How to Rank Your Blog Post on Google: 10 Tips for 2024 (2024)

Unlock the potential of blogging and discover why it is a crucial tool for your online presence and business growth!

Do you need a blog? The short answer here is, yes. The long answer here is, it depends. And here is what it depends on. The effectiveness of your blog really depends on whether or not your blog is done the right or wrong way. Here is what you need to consider to make sure your blog is done the right way…

Blogging has, and continues to be, one of the most effective and essential digital marketing content marketing strategies to raise brand awareness and attract potential clients to your business. And while frequency and consistency are vitally important to increase blog traffic, it’s also crucial to know how to write a good blog post to increase blog traffic, rather than simply cranking out as many articles as possible.

Writing blog posts that rank high on Google (not to mention posts that convert) is much more than an art form — it’s actually a science supported by several tried-and-true techniques that can dramatically improve the visibility and ranking of the content you generate and help you secure a place on the first page of search results.

If you’re wondering how to rank higher on Google and how to get traffic to your blog, the 10 tips we lay out below will be as good as gold for you and your company blog.

Follow this formula, and you’ll be in excellent shape. However, if you need more help creating blog posts that generate traffic, we’re here at Comrade to help you and your business.

1. Choose the Right Topic for Your Blog
2. Provide Your Users With High-Quality Information
3. Use Right Keywords So Your Block Ranks High on Google
4. Write Headlines That Captivate Your Audience’s Attention
5. Writing Long Reads Helps Your Blog Ranking
6. Create The Right Structure For Your Blog Post
7. Add CTA
8. Optimize Your Blog Post So It Ranks High
9. Use Crosslinking
10. Link Externally

Choosing a relevant AND proven topic for your blog post is absolutely key. When it comes to relevance, it should go without saying that the topics you choose have to relate in some way, shape, or form to your business. For example, if your company makes artisan cheeses in Wisconsin, a blog post about the best skateboard parks in Indiana doesn’t make any sense and won’t help you attract the leads you’re looking for.

So you understand that relevance is important, but how do you find topics for a blog or blog post ideas that will actually work for you? In short, you need to find relevant topics that people are actually searching for. There are some pretty amazing free tools out there to help you find the perfect proven topics that will help you rank higher in google:

• Google AdWords Keyword Planner — Google’s free tool can help you find the perfect title and topic for your post. Simply enter the basic topic into the keyword planner, click “Get Ideas,” and you’ll be provided with useful suggestions for often-used keywords that would be very valuable to use in your blog title and topic.
• Udemy — This online course site is a veritable goldmine of topic ideas. Not only will you find popular topics that people are searching for; you’ll actually find topics that people are willing to PAY for. Simply look up the topics relevant to your industry and you’ll find some excellent content inspiration.
• Amazon — Amazon can be extremely helpful for helping you find relevant blog topics as well. Simply search for books on Amazon with the simple keyword you’re thinking about and you’ll likely find a series of books that address the topic. Find a book with a lot of ratings, look inside the table of contents, and you’ll be spoon-fed a list of usable article title ideas to use.

Now that you’ve found the perfect title and topic for your high-ranking blog post, you’re going to need to focus on including highly valuable and quality information full of practical value. Google has a feature built into its analytics that considers “bounce rates,” which means Google will rate blog posts lower if readers are clicking out of your content without spending any time reading it. In other words, if your bounce rates are high, Google will ding you for it because they won’t consider your blog post useful, therefore making it less visible to potential clients. It’s absolutely key that your content is highly readable, engaging, useful, and actionable for your audience. Focus on providing that kind of extreme value, and it will keep them on your page for long periods of time, lowering your bounce rate and boosting your Google ranking. Providing high-quality information can significantly improve your Google rankings by enhancing organic CTR, internal linking, and on-page optimization.

We already mentioned this briefly, but understanding how to identify the most relevant keywords and incorporating them into your title is absolutely essential. This may seem like an absurd number to you, but Google handles over 40,000 search queries per second. In order to outperform your competitors, you’re going to have to use every available tool to tap into the most popular keywords that your desired audience is searching for, including strategically adding the target keyword multiple times within your content to indicate relevance to the search query. In addition to the Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends is a highly valuable tool to use when trying to find the best keywords at the right time.

