When to SEO optimize a blog post?
-
Hi there,
Here's our situation: there are two people working on the blog.
person 1) writes the posts
person 2) SEO optimizes the posts
I know this is not ideal but it's the best we can do and it's a whole lot better than no blog.
I'm the fellow optimizing the posts. I've found that my best SEO efforts usually slightly undermine the readability of these posts -- not in an extreme way, I'm not going overboard with keywords or anything. Rather, things like a sexy & enticing article heading may have to be dummed down for search engines...
Because of this dumming down, I like to wait a couple of weeks to SEO optimize our posts, the logic being that we get the best of both worlds:
- a happy regular readership
- on topic articles that are clearly described for (and aligned to the terms used by) our search engine visitors
What I'm wondering is,
Generally: can you see any problems with this setup? would you do it differently?
Specifically: does Google (et al) punish this sort of backwards re-writing? and, does it somehow amount to less SEO mojo when done retroactively?
Thanks so much for your time!
Best,
Jon
-
Hey Jon,
I agree with both David and Kayden--readability, emotional impact, and great content should take priority over the mechanical SEO-rewriting.
IMO, the best option here is to teach your copywriter the basics of writing with SEO considerations. Investing that time up front will save you the pain in the long-run of "re-cooking" his content. One suggestion would be to develop a checklist, or a system of some sort that helps your writer incorporate SEO best practices while writing the posts (think: synonyms for latent semantic indexing, rich anchor text, proper use of headings, etc.)
Teach a man to fish...
-
You should really optimize your blog posts before they are published live on the blog. We have seen an optimized blog post start to show up in search results in less than 24 hours after posting it. If you optimize your post later it wont get crawled and updated as quickly but it will still get your updates. It seem that search engines see blogs as very time sensitive (kind of like news articles) and will crawl new posts faster.
I agree with David about the level of SEO you are performing on the posts. You don't want to hurt the readability or persuasiveness of the blog posts. If you optimize it right it shouldn't seem forced or spammy. I would suggest to only target one or two keywords per blog post. You should also get the original blog writer to help out by giving them a keyword or two before they write the post. Just give the writer some basic SEO instructions abouit usings a keyword in headers and various phrases and let them incorporate the keywords into their message. Then afterwards you shouldn't have to do as much, just some simple clean up to optimize the post. This is what we do and it has work out great.
-
Personally in this case I would lay back off the level of SEO you are performing if its having a negative factor on the readability.
You want people to read these posts, enjoy reading them and get something of value from the posts and be encouraged to come back to your blog and even promoted it by linking back to it.
If your posts have the air of 'overcooked SEO' on them it may have a negative effect on your efforts. Sure use some SEO when it comes to the titles, tags, headings etc but of all things make it valuable to the readers.
Regards
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to optimize for software carousels? [2019]
There was a lot of discussion back in spring 2017 when carousels were expanded in Google. But no definitive answers on how Google determines which sites rank for these results and what SEOs can do to get listed. My site (ansys.com) ranks for some of these results (example: "cfd software"), but the product listed in the result is not the primary product from our suite that should rank for these queries. Also the image Google displays is an outdated product logo pulled from a low-level blog post. This despite having structured data on our site with correct logos. Also, we only rank for carousels in one of our product categories and not others, despite ranking on pg. 1 for those results. So rank doesn't seem to be a primary factor. What is the secret sauce for ranking for these software carousels? And is it even worth it to try?
Technical SEO | | KHritz1 -
What is the process for allowing someone to publish a blog post on another site? (duplicate content issue?)
I have a client who allowed a related business to use a blog post from my clients site and reposted to the related businesses site. The problem is the post was copied word for word. There is an introduction and a link back to the website but not to the post itself. I now manage the related business as well. So I have creative control over both websites as well as SEO duties. What is the best practice for this type of blog post syndication? Can the content appear on both sites?
Technical SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
SSl and SEO
Does the type of SSL used on a site have any significance to trust and seo ranking?
Technical SEO | | unikey0 -
My blog post for a specific keyword is in the 'omitted results'. Why might this be, and how to overcome it?
