SEO
13 Must-Have Elements Of An Exceptional Blog Post
One in five bloggers reports their blog delivers strong marketing results – 22%.
That’s it – and this percentage has been steadily declining over the past three years.
That can’t be true, can it?
Why are the vast majority of blogs not delivering strong marketing results?
My theory is that there is a lot of overly generalized advice in the content marketing industry:
“Write for users, not Google.”
“Google rewards high-quality content.”
“It’s about search intent.”
Okay, but what is high-quality content?
The bar is high. This article will help you get your content the respect it richly deserves by breaking down 13 essential elements of an exceptional blog post.
1. Compelling Topic
Your audience has to care about the topic.
If you’re not entirely sure what topics your audience cares about, there are a few places to start.
Find which pages support your business objectives in Google Analytics.
Ask your sales teams what questions potential customers are asking most frequently.
Or, look directly at your on-site search to see what products or services people are looking for.
Interact with members of your audience within social media channels that are related to your industry.
These are all great places to source content topics that are of great interest to your audience.
2. Search-Friendly URL
Google recommends keeping a simple, short URL structure whenever possible.
Do not use long ID numbers in your URLs or time-specific elements such as date and year. Overly complex URLs can cause problems for crawlers and are not helpful to humans.
For instance, this:
https://www.example.com/blog/2022/06/thirteen-elements-of-a-good-blog-post-that-delivers-results/
Can become this:
https://www.example.com/blog/elements-of-a-good-blog/
Be descriptive with your URL so that someone who sees the link will know exactly what to expect when they click on it.
3. Include An Author
Showcasing the author gives a blog article more credibility, context, and authenticity.
Link the author’s name to a profile page (with a photo) where readers can explore other articles by the author and feel like they’re reading something from a real person.
Doing so will encourage your readers to engage with your brand on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
4. Table Of Contents
Using a table of contents at the top of posts organizes your content making it easy for users and bots to navigate.
Anchor links in a table of contents help your readers quickly get to the information they are most interested in.
Search engines love a table of contents! It’s not guaranteed, but they are often pulled into Google search and displayed as sitelinks.
5. Powerful Headline
A powerful headline attracts your audience to your blog and gets your post page views.
Without a headline that attracts eyes, a good blog post is lost among the vast sea that is the internet.
Spend time crafting the perfect catchy title to reel in readers and make them want to read your article.
SEJ provides 12 tips to turn an average headline into one that is exceptional and entices clicks.
6. Interesting Introduction
While a good headline attracts clicks to your site, it is the introduction that turns a site visitor into a reader.
For an introduction to resonate, readers need to understand what you’re talking about and care about what you have to say.
You don’t need to give them the answer to their question yet, just enough information to give them a reason to care.
SEJ provides seven ways to write blog introductions your readers and Google will love.
7. Compelling Subheadings
Headlines and subheadings highlight the main elements of the topic making the article easy to scan and leading the reader through the content.
Using keywords in subheadings helps search engines identify the content and quickly tells the reader the main points within the article.
This does not mean you should force keywords into subheadings. Keywords need to make sense and sound natural.
Subheadings should be formatted with the title tag hierarchy. This means that you use progressively smaller heading formats.
For most articles, you only need to use H2s, but if you need to separate an H2 with a lot of content, you can use an H3.
Make sure you’re using header tags properly as recommended in this SEJ article on SEO best practices.
8. Length
I frequently hear studies claiming anywhere between 1,500 to 3,000 words is the ideal content length for articles.
Truth is, it doesn’t matter.
Length will vary by content style, topic, and audience.
A good blog is as long as it needs to be and as long as your audience will read.
Use page depth (scroll) tracking in Google Analytics (or Hotjar) to see how far users are reading your blog articles.
Try hiding a subsection answer within an accordion for users to interact with, you can tag this event to see if you’re keeping users engaged that far into the article or not.
9. Appealing Visuals
We respond to and process visual data far better than text.
And not just a little bit – 60,000 times faster.
How the human brain processes complex information is what makes visualization so important.
Using charts or graphs to explain complex data is much easier than trudging through a large amount of text.
Just be sure to optimize your images for search. SEJ shares 12 important image SEO tips you need to know.
10. Conclusion
By the end of your article, your reader may have forgotten a few of the points you made earlier in the piece.
A good blog post will summarize the key takeaways from the article and guide your reader on what to do next.
The point is not to reiterate your points, but to help your audience draw actionable conclusions from your blog post.
