The Ultimate SEO Blog Checklist
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Blog Checklist
The most important settings for individual blog posts are below.
▢ 1 Slugs - Revise slugs before publishing to make them concise and descriptive. (this may or may not include the Main Keyword)
▢ 2 Title Tag -Include the main keyword at or near the beginning of the title tag and keep the length to 60 characters or less.
▢ 3 Heading (H1) - Create a heading similar to the title tag, but not the exact same.
▢ 4 Meta Description - Create a unique description tag (ie. different from other pages) describing the blog topic in 160 characters or less
▢ 5 Excerpt - If excerpts are an option, match the Meta Description
▢ 6 Image Tags - “Tell the Story” by including descriptive Image Alt Text for each image. (do NOT stuff keywords)
▢ 7 Body Text - Use your keyword naturally (do not repeat it unnecessarily) and follow the tips below.
▢ 8 Subheadings - “Tell the Story” with subheadings. Include variarations or phrases related the Main Keyword, but do not repeat it.
▢ 9 Length - Include at least 500 words. Check top existing blogs for the Main Keyword for general guidance.
▢ 10 Filenames - Name files according to the page where they are located.
▢ 11 Duplicate Content - Avoid duplication of content between pages. Short pieces of copy like an author’s bio or concluding calls-to-action.
▢ 12 Links - Include links to helpful internal & external pages.
▢ 13 Publish Date - Create/update the date to match the date or publication or date when major changes are made.
▢ 14 Define the Main Keyword - Perform at least minimal amount of keyword research before crafting an article. Use one of the 3 methods here.
How to Optimize a Blog Article
Taken together, the SEO elements of your blog should Tell the Story of your blog. (ie. what it’s about & what’s included)
Title tag
Headings (H1 & H2 tags)
URL (the “slug”)
Image alt tags & Captions
Meta description
A reader should be able to scan your blog and, looking only at those elements, be able to understand exactly what your blog is about.
Example
If this article were a blog, the following would be the SEO elements. See how they provide a
Main Keyword: “seo checklist for blog posts”
Title Tag: SEO Checklist for Blog Posts | MeredithsHusband.com
Heading (H1 tag): The Ultimate Blog SEO Checklist
H2 tags: (subheadings)
- Blog Checklist
- Blog SEO Best Practices
- More SEO Tips for Blogs
H3 tags: (smaller subheadings)
- Title Tag
- Headings (H1 tags)
- Meta Description
- Image Alt Tags
Slug: /blog-seo-checklist/
Meta Description: A quick & simple checklist to help ensure your blogs follow SEO best practices
Image Alt Tags: (images are not included yet, but the image alt text will be…)
- “Title tag displayed in Google search results”
- “Meta Description tag displayed in Google search results”
- “Example blog H1 tag”
- “How to write image alt text”
How to Choose Your Main Keyword
To identify the main keyword for any blog, it’s highly recommended that you do some type of keyword research before writing an article. In addition to helping you choose the Main Keyword, keyword research is also helpful…
When you know a rough topic only, and want to have a more exact focus
When you want to divide your topic into subtopics to answer specific & popular questions
Best Practices (for each element)
Slug (the URL)
By default, slugs are auto-created to match the blog title. Although this creates relevant slugs, they are poor for SEO purposes and usability. Use the Best Practice guidelines below to revise slugs.
BEST PRACTICES
DO NOT change slugs more than 24 hours after a post is published
If future changes to the slug are necessary, ‘301 redirects need to be created
Try to convey the topic of the article in as few words as necessary (4-5 words max)
Do not include “stop words” such as:
a / an / in / is / of / on / the, etc.
Do not use capital letters
Do not use underscores between words (use hyphens instead)
Include keywords relevant to the topic of the article but do not “stuff” keywords (see examples below)
EXAMPLE SLUGS
The following are meant to illustrate best practices. The original slugs (created by WordPress) are shown in bold, and examples of better slugs are shown in the bullet points.
