Structuring blog posts for maximum impact

You need 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’re 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’re getting smarter, but they’re 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 structuring blog posts for maximum impact.

Does SEO stifle the creative process?

I’ve heard it argued that search engine optimisation 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 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. Guiding the search engines to the right conclusion when indexing your article or site is what SEO about. You do this by structuring your articles effectively.

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.

Stress free formatting of your content

So what do you need to do? You can either think about the structuring the content before you start working on it – perhaps when you’re writing your outline – or after you’ve finished your draft and are ready to review and tweak it.

It doesn’t really matter which end of the process you do this work, just as long as you do it!

Here’s a quick checklist of things to do to when structuring blog posts for maximum impact 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’d also make sure that you use relevant images and name the files accordingly; adding alternate text and titles to the image metadata. 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’d 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 look to achieve.

So don’t go from a minimal structure in your blog posts to producing over optimised content that only has the search engines in mind.

Too many forced insertions of a keyword into a piece of content makes an 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 blog posts?  In my opinion, it’s all about finding a way of making the optimisation process fit into your writing workflow. Find the spot where it has as little negative impact as possible.

I’d be interested in hearing any tips and tricks you’ve found along the way to help you optimise the structure of a blog post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

22 Comments

  1. Sherry Nouraini on 4 May 2012 at 3:31 am

    Thank you so much for writing this Kittie! I use the plugin Yoast to optimize the elements you mentioned. Am I doing good?

    • Kittie Walker on 4 May 2012 at 10:08 am

      Absolutely! the Yoast SEO plugin is brilliant. His blog is worth a follow too.

  2. Joel Carter on 4 May 2012 at 4:12 am

    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.

    • Kittie Walker on 4 May 2012 at 10:11 am

      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?

  3. flaminglacer on 4 May 2012 at 2:26 pm

    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.

    • Kittie Walker on 4 May 2012 at 11:25 pm

      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.

  4. Keri on 6 May 2012 at 5:29 pm

    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

    • Kittie Walker on 7 May 2012 at 1:53 pm

      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

  5. Sally K Witt, Social Media and Ministry on 22 May 2012 at 11:17 pm

    Very good points, and so well presented!

    • Kittie Walker on 23 May 2012 at 1:08 pm

      Thanks for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed it.

  6. Fabrizio Faraco on 24 May 2012 at 10:11 am

    Kittie, really useful. Clear and well presented. You make me think about improving the seo fo my blog

    • Kittie Walker on 24 May 2012 at 7:53 pm

      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

  7. Barbara on 24 May 2012 at 6:22 pm

    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?

    • Kittie Walker on 24 May 2012 at 7:53 pm

      Hi Barbara.

      Thanks for the kind words. Of course you can… any time… just give me a shout.

      Kittie

  8. Kittie Walker on 24 May 2012 at 7:50 pm

    Hi Barbara.

    Thanks for the kind words. Of course you can… any time… just give me a shout.

    Kittie

  9. Caroline Gerardo on 26 May 2012 at 3:53 pm

    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.

    • Kittie Walker on 26 May 2012 at 4:25 pm

      Hey Caroline,

      Shall be heading over to your blog shortly to see what it is all about. Thanks for stopping by.

      Kittie

  10. Maria Stefanopoulos on 26 May 2012 at 4:07 pm

    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.

    • Kittie Walker on 26 May 2012 at 4:23 pm

      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

  11. Randy Bowden on 3 July 2012 at 1:22 am

    You share such helpful insight Kittie, I very much appreciate the helpfulness.

  12. Roving Jay on 3 November 2012 at 4:03 pm

    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.

    • Kittie Walker on 3 November 2012 at 4:15 pm

      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 🙂

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