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Blog SEO is the practice of optimizing your posts and your blog's structure so search engines can find, understand and rank them. Whether you’re creating a blog or adding a blog section as you work out how to make your website, the tips below cover what actually moves rankings. Wix helps you write SEO-ready blog posts with AI titles, meta descriptions and internal linking suggestions. You’ll learn how to choose topics, structure your posts, optimize on-page elements and build the internal links that keep your blog visible.
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TL;DR: blog SEO
Blog SEO is the work of making your blog posts easy for search engines to crawl, understand and rank. It runs across topic selection, post structure, on-page optimization, rich media, internal links and publishing consistency, and the ten steps below cover each one in order.
Step | What it does |
Find the right topics | Targets keywords with real demand and clear intent |
Choose SEO-friendly blog formats | Matches the format to what already ranks |
Optimize your posts | Places the keyword where search engines read it |
Structure your content | Uses heading hierarchy so bots can parse sections |
Incorporate rich media | Raises time on page with video and audio |
Add alt text to images | Makes images indexable and accessible |
Link internally | Helps crawlers reach and index more pages |
Be mobile-friendly | Serves the version Google ranks from |
Post frequently | Gives search engines more pages to rank |
Engage on social media | Amplifies reach and earns links |
What is blog SEO and why is it so important?
Blog SEO, or search engine optimization for blogs, is the practice of optimizing a blog's content and structure to improve its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of blog SEO is to make your blog more attractive to search engines (plus the people who use them), ultimately leading to increased organic traffic.
Search engines look at a variety of signals to understand the value of your blog posts. In general, they seek out the most relevant, informative and/or in-depth content on a given topic, whether that content lives on your blog or any other type of website.
By optimizing your blogs for SEO, you can:
Gain site authority
Increase visibility
Boost site traffic
Generate more leads
10 blog SEO tips
01. Find the right topics
Unfortunate news. Many avid writers with established blog sites have already covered the topics about your industry. So, how can you make sure your blog posts stand out on search engines? Research and intent. We also recommend getting familiar with semantic SEO.
Identify the target audience for your blog
When starting a blog, focus your blog on just a few topics. Create posts that address your target audiences’ needs, pain points and questions. This tailored experience will improve how the search engine views your site as an authority on these topics, and simultaneously offer value to your readers.
Do thorough keyword research
Your first research goal is to target niche keywords in your expertise to find the best topics to write about. Just a reminder. Keywords are short phrases that a person enters into a search engine. By inserting these keywords into your content, you’ll increase your chances of appearing in the results for that specific query. Ideally, you’d choose the most popular terms to get more eyes on your posts. However, these broad, popular terms are extremely competitive and usually show a range of results.
For example, think if someone typed in “cake” on a search engine. Their intent is not so clear, and the results will reflect this ambiguity. In this case, you’d compete with strong pages like Wikipedia, very well-established recipe blogs and the 2014 movie “Cake.”
When it comes to keyword selection, more specific is almost always better, as these terms tend to be more precise and much less competitive (e.g., “gluten-free orange pound cake recipe.”) These “long-tail” keywords allow you to target a specific intent that directly answers your audience’s query.
Find those specific intent keywords that still carry a solid amount of search volume. The higher the volume, the more competitive the ranking gets.
To find the right keywords, list all the broad topics (also known as ‘seed topics’) you’d like to write about. Then break them down into more specialized subjects. For a food blogger, the seed topics could be: cakes, soups, salads, etc. The more specialized topics could be, for example, winter mushroom soup, carrot and ginger soup, etc.
Use Wix's SEO tools to find great keywords for article topics and discover their search volume.
Some of our favorite tools for finding blog topics include:
Semrush – often used for keyword research and online ranking data, including metrics such as search volume and cost per click.
Ahrefs – a tool that gives you plenty of suggestions when you pop in your keyword research area. After publishing the post, use Ahrefs to track how your blog performs in search rankings week over week.
Answer the Public – a tool that gives you a huge list of questions and related phrases around your topic of choice.
Keywords Everywhere – a Chrome extension that shows the search volume for various keywords. Great to use in combination with the previous one.
Look at the intent
A common mistake bloggers make when optimizing their content is writing content that does not address the intent in the eyes of Google. You may have found a keyword that you think perfectly aligns with your article, however, if the article does not address what Google believes the searcher looks for, then your article will likely not rank.
For example, if you address the keyword “newsletter templates” with a blog post, but the search results page focuses on product pages, then your post will probably not appear on the first page. To avoid this, look at the live SERP of the keyword and confirm the intent before writing.