Decide what action you want your blog reader to take. Maybe you want them to sign up for email, follow on social, or check out a product or service you offer.
The point here is to inspire your reader to take your desired action.
11. Useful Links
Without links, the internet would be an organized mess of pages. It would be really difficult to navigate (find what we were looking for.)
A good blog post makes navigation intuitive for users and easy for search engines to crawl.
Internal links help connect related topics for search engines and provide further research that may interest the reader.
John Mueller explained in an SEO After Hours video:
“…internal linking is super critical for SEO.
I think it’s one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important.”
External links are best used to cite sources and act as an endorsement for high-quality content.
12. Schema
Schema markup is an essential element of a good blog post because it helps search engines identify your page as a blog post instead of product pages, system pages, or other content.
There are a few schema markup types that apply to blog posts, articles, and news.
There is also FAQ, How-To, Breadcrumbs, Speakable, and more.
13. Suggest Related Blog Posts
At this point, you have a well-structured blog post that includes the technical aspects of ranking a page and an engaging copy that entertains and informs the reader through to the end.
Now, you want to improve the likelihood that your readers will stay on your site and ideally convert at the end.
At the end of your blog post, display a few (three max) blog articles that are related to the same topic cluster.
Final Thoughts
The 13 elements in this article help users care about your blog article and help search engines better understand how the topic relates to your website as a whole.
Aside from these technical elements, there is a strong argument for style, delivery, and prose.
To continue learning, browse Search Engine Journal’s contributors and on-staff writers. Select five writers you enjoy reading and follow their content to study what makes them great.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Lyubov Levitskaya/Shutterstock
SEO
Why Google Can’t Tell You About Every Ranking Drop
In a recent Twitter exchange, Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, provided insight into how the search engine handles algorithmic spam actions and ranking drops.
The discussion was sparked by a website owner’s complaint about a significant traffic loss and the inability to request a manual review.
Sullivan clarified that a site could be affected by an algorithmic spam action or simply not ranking well due to other factors.
He emphasized that many sites experiencing ranking drops mistakenly attribute it to an algorithmic spam action when that may not be the case.
“I’ve looked at many sites where people have complained about losing rankings and decide they have a algorithmic spam action against them, but they don’t. “
Sullivan’s full statement will help you understand Google’s transparency challenges.
Additionally, he explains why the desire for manual review to override automated rankings may be misguided.
Two different things. A site could have an algorithmic spam action. A site could be not ranking well because other systems that *are not about spam* just don’t see it as helpful.
I’ve looked at many sites where people have complained about losing rankings and decide they have a…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 13, 2024
Challenges In Transparency & Manual Intervention
Sullivan acknowledged the idea of providing more transparency in Search Console, potentially notifying site owners of algorithmic actions similar to manual actions.
However, he highlighted two key challenges:
- Revealing algorithmic spam indicators could allow bad actors to game the system.
- Algorithmic actions are not site-specific and cannot be manually lifted.
Sullivan expressed sympathy for the frustration of not knowing the cause of a traffic drop and the inability to communicate with someone about it.
However, he cautioned against the desire for a manual intervention to override the automated systems’ rankings.
Sullivan states:
“…you don’t really want to think “Oh, I just wish I had a manual action, that would be so much easier.” You really don’t want your individual site coming the attention of our spam analysts. First, it’s not like manual actions are somehow instantly processed. Second, it’s just something we know about a site going forward, especially if it says it has change but hasn’t really.”
Determining Content Helpfulness & Reliability
Moving beyond spam, Sullivan discussed various systems that assess the helpfulness, usefulness, and reliability of individual content and sites.
He acknowledged that these systems are imperfect and some high-quality sites may not be recognized as well as they should be.
“Some of them ranking really well. But they’ve moved down a bit in small positions enough that the traffic drop is notable. They assume they have fundamental issues but don’t, really — which is why we added a whole section about this to our debugging traffic drops page.”
Sullivan revealed ongoing discussions about providing more indicators in Search Console to help creators understand their content’s performance.
“Another thing I’ve been discussing, and I’m not alone in this, is could we do more in Search Console to show some of these indicators. This is all challenging similar to all the stuff I said about spam, about how not wanting to let the systems get gamed, and also how there’s then no button we would push that’s like “actually more useful than our automated systems think — rank it better!” But maybe there’s a way we can find to share more, in a way that helps everyone and coupled with better guidance, would help creators.”
