Why the Structure of a Blog Post Is Vital To Getting Your Message Out There
Photo by Paul Lowry
You have to think of the internet as a vast library or superstore. You don’t go to a store and find all the products jumbled up. They are neatly arranged by categories and by product. The same is true of a library – when you arrive the shelves are not stacked in a random order. They are arranged by genre and author surname so that you can easily track down what you need. This indexing is done by people who have the visual ability to recognise what an item is and where in the indexing framework it belongs. Search engines do not have the same skills that humans do. They are getting smarter, but they are still not brilliant at identifying what the content is exactly and how it relates to any given topic. This is why your content marketing and content strategy can benefit greatly from the structure of a blog post.
Does SEO Stifle the Creative Process?
I’ve heard it argued that search engine optimization has a negative impact on the way in which people write and that it can totally block their creativity.
To my mind this is not true it just means that they are approaching it the wrong way.
You can write about anything that you want but if you want your content to be indexed and found by the right audience then you need to give the search engines some clues to guide them to the right conclusion when indexing your article. You do this by applying some structure to your articles.
Your creativity need not be stifled. And done properly this process will make your content better and more robust so that it is received by its intended audience.
Getting Your Content Formatted With as Little Stress as Possible
So what do you need to do? You can either think about the structure of the content before you start working on it – perhaps when you are writing your outline – or after you have finished your draft and are ready to review and tweak it.
It doesn’t really matter at which end of the process you do this work, just as long as you do it!
Here’s a quick check list of things to do to the structure of a blog post without being spammy:
- URL – make it descriptive and include the main theme (keyword) of the content
- Title Tag – this is another opportunity to indicate what your page is about. Again, make sure that it is relevant and not keyword stuffed.
- Meta description – this is what will appear under your title in the search results. You should use this opportunity to entice people to click through to your page. Make your description interesting and relevant to the topic of your page.
- Good headline – it’s all about relevance write a headline that is engaging and informative. Again include the main theme.
- Use the <h></h> tags for your headings – each heading as you go down the page should lea the reader and the search engines through the narrative of your content.
- Images – I would also make sure that you use relevant images and name the files accordingly; adding alternate text and titles to the meta data. You don’t need to do this. It will help the overall structure of your blog post as search engines still have a hard time determining the exact content of images.
Some Words Of Caution About Over Optimising
You wouldn’t consider writing a letter, a piece of marketing collateral or a report on behalf of your business without making sure that it addresses the issues that you want it to. You would also ensure that you cover the topic(s) that are of interest to your target audience.This is exactly what each piece of content you produce for your web presence should also look to achieve.
So don’t go from minimal structure in your blog posts at all to producing over optimised content that only has the search engines in mind.
Too many forced insertions of a keyword in a piece of content makes article hard for your audience to read. You may also be penalised by the search engines for this behaviour.
When you’re optimising your content make sure that you do it as naturally as possible by varying the text that you use for titles, descriptions, headings and file names. Be creative they should not all be exactly the same!
Do you find your creativity stifled by having to optimise the structure of your bog posts? In my opinion it is all about finding a way of making the optimisation process fit into your workflow at the place where it has as little negative impact as possible.
I’d be interested in hearing any tips and tricks you have found along the way to help you optimise the structure of a blog post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Thank you so much for writing this Kittie! I use the plugin Yoast to optimize the elements you mentioned. Am I doing good?
Absolutely! the Yoast SEO plugin is brilliant. His blog is worth a follow too.
Kittie, you always offer tips that are useful and helpful. Although I have yet to write my first blog, I am reading closer and closer to it.
Hi Joel… thanks for stopping by. Glad you found it helpful. I’m looking forward to reading your blog. Have you decided what it is going to cover?
You make some very good points. There is a lot of fear around SEO and blog posts, particularly for new bloggers. One of the commonest mistakes I see is that people write for SEO first and the reader second. If you post is well written and crafted first, then it will stand the tweaks necessary for SEO and still maintain it’s integrity. If it doesn’t, go back to the drawing board because it probably didn’t have a great deal of value anyway.
I totally agree with what you say. The fear of SEO seems to be getting more and more widespread which is why I tried to explain it another way.
Kittie,
I do not find that the optimization process limits or takes away from creativity, necessarily. It just insists you be creative in your approach to gel them both together.
I’ve found the Yoast plug-in to be helpful, and have noticed the difference in SEO, but also giving a bit more sense to arrangement on a page.
It’s all in how you look at it.
Thanks for your insight along the way – I do appreciate your thoughts as I’ve continued my learning process…
~Keri
Hi Keri,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I always value your thoughts too.
The Yoast plugin is useful – I think it also helps to train your mind to start doing these things automatically, which is what you need for it to appear seamless.
Kittie
Very good points, and so well presented!
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed it.
Kittie, really useful. Clear and well presented. You make me think about improving the seo fo my blog
Hi Fabrizio
I’m glad the post made you feel that way.
I’m trying to make SEO not seem like such a dirty word!
Kittie
Hi, Kittie, loved your post (although it is on a subject I normally shy away from), concise, to the point and helpful. Can I engage your services and trade some of my goodies?
Hi Barbara.
Thanks for the kind words. Of course you can… any time… just give me a shout.
Kittie
Hi Barbara.
Thanks for the kind words. Of course you can… any time… just give me a shout.
Kittie
Great article – most of the time I am not focusing on writing to certain key topics, and perhaps I need to shake it up a little.
Hey Caroline,
Shall be heading over to your blog shortly to see what it is all about. Thanks for stopping by.
Kittie
Great article. Will have to read it again later. One thing I would mention is that when you use the Tweet Sharaholic button at the top it references @sharaholic in the tweet. You might want to customize that to your own twitter handle. Thanks for writing this Kitty.
Hi Maria!
Thanks for swinging by… glad you enjoyed the article.
Good point about Shareaholic, will have to change that – thanks for pointing it out
Kittie
You share such helpful insight Kittie, I very much appreciate the helpfulness.
When you start blogging it’s easy to get too wrapped up in key words and SEO, and let that become the primary focus of your content creation. Your Library analogy really simplifies the concept, and this is a great way for all content creators to approach the writing process. The end result is the same — but this switches the focus back onto the creative process of writing. You have a good little check list at the bottom, as a reminder of things to incorporate into the creative process, rather than have these elements define the creative process.
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
Glad the analogy resonated with you! I agree you can get far too caught up in the technicalities and end up with entirely the wrong type of content, if you’re not careful