The 13 Best SEO Basics For Every Long-Form Blog Post

Long-form content is fundamentally the backbone of the sales funnel. Long-form content builds your image as an expert in your niche.

Long-form content has a minimum of 3000 words, whereas it can reach up to 10,000 words. 

And longer guides can even be 20,000 words.

Long-form makes your website stand out from the competition. Obviously, this content isn’t just lengthy content, but it has to be deep, and informational, like a thesis on a subject. 

Now the twist is that just lengthy content will not make it appear magically on page one of Google. It has to be content that is incorporated with SEO. Even the most basic SEO helps. 

If done right this will help you gain thousands of followers. 

Let’s dive straight into it 

1. Keywords research 
2. Long-tail keywords and Use LSI keywords
3. Create great titles
4. Create useful subheadings
5. Apply schema markup
6. Use influencer’s reach
7. Optimize your URL
8. Incorporate outbound links
9. Insert internal links 
10. Choose the correct title tag
11. SEO friendly meta description 
12. Mobile friendly 
13. Analyze site speed

Keywords Research 

The goal of keyword research is to discover words and phrases that people are looking for on Google and other major search engines. These phrases are associated with your website’s products and services. Keywords are now more than ever focusing on the purpose of the searcher’s intent. 

Pay attention to two things while selecting your keywords.

1. Make sure it is specific to your topic
2. Try selecting a low competition keyword

SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner are absolutely the best for it. 

Long-Tail Keywords and LSI Keywords

Once you have a focus keyword in place, it is time to start using long-tail keywords. With Long Tail keywords you can focus on keywords with really low competition. 

With the increase in voice searches, it is crucial that your website be available for all kinds of searches, mobile, desktop, and voice. 

LSI (latent semantic index) keywords is just a technical term for keywords that are close to your focus keyword. 

Tip: Use Google’s “searches related to” section shown below:

Create Great Title (h1 tag)

H1 tags are the first thing that a person sees when they see your blog. It has to be captivating and SEO-friendly at the same time. It should also hold the essence of your whole blog in 70 characters. 

Title tags should be what people are searching for, try using words as you would actually make a search. 

Eg: which are the best running shoes 

• Make sure you include a long-tail keyword.
• Make it short 20-70 characters.
• Clearly state what the article is about.

Create Useful Subheadings

The main goal of subheadings is to draw attention to themselves because of their size. The scanner will come to a halt to read them before continuing to scan till they reach the next subhead, which they will then read. They serve to direct the reader down the page as they scan from subhead to subhead.

Stay away from keyword stuffing in your subheading. Search engines can spot keyword stuffing from a mile away. And guess what they hate it. Try making your keywords as natural as possible. 

Subheadings should be categorizing your blog into chunks of information. 

Apply Schema Markup 

According to Impactplus, here is a definition of schema makeup,  “Schema markup, also known as structured data, is the language of search engines, using a unique semantic vocabulary. It is code used to more clearly provide information to search engines in order to understand your content.”

Schema markups in simple language allow search engines to crawl and understand the meaning of what is mentioned in the blog or your website. 

Schema markup helps any website rank better than other websites. If you are dreaming of ranking on page #1 of Google, schema markup is your new friend. It markup up data for tons of different types of data, including: 

• Articles
• Local businesses
• Restaurants
• TV episodes and ratings
• Book reviews
• Movies
• Software applications
• Events
• Products

Use Influencer’s Reach

Influencers have a great reach. You can take advantage of their reach by reaching out to them for a backlink.
Their backlinks will drive a ton of traffic to your website. The goal is to get as many backlinks as possible for your blog. Influencers have a great network and can help you build the same. 

Optimize Your URL 

Shorter URLs give your users a better experience, plus they are easier to remember. Moreover, it helps the search engines too. 

URLs should focus on long-tailed keywords. 

Incorporate Outbound Links

Outbound links enhance your post’s SEO. Like brian mentions, it’s best to have 2 to 4 links per 1000 words. 

For an in-depth topic, you can add more links, but make sure to not overdo it and put a link in every paragraph. It is always a good idea to keep it simple when in doubt. 

Insert Internal Links 

Internal links can help you develop a website structure, generate traffic throughout your site, and encourage users to spend more time there. Internal linking is a useful feature for search engines as well. Internal links are crawled by search engines like Google and Bing.

Internal links are as important as external and backlinks. A lot of people miss out on internal linking which is basic for on-page SEO. 2 to 4 links per blog is a good number of internal links, remember we don’t want to overdo it. 

 Choose the Correct Title Tag

Title tags are the face of your blog. They are the first thing search engines find. Title tags are supposed to accommodate a focus keyword.  

Source: https://modernworldconsulting.com/title-tags/

Title tags are different from what the blog title is. But both should have your focus keywords in them. Any title tag should describe what the blog has and what benefits it has and it has to contain the focus keyword. 

SEO friendly meta description

In addition to the title tag, the meta description adds a little bit of jazz that helps your page stand out for the SERPs. 

Below are tips for an optimized meta description:

• Keep it brief between 135-160 characters. 
• Insert focus keyword.
• Keep it simple and descriptive.
• Be honest and convince them to read the page. 

Mobile Friendly 

A responsive design, and how your blog will look on the mobile. For a better experience reading on mobile, make short paragraphs with 3-4 short sentences. 

Use images to break down the content and make sure to add your S1 and S2 subheadings. 

Analyze Site Speed

You have 3 seconds before someone loses their interest in your website. You don’t want to lose traffic for your site is even slightly slower. 

Use optimized images, to make your site load faster. Optimize your design and images to reduce the server response time. 

Speed test your website on https://tools.pingdom.com/ to find out how well your site can capture the attention of your visitors. 

Wrapping It Up

Check out these tips before pushing out your long-form content. Make a checklist and tick them off once you get the basics done. 

Developing content in itself can be a big challenge, especially if you can’t drive traffic to your website. 

Remember that this isn’t an exhaustive list of things you should do to improve your SEO. It’s just a simple checklist to keep in mind as you write and update your blog entries.

SEO, as I always emphasize, is a long-term approach. With SEO, don’t expect to see immediate results. (These things happen, but you should be thinking about the long run.)