The ten commandments of blog SEO: a guide to optimised copywriting
"I don't believe in blogs. When I was presenting my Master's thesis, I received this assessment from a member of the examining board. I had already heard similar phrases referring to social networks. Fortunately, at Zinkdo we work on 360-degree digital strategies, comprehensive solutions in which SEO for blogs is a key component, along with SMO and SEM. As a journalist, anything else would seem boring to me; as a marketing professional, I consider any other approach dangerous: I share Zinkdo's vision of launching actions with prior strategy and subsequent measurement.
As an SEO manager, I work with copywriters every day, coordinating the optimisation of posts. All kinds of blogs have passed through our hands, for very different clients, from a B2B company that was looking to improve its reputation so as not to damage the B2C company it worked for, owner of one of the best-known brands in the world, to start-ups led by scientists with innovative products and a lot to tell, to e-commerce companies in different sectors. Regardless of the objective, reputational, commercial, solidarity... The rules of SEO blog writing are common. From repeating them so much, I sound like Moses with the tables of the law, so this SEO guide for blog copywriters is organised in ten commandments.
Commandments of SEO for blogs
- You will love Google above all things. Only if you know the rules of the game can you win. Find out how the search engine works, how it decides what to show and how we help it find us.
- You will not take Google's name in vain. Respect the rules of the game, understand the search engine. Optimise for keywords, write with related words and synonyms. Use tools (SEMRush writing assistant, Yoast...), but trust more in what you know about Google and in your judgement as a copywriter. Don't get obsessed with Yoast's green balls, especially when it comes to readability, it has been more than proven that it doesn't know what a relative clause is and is allergic to subjunctives. Beware of related words in the SEMRush content plan: competitors' brands sneak into your suggestions, keywords for which you are already positioned... The latter is related to the most important commandment of these tables. Read on.
- You will sanctify transactional pages. You are publishing with a goal: to get something from whoever comes to your blog; take them to where they will convert. Before you start writing, you must be very clear about the transactional page you will link to facilitate conversion and the anchor text you should use to boost the positioning of that page; at this point, prior collaboration with the SEO is essential, who should complete the information extracted from SEO tools with that offered by Google Search Console. With the blog you are looking to attract the top funnel audience, which is at the wide end of the conversion funnel. You are playing in the longtail league, never compete with transactional pages. Look for new territories. You must also make sure that the categorisation of the blog does not overlap with that of the website. Here we must act with surgical precision. And this applies whether we have a good web architecture or not. In the latter case, the SEO must prevent categorisation, propose it and wait for it to be implemented. Imagine an ecommerce that starts with a limited portfolio of products but plans to expand it; this would be the case of a new leasing company that has few car models but whose managers are clear about the characteristics of the fleet they are going to put on the market: keyword research should be carried out in parallel for the future categorisation of services, on the one hand, and, on the other, for the first blog posts and FAQs, which will be published as soon as the website is published, occupying territories that are of interest to potential customers (legal news on traffic, motor world...) and optimising for keywords that do not compete with the planned transactional ones. If you are in the best scenario because you have a good architecture, with an adequate categorisation of services, congratulations, although you will have to make an effort to find new territories. Be that as it may, this SEO commandment for blogs is also related to the most important one.
- You will honour your audience. Get to know them, put yourself in their shoes, think about how they search and give it to them, both in the SERP (title and description) and in the post. Whoever you work for will always have a point of view: "I'm offering this to the market", yours should be the other side: "I'm looking for this in the market". Limit the use of terminology that is reserved for professionals. But remember that you may need to satisfy different types of audience in the same message, from professional prescribers to end users. Don't use calls to action that only apply to one part of your audience.
- Thou shalt not cannibalise. The "thou shalt not kill" of SEO, the key commandment we have been talking about throughout this post. Don't kill your own efforts, plan your blog posts together with the SEO, avoid optimising for what already ranks or is expected to rank. Be very careful when categorising your blog posts, don't invent categories. This also applies to blogs with tags; if there is no choice but to keep them, it is necessary to keep them under tight control. Be firm on themes suggested from above: a classic case is when you launch a product and try to position it with the same keywords on all parts of the site (category pages, product sheets, blog posts and categories, etc.). This is where you need to train the managers of the organisation you work for. As we have seen, it is important not to cannibalise transactional pages with blog posts or categories, but it is also important to take this into account for posts that have already been published. You may be working with blogs that have been running for years, you may have to deal with business needs that make SEO difficult (promotions that are repeated year after year, topics that need to be dealt with on an ongoing basis...). It is essential to plan and to make concessions: maintaining a constant publishing rhythm is not always sustainable (another aspect where you need to be didactic); sometimes it is preferable to recover posts that have already been published to reoptimise them. It is also worth considering the possibility of publishing evergreen posts with a part of content that can be updated and another part that is fixed, suitable for promotions that are repeated but with new claims that need to be reported.
- Do not over-optimise. If you do not respect the rules you will be penalised. Optimise with sense, do not abuse the keyword (keyword stuffing), place it in places where it has power (title, first paragraph, subtitles, images) and combine bold that facilitates readability and bold with SEO intentionality, do not apply it only to keywords, mark meaningful phrases.
- Thou shalt not steal. Another key commandment of SEO for blogs, and the temptation is great when you have to publish with demanding periodicity. Write original content, remember that duplicate content is penalised. Why copy, when you have the best expert in what you are talking about: the entity you work for. Try to start with a content audit, there is gold waiting in the archives, access the facilities whenever you can, ask for all available documentation, ask for access to any database you know about. You will be amazed at how much information you can glean from brochures or videos in the background of corporate YouTube playlists. Statements from the CEO and senior management, particularly in sustainability-related positions, are always at your disposal. Take advantage of what the official spokespersons have to offer, and they are always willing to accept the statements you produce for them (study their communication style, adapt it and go for it). But look for those who touch product: technicians and product managers, here is the expertise that you need to transform into valuable content for your audiences. Draw up a map of spokespersons that includes these profiles and open it up as much as possible to third parties: potential prescribers, satisfied customers...
- You shall not bear false witness or lie. Acknowledge your sources. This does not always mean linking to them; if you do, avoid pages that run the risk of ending up causing 404 errors (when in doubt, opt for the home page), and take advantage, if you can, of the possibility of linking as Nofollow so as not to dilute the authority of the internal link you include in the post. Keep in mind that Chat GPT does not disclose its sources, it would be like trolling, trawling the bottom. As a copywriter, you should act like a pearl diver on the web, digging around until you find the place where you get just what you are looking for.
- You will not tolerate impurity about optimisation. Nobody knows more about what you blog about than the organisation you work for, but you know more than you know about SEO. Don't allow them to distort the optimisation, to change keywords on the fly. If you don't have access to the CMS, let them know if you detect that they are publishing by changing the URLs you propose, without snippets, without ALT tagging, without hierarchising correctly.
- Do not covet others' positioning, but do not lose sight of it. If you're starting from the bottom, don't try to play in the same league as the big players, be aware of who you're working for, and at the same time work with the SEO to improve positions. Ask for content gaps, check the indexation status in Search Console so that you can claim it if necessary...
In conclusion, a successful SEO strategy for a blog requires planning and cooperation from all parties involved.