Conduct competitive research
The best way to suss out your competition? Easy. Just Google it. Your second research task is to figure out how to improve your content beyond what already ranks. Aim for content that is clearly ten times more useful than what sits on the first results page.
First, search for your chosen keywords and look at your top five to 10 competitors to understand the kind of content people want when searching for that term. Also, notice the average length of the blog posts and aim to stay in that range. You can draw inspiration from these posts to make sure you write the most thorough and in-depth article possible.
Then, think about the added value only you can provide in your piece. Maybe you tried out several recipes for a flourless chocolate cake and discovered a magic ingredient. Perhaps your images are just so much more appealing than the ones you saw in the top results? Or you made a video that includes all the steps for the recipe? All of these elements can take your content to the next level and help show your authority and expertise to Google.
02. Choose SEO-friendly blog formats
As mentioned above, to outrank the competition, you must write content that brings value. Search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo will often prioritize comprehensive, research-based content with original data.
When brainstorming potential blog ideas, consider these blog formats that communicate helpful information:
Listicles
Tutorials
In-depth “how to” guides
Infographics
Expert round-up posts
Case studies
Beginner “what is” posts
FAQ
Write evergreen content
Choose keywords that people search for all year long, for years to come, also known as “evergreen” topics. Not only will these bring steady traffic to your site, you also won’t need to update it as frequently.
Evergreen topic: best advertising examples
Not evergreen: 2019 Super Bowl ad examples
03. Optimize your posts
Once you find your keywords and research your competition, dive into your article SEO. By driving traffic to your site, SEO will help you grow your fan base and even start monetizing your blog. Also, check out this guide on ideal blog post length.
Include your article’s main keyword in the following places (thankfully, too, the Wix Blog tool makes it super easy to implement all of these elements):
Your post title (H1)
The first paragraph of your post
The first part of your title tag
Your meta description
The URL of the blog post page
A couple of times in the post itself, or variations thereof
Did you know that Wix's AI meta tag creator can suggest title tag and meta descriptions for your blog, based on its content and purpose.
Remember to write for people, not search engines. The rules of good writing still count. Don’t keyword-stuff, but naturally include these terms when writing about a specific topic. And don’t worry. Search engines have improved at understanding synonyms and variations of your keyword, so you can use them to avoid sounding repetitive.
How to use AI for blog SEO
Wix helps you write on-brand blog posts fast with AI-generated outlines, titles and editable drafts. Aria is Wix's proprietary AI agent, not a generic chatbot with editing features.
04. Structure your content
This one may seem pretty obvious, but imagine a world in which articles don’t have any paragraphs, subheadings or titles and text appears in a stream-of-consciousness type form. A blog post without any structure is not a pretty sight, and search engines agree. So do users and if you also want to improve your dwell time, focus on your content structure.
When you use different formats for your text, you give them a specific tag in the code. This is how search engines distinguish between different types of text and their hierarchy within a page. To provide your readers (and the search engine) with the best experience possible, use some simple formatting.
HTML pieces are called H-headings and they range from H1 to H6 in descending importance. This means that H1 is your most important title (your article title), H2 is one level below (heading), and so on. Think of it as reading a newspaper in which you have a main headline, subheadings and paragraph text.
How to get cited in AI Overviews
AI Overviews now sit above the organic results on a large share of informational searches, which changes what a top ranking is worth. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults across roughly 69,000 Google searches and found that when an AI summary appeared, people clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, against 15% when no summary appeared. Being named inside the summary now matters as much as ranking underneath it.
The opening for bloggers is that these summaries pull from several places at once. Pew found that 88% of the summaries it examined cited three or more sources and only 1% leaned on a single source. A featured snippet shows one page, so this is a wider door, not a narrower one.
What triggers a summary is predictable too. Question-style queries produced one 60% of the time in the Pew data, and searches of ten words or more produced one 53% of the time, against 8% for one or two word searches. Those long conversational queries are exactly what a well-structured blog post answers. Write headings that match the question a reader would actually type, put a direct answer in the first two sentences underneath, and make each answer able to stand on its own when it is lifted out of the page.
05. Incorporate rich media
Since Google’s algorithm determines rankings due to user behavior, bloggers should try to keep their readers engaged for as long as possible. For example, adding a video or podcast episode to your post may help readers stay on your page for longer, thus lowering your bounce rates.
Video and audio give your post another way to show up in search, since Google surfaces video results for a wide range of queries. This is why we recommend having a solid video marketing strategy for your blog or even starting a podcast. Get started with our free video maker tool and podcast player.