Advocacy For Small Publishers & Positive Progress
In response to a suggestion from Brandon Saltalamacchia, founder of RetroDodo, about manually reviewing “good” sites and providing guidance, Sullivan shared his thoughts on potential solutions.
He mentioned exploring ideas such as self-declaration through structured data for small publishers and learning from that information to make positive changes.
“I have some thoughts I’ve been exploring and proposing on what we might do with small publishers and self-declaring with structured data and how we might learn from that and use that in various ways. Which is getting way ahead of myself and the usual no promises but yes, I think and hope for ways to move ahead more positively.”
Sullivan said he can’t make promises or implement changes overnight, but he expressed hope for finding ways to move forward positively.
Featured Image: Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock
SEO
56 Google Search Statistics to Bookmark for 2024
If you’re curious about the state of Google search in 2024, look no further.
Each year we pick, vet, and categorize a list of up-to-date statistics to give you insights from trusted sources on Google search trends.
Check out more resources on how Google works:
Learn more
SEO
How To Use ChatGPT For Keyword Research
Anyone not using ChatGPT for keyword research is missing a trick.
You can save time and understand an entire topic in seconds instead of hours.
In this article, I outline my most effective ChatGPT prompts for keyword research and teach you how I put them together so that you, too, can take, edit, and enhance them even further.
But before we jump into the prompts, I want to emphasize that you shouldn’t replace keyword research tools or disregard traditional keyword research methods.
ChatGPT can make mistakes. It can even create new keywords if you give it the right prompt. For example, I asked it to provide me with a unique keyword for the topic “SEO” that had never been searched before.
“Interstellar Internet SEO: Optimizing content for the theoretical concept of an interstellar internet, considering the challenges of space-time and interplanetary communication delays.”
Although I want to jump into my LinkedIn profile and update my title to “Interstellar Internet SEO Consultant,” unfortunately, no one has searched that (and they probably never will)!
You must not blindly rely on the data you get back from ChatGPT.
What you can rely on ChatGPT for is the topic ideation stage of keyword research and inspiration.
ChatGPT is a large language model trained with massive amounts of data to accurately predict what word will come next in a sentence. However, it does not know how to do keyword research yet.
Instead, think of ChatGPT as having an expert on any topic armed with the information if you ask it the right question.
In this guide, that is exactly what I aim to teach you how to do – the most essential prompts you need to know when performing topical keyword research.
Best ChatGPT Keyword Research Prompts
The following ChatGPT keyword research prompts can be used on any niche, even a topic to which you are brand new.
For this demonstration, let’s use the topic of “SEO” to demonstrate these prompts.
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On A Topic
What Are The {X} Most Popular Sub-topics Related To {Topic}?
The first prompt is to give you an idea of the niche.
As shown above, ChatGPT did a great job understanding and breaking down SEO into three pillars: on-page, off-page & technical.
The key to the following prompt is to take one of the topics ChatGPT has given and query the sub-topics.
What Are The {X} Most Popular Sub-topics Related To {Sub-topic}?
For this example, let’s query, “What are the most popular sub-topics related to keyword research?”
Having done keyword research for over 10 years, I would expect it to output information related to keyword research metrics, the types of keywords, and intent.
Let’s see.
Again, right on the money.
To get the keywords you want without having ChatGPT describe each answer, use the prompt “list without description.”
Here is an example of that.
List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Keywords For The Topic Of {X}
You can even branch these keywords out further into their long-tail.
Example prompt:
List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic “{X}”
List Without Description The Top Semantically Related Keywords And Entities For The Topic {X}
You can even ask ChatGPT what any topic’s semantically related keywords and entities are!
Tip: The Onion Method Of Prompting ChatGPT
When you are happy with a series of prompts, add them all to one prompt. For example, so far in this article, we have asked ChatGPT the following:
- What are the four most popular sub-topics related to SEO?
- What are the four most popular sub-topics related to keyword research
- List without description the top five most popular keywords for “keyword intent”?
- List without description the top five most popular long-tail keywords for the topic “keyword intent types”?
- List without description the top semantically related keywords and entities for the topic “types of keyword intent in SEO.”
Combine all five into one prompt by telling ChatGPT to perform a series of steps. Example:
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, and Step 5”
Example:
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 and Step 5. Step 1 – Generate an answer for the 3 most popular sub-topics related to {Topic}?. Step 2 – Generate 3 of the most popular sub-topics related to each answer. Step 3 – Take those answers and list without description their top 3 most popular keywords. Step 4 – For the answers given of their most popular keywords, provide 3 long-tail keywords. Step 5 – for each long-tail keyword offered in the response, a list without descriptions 3 of their top semantically related keywords and entities.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On A Question
Taking the steps approach from above, we can get ChatGPT to help streamline getting keyword ideas based on a question. For example, let’s ask, “What is SEO?”