My website Homepage: http://kulraj.org Here is the page I am working to rank for:** http://kulraj.org/2014/07/15/hedonic-treadmill/** When I search specifically for 'kulraj hedonic treadmill' just to test it, the first result is this: kulraj.org_/tag/_hedonic-treadmill. It shows the shortened version of the article that is within the Tag page. [I'm new to SEO and Moz, please keep in mind] Moz has told me I have duplicate content, which is regarding my main Blog page and Tags page, which is true the content is duplicate. However, the actual blog post itself is not displayed anywhere else on the website, or anywhere else on the web. Moz confirms this, and reports no duplicate content warning. My questions, therefore, are: 1. How do I actually go about installing a rel canonical tag within a standard WordPress dashboard (I'm using Genesis Framework) - I'm finding great difficulty finding instructions on this anywhere on the web. I clearly need to fix the issue with Blog page and Tags Page. 2. Why would my blog post be omitted, and are there any suggestions I could implement to bring it into the main search results. Other things I've noticed: 1. If I type this URL in: kulraj.org/hedonic-treadmill, it automatically redirects to http://kulraj.org/2014/07/15/hedonic-treadmill/ 2. Inside Google Webmaster Tools it says: No new messages or recent critical issues. 3. Regarding the above, when I click 'Labs > author stats' within Webmaster Tools, it shows nil stats, so something there is not quite right either, even though Google+ Authorship is confirmed.
Technical SEO | | Kulraj0 -
Website not ranking but the blog is!
I am hoping someone might be able to help me, I am doing some work on a website. A new version of the site was recently launched and since then rankings have plummeted and the new blog pages are ranking better! When the new version of the site went live, the domain changed to the non-www version, plus an incorrect robots.txt file and we have never really been able to fully recover (both of these things were beyond my control!). The robots.txt file was corrected and some of the external links links changed to the non-www but there is a 301 redirect in place so changing to the non-www shouldn't have been the reason to drop the site out completely. Before the launch of the new website, the site was ranking on the front page of Google for a lot of relevant keywords such as outdoor blinds, outdoor blinds Perth, cafe blinds, patio blinds, etc. The quality of the links is pretty bad and I am attempting to remove them before doing a disavow of all the really bad quality links but unless we were really unlucky I don't think it's the links right now that are causing the problem. I have ran the site through numerous crawl tests, checked the robots.txt, there are no messages in GWMT, the pages are indexed but I have a feeling there is something wrong with the site that is stopping this site from ranking well. If anyone could give me any insights I would be really grateful. I know the site could be better structured from a keyword/ structure perspective but the site was ranking fine!
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
.lbi file - SEO friendly or not?
Up until yesterday afternoon i had never heard of a .lbi file. It turns out it is a library file used by Adobe Dreamweaver. From what i can tell it works like a client side included but i am unsure of the technology behind it. The issue:
Technical SEO | | kchandler
When running through a recent SEO audit for a new client i found these .lbi files being used all over there site for site wide callouts and even navigation. When viewing this content through firebug or in the browser you can see the executed HTML content but when viewing the source or the page in seo-browser.com the content is nowhere to be seen. So my thought is this is not SEO friendly and is the same as displaying content in any client-side script like JavaScript or JQuery. Any feedback or thoughts on this subject would be awesome, especially if anyone has used these previously. Unfortunately i cannot share the client site but i would be more than happy to answer any questions if more detail is needed. Thanks in advance - Kyle0 -
E-Commerce site and blogs
We have e-Commerce site and an official blog to give advice about our products. This blog exists under our domain. Usually we build links directly to our site. Recently our ranking started going down. Also, we have been experiencing backlash for spam based on our link building (we are working on this, including a change of staff,but we cannot be sure that this will not happen again). This backlash has come through our social networking outlets (Facebook) in the form of very negative posts to our pages. One of our "SEOs" has devised a plan to use secondary blogs which we would start building links for. This blog would contain links back to our website. The idea is that the blog acts as a gate in a sense, in this way backlash is either posted on the blog or is directed at the blog. Also, we would be attempting to raise the page authority of these secondary blogs so in essence they act as high page authority links back to our website. The concern is that these secondary blogs may undermine the legitimacy of the official primary blog, which is still in its early stages as far as ranking and authority goes. Also, we are concerned that this technique would further undermine the legitimacy of the website itself by creating a larger "spam-like" presence, since visitors may see through the use of the secondary link through blogs.
Technical SEO | | ctam0 -
Feedburner - Why Sending My Blog Posts A Day After I Post Them?
I have my feed setup through feedburner for my wife's blog ktlouise.com. Whenever she posts a new blog post, it doesn't get emailed to her subscribers until the next day. Does anyone know how to change this so that the updates go out the same day? Thanks for the help! REF
Technical SEO | | FergusonSEO0