/blog/this-is-why-everyone-else-is-embracing-kubernetes
Better slugs would be:
/why-embrace-kubernetes
/why-kubernetes
/blog/the-top-6-challenges-enterprises-face-deploying-kubernetes-in-hybrid-cloud-environments
Better slugs would be:
/kubernetes-deployment-challenges
/kubernetes-challenges
Title Tag
Title Tags are extremely important in terms of SEO due to their appearance in search results. See the screenshot below.
BEST PRACTICES
Follow the guidelines below when writing Title tags for blog (or any other) posts:
Include the target keyword at the beginning of of the title tag.
Every page needs a unique Title Tag
Do not duplicate Title Tags across multiple pages
Include the primary keyword at or near the beginning of the Title
Do not repeat the keyword within the title tag.
Aim for 60 characters or less, including spaces
Longer Titles are not penalized, but are truncated
Minimize the use of “stop words” (a, an, of, the, in, on, etc)
If using the word “and” is necessary, replace it with an ampersand (“&”)
Use the pipe symbol (“|”) as a separator
Headings (H1 tags)
More commonly called the “heading” or “H1” tag, this heading should accomplish the following:
Accurately describe the content of the article
Include the main keyword or phrase
Entice users to read the content
Aside from including the main keyword, the H1 does not play a heavy role in SEO. It’s more important to craft headings that align with user goals. Keyword Method #2 can be very useful here, as well as adjusting the Perspective.
Meta Description
There is NO ADVANTAGE to including keywords in the Meta Description. It’s only important to ensure that every page has a Meta Description and that it is not duplicated on other pages
Meta Descriptions are highly visible in search engines, but the content within meta descriptions does not directly affect Google rankings. Including keywords is not necessary, although it is important for every page to have a meta description.
Descriptions should be written with the intent of informing users about the topic of a page and (ideally) enticing them to click through to visit the page.
BEST PRACTICES
Follow the guidelines when creating Meta Description tags:
Every page needs a unique Meta Description tag
Aim for 160 characters or fewer, including spaces
Outside this range, shorter is better than longer. (ie. using 80 characters is better than using 180)
To help reduce the size of long Description tags:
Reduce the number of stop words
Replace “and” with “&”
Eliminate text that does not convey important information
Image Alt Tags
Google provides the following guidelines for image alt tags:
When writing alt text, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context of the content of the page. Avoid filling alt attributes with keywords (also known as keyword stuffing) as it results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam.
source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images
It is NOT necessary to include keywords in image alt tags - include them only if they help to describe the contents of the image.
For non-photographic images, (see examples below) create image alt text using one of the following methods.
Method 1 - When images contain text
Simply use text that is displayed within the image to create Image Alt Text. For example, the example above would have Image Alt Text: National Homeland Security Conference
Method 2 - When images do not include text
Imagine describing the image to someone who cannot see it. There is no right or wrong way to do this, but it’s important for all images to have alt text.
More SEO Tips for Blogs
Blog Length
Aim to create posts with 350 words or more. Pages with smaller amounts of text are unlikely to appear in search results. 200 words is considered the absolute lower limit. Only pages like a Contact Us page or navigational page (ie. category or tag pages) should have less than 200 words.
Filenames
Google advice for naming files:
filename can give Google very light clues about the subject matter of the image. When possible, use filenames that are short, but descriptive. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG. Avoid using generic filenames like image1.jpg, pic.gif, 1.jpg when possible.
Links
Try to include links within the first 1-2 paragraphs of text, leading to main pagenon-blog pages. Text links that are located near the beginning of the page copy have good SEO value.
Try to link using keyword-rich text whenever possible. For example, rather than linking from the text “Join the webinar” … used the actual name of the webinar to create the link.
Finally, try to limit the number of external links from page copy - especially near the top of the page. External links are OK to include when they link to well-known trustworthy websites, but still try to avoid placing them near the top of page copy. See the example below.
Try to avoid using generic words like “learn more” when creating links. Instead, create links using keywords whenever possible. For the example shown above…
Writing your Blog Content
Most importantly, create your blog content FOR readers - not FOR Google. That means: don’t include keywords unnaturally or place higher importance on search engines.
Remember: Above all else, the goal of your blog is to provide useful information.