Equally important is to naturally integrate those keywords throughout your blog post. If you want to increase blog traffic, this is an incredibly valuable skill to understand and implement. Don’t force keywords into awkward sentences — it’ll appear spammy and will set off alarm bells in your readers’ minds — do what you can to make the integration of the keywords you want to use flow smoothly into the paragraphs and sentences you’re writing. Also don’t commit the cardinal sin of “keyword stuffing” — i.e. overusing keywords, as that may lead to search engines severely penalizing your content.

You know that you should be including relevant keywords into your blog title, there are some useful hacks to understand what types of headlines are going to grab your audience’s attention. Additionally, a compelling meta description is crucial as it provides a custom phrase for Google search results, enhancing your SEO efforts. This is a key component of the tried-and-true AIDA formula (an acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) that is often used by marketers but can be directly applied to your blog posts (and titles) as well.

Once you’ve identified the keywords you want to use, craft your headline using some of the top-ranked phrases (according to BuzzSumo). BuzzSumo also recommends that you use between 12 and 18 words in your blog title for maximum effectiveness. Another trick you can use is to incorporate brackets or parentheses. For some reason, blog post titles with parentheses rank 38% higher than those without, according to a study conducted by OutBrain.

Google has about 200 different factors that go into their algorithm, and one of them is comprehensive content. Using long-tail keywords in long reads can significantly improve SEO rankings. Questions that are answered more thoroughly are given higher authority by Google and thus rate better on the search page. Aiming for blog posts that are 2,000–3,000 words in length, rather than short quick posts, will help optimize your blog post for higher ranking. An added bonus of having longer posts is that you’ll be able to break up the content for use in other forms of marketing, including social media and in your email drip campaigns.

Once you understand the essential structural elements of a blog post, you’ll be able to craft compelling content quickly and effectively. The basic structure consists of an introduction, the body of your post, and a conclusion. To paraphrase the great Aristotle, tell them what you are going to tell them (intro), tell them (body), then tell them what you told them (conclusion). Follow this formula and your blog post structure will be easy to understand and fun to read.

A CTA is a “call to action,” or the final “A” in the AIDA formula. You always want to include compelling calls to action in your posts. However, considering the exceptionally short attention span of humans, you shouldn’t wait until the very end of your post to include a CTA. When applicable, include a CTA as early and as clearly as possible so you don’t risk losing your readers’ interest.

Writing engaging posts is simply not enough. In order to rank higher on Google, you need to optimize every aspect of your post for SEO. Using Google Search Console to track and optimize your blog post performance is crucial. This includes the aforementioned keywords, linking to influential websites and crosslinking linking (mentioned below), writing clear and well-structured longer posts, optimizing images for the fastest possible page speed, optimizing your image alt text, and utilizing link building strategies. When you’ve successfully addressed each and every one of these aspects of on-page SEO, your company blog post will be optimized for increased organic traffic.

Internal links are also commonly referred to as internal linking, and it simply means finding as many relevant places as possible in your article to place links to other pages or posts on your website. This helps search engines crawl your website more efficiently and create a more accurate sitemap, which plays a significant role in SEO. From a practical perspective, it provides more value to your readers and allows them to discover other useful and relevant information on your website more easily. Make the text for your links as natural as possible, rather than using generic and spammy phrases such as “click here.” Crosslinking is a key component to providing extreme value to your readers, which will keep them coming back over and over again.

It may seem counterintuitive to link out to other influential blog posts or websites, but external linking can be extraordinarily helpful for your SEO. Adding in valuable external links accomplishes three key things — it provides more value to your readers to help them find the information they’re looking for, it shows Google that you’re putting the work into researching you topic thoroughly, and it may even result in the blogger or writer of the site you link to including YOUR content into their posts as well (this will help you build a valuable backlink for your website). Additionally, external linking can improve search results by enhancing the credibility and relevance of your content.

So there you have it! Employ these 10 tips to increase blog traffic as part of your content marketing strategy and you’ll be on the road to more attention, more traffic, more leads, and ultimately more clients. However, employing each and every one of these SEO tactics effectively in one company blog post can be easier said than done. Writing fluidly and naturally in this style an acquired skill, and finding topics for your blog can be daunting and time consuming.

At Comrade Digital Marketing, we can shorten the learning curve, as our team of SEO experts can help you with creating a blog that generates significantly more traffic to your website. Contact us today to tell us about your project and goals, and we’ll tell you about the many ways we can help you grow.