06. Add alt text to images
The famous saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true for most people, but unfortunately, it’s a different story for search engines. Google, Bing and others can’t see images as we do, so you need to add some context (in the form of text) to help them decipher your photos and graphics. Adding alt text to your images helps search engines better understand, and thus efficiently index, them.
Adding these little textual descriptions will also enable people to discover your images on Google Image Search, giving you more traffic to your website and, ultimately, gaining better blog SEO.
To add alt text to images on your Wix Blog, open the image settings in your editor and fill in the alt text field. A great tip for writing good alt text is to imagine you’re describing the image to a friend who cannot see it.
Alt text is also an important part of web accessibility. It allows those accessing your content via a screen reader to better understand your accompanying images.
07. Link internally
Ever wondered how a Googlebot gets from one page to another? Probably not. But we’ll let you in on that secret. Links. Indeed, links are like a spider’s web behind the scenes of your website’s pages. When you link from one blog post to another page within the same domain (sitename.com), search engine bots (also known as “spiders”) can more easily discover all of your site’s pages and scan the content from head to toe. This process is called “crawling.” Once crawled, the web pages are saved in a massive library, aka “indexed.”
The more blog posts in your library, the higher the chances of your pages appearing on search results for a relevant query.
Adding more internal links also allows your visitors to browse your site freely, facilitating clicks to more pages. This signals to search engines that your website’s content satisfies its audience, and you’ll get a good blog SEO boost for it.
Pro tip: Instead of using “click here” or “read this,” use descriptive anchor text when linking to an internal blog post. This gives more context and makes it easier for the search engine to understand what’s on the upcoming page.
08. Be mobile-friendly
Device-use is ubiquitous, so even Google has started not only indexing the mobile version of your website, but also using that version to rank sites. That means mobile-optimized blogs get an extra SEO Boost. Thankfully, if you use Wix, your blog websites templates come with mobile-friendly design and navigation by default.
09. Post frequently
Starting a blog involves some work. You can’t expect to write one blog post and wait for the visitors to start rolling in. Blogging is a bit like going to the gym. It’s hard to do it regularly, but the benefits are huge. We’re not saying you need to write a 3,000-word post every day, but you can start by publishing weekly or bi-weekly.
From our experience, blogging more frequently can greatly impact blog SEO. When you provide those hungry Googlebots with your fresh and updated content, they will keep on coming back for more. Plus, you give the search engine more opportunities to rank your pages.
The key to posting more frequently is simple. Be organized. A posting schedule can help you make your blog plan a reality. In an Excel sheet, create a table that includes each blog post’s publishing date, writing deadline, some references and your target keywords. Having a good overview will make you feel more in control and encourage you to stick to your schedule.
To take some of the work off of you, consider inviting other experts in the field to write guest posts or hire freelancers to outsource some of the heavy lifting.
10. Engage on social media
Although not commonly known for its SEO power, social media can help get your name (and your links) out there. By sharing your valuable, original and well-written blog posts on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and more, you increase the chances that someone will amplify your content.
Search engines perceive that extra amount of traffic from social as a signal that others respect your blog, which can do wonders for your blog's SEO.
The easiest way to do this is to add a “share” and Twitter Tweet button in your blog posts, so your readers can easily post about them. Also, don't forget to share your published blog posts on your own social channels: Use the Social Media Graphics tool’s incredible ready-made templates to customize and create extra buzz about your posts.
Blog SEO FAQ
Are blogs good for SEO?
Blogs are a good way to generate organic traffic from search, and so Blog SEO is crucial to this. A lot of search engines searches are informational, and blogs are one of the best ways to meet this intent for searchers. Generally optimizing blog posts for SEO is a straightforward process which begins with the creation of great content.
How to add SEO to my blog?
If you create your blog with Wix, you'll get access to our inbuilt SEO setup tools which will allow you do kickstart your SEO with crucial on-page optimizations, such as meta titles and descriptions. You'll also be able to sync your site with Google Search Console for important SEO insights. In general SEO is not something that is added to your site, it's something that should be integrated from the very start of how you choose and write topics, to ho well you optimize them to be found on search engines.
What is a headless CMS?
The content in a headless cms lives separately from the front end that displays it, which means the same posts can power a website, an app or a storefront. Wix Headless is a headless solution that lets AI builders, vibe coders and agencies connect any frontend to a full native business backend including payments, bookings, events, CMS and eCommerce without building or managing infrastructure.
Read more about Wix Headless:
