depth and see what they are covering but more importantly what they are not. Build out a blueprint for a blog post that matches them for content and adds something new.
In as little as 30 minutes you'll gain a big head start on a blog post and have a solid blueprint to creating a piece of content that can rank.
Great content, man. I featured it in the newsletter https://indieletters.com/
thanks!
+1
How you structure your article can also make a big difference in ranking.
You can have the best article content in the world, but if it's not formatted well, with the reader in mind, the almighty Google may not rank it.
Be sure to use best practices like proper formatting (i.e. use of H2s, H3s, etc properly), easy to read on mobile, ordered/unordered lists, tables, structured content when applicable, etc.
Additionally, if the SERPs for a keyword/phrase is showing Product pages, it may be very hard to rank the article. If the search engine thinks people are looking for products and not information, even the greatest content may not rank.
Thanks and excellent additional points! That's all very important too in creating content that can rank and assessing how worth it is to write an article for a given keyword.
What a thorough guide! I will keep this in mind when writing my next post.
Thanks!
No problem glad it's helpful!
Great post @tscionti. Thanks for sharing.
I like to think of content and blogging as a long term strategy, but you also can't underestimate the role it plays in kickstarting the growth of your personal brand organically.
Thanks! Exactly right, SEO is a long game but it can be broken down into incremental steps.
Thanks Tyler. I would also add backlinks to this. A lot of people do not really put link building on priority, but even a couple of backlinks is going to be amazing for your blog.
For example, sometime back, I found a keyword that has plenty of search requests, but less than 1000 listed results on SERPs. I wrote an article that is extremely comprehensive and worthy of #1. It got crawled alright, but no ranking even after a week or two.
Then I added a comment on Tim Ferris' blog with a link to that blog post in my profile URL (nofollow, mind you). I made a similar couple of comments (all nofollow links) on a couple of smaller blogs.
That was enough to push it to the top of Bing SERPs in a couple of days. Google took more time, but I think I rank #3 or #4 for that keyword.
Interesting! I'm running a post on nofollow vs dofollow links on my site soon and it touches on this, traditionally it's been thought that nofollow links do not provide any SEO benefit however there are case studies where that just is not the case.
The official word from Google is that they 'generally do not follow nofollow links' but generally is a very broad term and there's plenty of evidence where nofollow links have helped (just not as consistently as dofollow links), glad it worked out for you!