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4. Step 1 Generate 10 questions about “{Question}”?. Step 2 – Generate 5 more questions about “{Question}” that do not repeat the above. Step 3 – Generate 5 more questions about “{Question}” that do not repeat the above. Step 4 – Based on the above Steps 1,2,3 suggest a final list of questions avoiding duplicates or semantically similar questions.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Using ChatGPT Based On The Alphabet Soup Method
One of my favorite methods, manually, without even using a keyword research tool, is to generate keyword research ideas from Google autocomplete, going from A to Z.
You can also do this using ChatGPT.
Example prompt:
“give me popular keywords that includes the keyword “SEO”, and the next letter of the word starts with a”
Tip: Using the onion prompting method above, we can combine all this in one prompt.
“Give me five popular keywords that include “SEO” in the word, and the following letter starts with a. Once the answer has been done, move on to giving five more popular keywords that include “SEO” for each letter of the alphabet b to z.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On User Personas
When it comes to keyword research, understanding user personas is essential for understanding your target audience and keeping your keyword research focused and targeted. ChatGPT may help you get an initial understanding of customer personas.
Example prompt:
“For the topic of “{Topic}” list 10 keywords each for the different types of user personas”
You could even go a step further and ask for questions based on those topics that those specific user personas may be searching for:
As well as get the keywords to target based on those questions:
“For each question listed above for each persona, list the keywords, as well as the long-tail keywords to target, and put them in a table”
Generating Keyword Ideas Using ChatGPT Based On Searcher Intent And User Personas
Understanding the keywords your target persona may be searching is the first step to effective keyword research. The next step is to understand the search intent behind those keywords and which content format may work best.
For example, a business owner who is new to SEO or has just heard about it may be searching for “what is SEO.”
However, if they are further down the funnel and in the navigational stage, they may search for “top SEO firms.”
You can query ChatGPT to inspire you here based on any topic and your target user persona.
SEO Example:
“For the topic of “{Topic}” list 10 keywords each for the different types of searcher intent that a {Target Persona} would be searching for”
ChatGPT For Keyword Research Admin
Here is how you can best use ChatGPT for keyword research admin tasks.
Using ChatGPT As A Keyword Categorization Tool
One of the use cases for using ChatGPT is for keyword categorization.
In the past, I would have had to devise spreadsheet formulas to categorize keywords or even spend hours filtering and manually categorizing keywords.
ChatGPT can be a great companion for running a short version of this for you.
Let’s say you have done keyword research in a keyword research tool, have a list of keywords, and want to categorize them.
You could use the following prompt:
“Filter the below list of keywords into categories, target persona, searcher intent, search volume and add information to a six-column table: List of keywords – [LIST OF KEYWORDS], Keyword Search Volume [SEARCH VOLUMES] and Keyword Difficulties [KEYWORD DIFFICUTIES].”
Tip: Add keyword metrics from the keyword research tools, as using the search volumes that a ChatGPT prompt may give you will be wildly inaccurate at best.
Using ChatGPT For Keyword Clustering
Another of ChatGPT’s use cases for keyword research is to help you cluster. Many keywords have the same intent, and by grouping related keywords, you may find that one piece of content can often target multiple keywords at once.
However, be careful not to rely only on LLM data for clustering. What ChatGPT may cluster as a similar keyword, the SERP or the user may not agree with. But it is a good starting point.
The big downside of using ChatGPT for keyword clustering is actually the amount of keyword data you can cluster based on the memory limits.
So, you may find a keyword clustering tool or script that is better for large keyword clustering tasks. But for small amounts of keywords, ChatGPT is actually quite good.
A great use small keyword clustering use case using ChatGPT is for grouping People Also Ask (PAA) questions.
Use the following prompt to group keywords based on their semantic relationships. For example:
“Organize the following keywords into groups based on their semantic relationships, and give a short name to each group: [LIST OF PAA], create a two-column table where each keyword sits on its own row.
Using Chat GPT For Keyword Expansion By Patterns
One of my favorite methods of doing keyword research is pattern spotting.
Most seed keywords have a variable that can expand your target keywords.
Here are a few examples of patterns:
1. Question Patterns
(who, what, where, why, how, are, can, do, does, will)
“Generate [X] keywords for the topic “[Topic]” that contain any or all of the following “who, what, where, why, how, are, can, do, does, will”
2. Comparison Patterns
Example:
“Generate 50 keywords for the topic “{Topic}” that contain any or all of the following “for, vs, alternative, best, top, review”
3. Brand Patterns
Another one of my favorite modifiers is a keyword by brand.
We are probably all familiar with the most popular SEO brands; however, if you aren’t, you could ask your AI friend to do the heavy lifting.
Example prompt:
“For the top {Topic} brands what are the top “vs” keywords”
4. Search Intent Patterns
One of the most common search intent patterns is “best.”
When someone is searching for a “best {topic}” keyword, they are generally searching for a comprehensive list or guide that highlights the top options, products, or services within that specific topic, along with their features, benefits, and potential drawbacks, to make an informed decision.
Example:
“For the topic of “[Topic]” what are the 20 top keywords that include “best”
Again, this guide to keyword research using ChatGPT has emphasized the ease of generating keyword research ideas by utilizing ChatGPT throughout the process.
Keyword Research Using ChatGPT Vs. Keyword Research Tools
Free Vs. Paid Keyword Research Tools
Like keyword research tools, ChatGPT has free and paid options.
However, one of the most significant drawbacks of using ChatGPT for keyword research alone is the absence of SEO metrics to help you make smarter decisions.
To improve accuracy, you could take the results it gives you and verify them with your classic keyword research tool – or vice versa, as shown above, uploading accurate data into the tool and then prompting.
However, you must consider how long it takes to type and fine-tune your prompt to get your desired data versus using the filters within popular keyword research tools.
For example, if we use a popular keyword research tool using filters, you could have all of the “best” queries with all of their SEO metrics:
And unlike ChatGPT, generally, there is no token limit; you can extract several hundred, if not thousands, of keywords at a time.
As I have mentioned multiple times throughout this piece, you cannot blindly trust the data or SEO metrics it may attempt to provide you with.
The key is to validate the keyword research with a keyword research tool.
ChatGPT For International SEO Keyword Research
ChatGPT can be a terrific multilingual keyword research assistant.
For example, if you wanted to research keywords in a foreign language such as French. You could ask ChatGPT to translate your English keywords;
- The key is to take the data above and paste it into a popular keyword research tool to verify.
- As you can see below, many of the keyword translations for the English keywords do not have any search volume for direct translations in French.
But don’t worry, there is a workaround: If you have access to a competitor keyword research tool, you can see what webpage is ranking for that query – and then identify the top keyword for that page based on the ChatGPT translated keywords that do have search volume.
-
Or, if you don’t have access to a paid keyword research tool, you could always take the top-performing result, extract the page copy, and then ask ChatGPT what the primary keyword for the page is.
Key Takeaway
ChatGPT can be an expert on any topic and an invaluable keyword research tool. However, it is another tool to add to your toolbox when doing keyword research; it does not replace traditional keyword research tools.
As shown throughout this tutorial, from making up keywords at the beginning to inaccuracies around data and translations, ChatGPT can make mistakes when used for keyword research.
You cannot blindly trust the data you get back from ChatGPT.
However, it can offer a shortcut to understanding any topic for which you need to do keyword research and, as a result, save you countless hours.
But the key is how you prompt.
The prompts I shared with you above will help you understand a topic in minutes instead of hours and allow you to better seed keywords using keyword research tools.
It can even replace mundane keyword clustering tasks that you used to do with formulas in spreadsheets or generate ideas based on keywords you give it.
Paired with traditional keyword research tools, ChatGPT for keyword research can be a powerful tool in your arsenal.
More resources:
Featured Image: Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock
-
PPC6 days ago
How the TikTok Algorithm Works in 2024 (+9 Ways to Go Viral)
-
SEO6 days ago
Blog Post Checklist: Check All Prior to Hitting “Publish”
-
SEO5 days ago
How to Use Keywords for SEO: The Complete Beginner’s Guide
-
MARKETING5 days ago
How To Protect Your People and Brand
-
PPC7 days ago
How to Craft Compelling Google Ads for eCommerce
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Google Started Enforcing The Site Reputation Abuse Policy
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Elevating Women in SEO for a More Inclusive Industry
-
PPC6 days ago
How to Brainstorm Business Ideas: 9 Fool-Proof Approaches
You must be logged in to post a comment Login