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
-
Will using query string in the URL and swapping H1s for filtered view of the blog impact SEO negatively?
This is a blog revamp we are trying to personalize the experience for 2 separate audiences.We are revamping our blog the user starts on the blog that shows all stories (first screen) then can filter to a more specific blog (ESG or News blog). The filtered version for ESG or the News blog is done through a query string in the URL. We also swap out the page’s H1s accordingly in this process, will this impact SEO negatively?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Domain forwarding or redirects for SEO?
Hi all! A client of mine owns several top level domains which are not in use, let's call them example.nu, example.de, example.net and so on. The current website is example.com.
Technical SEO | | JHultqvist
When checking the technical status of the unused domains I realized that all but one are forwarded (via DNS) to example.com and only one has a 301 redirect. Should I redirect all of them by means of 301 or let them stay forwarded? Very few of the domains have any other sites linking to them. Any thoughts would be really appreciated! Jesper0 -
Redirect Process for Moving a Blog
Hi, I've read several articles about the correct process for moving a blog from a subdomain to the main root domain but am not quite 100% sure as to what to do in our scenario. They were hosting their blog on Hubspot which puts the blog on a sub-domain "blog.rootdomain.com". Realizing it isn't benefiting the main website for SEO they want to move it to the main website. I understand we have to redirect the Hubspot "blog." pages to the new "rootdomain.com/blog" pages but when transferred over (it's a WordPress site) it shows the dates. So, the URL is "rootdomain.com/blog/year/month/title". They want to remove the date. Does that mean the URL must be re-written then redirected so that there's no date showing? There's over 300 posts which will have to be redirected from the Hubspot URLs. Is there a way to avoid setting up the second redirect to remove the dates or make it easier so it isn't one page at a time?
Technical SEO | | Flock.Media0 -
Local SEO and Penguin
All, One of my client's sites was hit by Penguin. The business has lost almost all of its organic rankings but is still holding on for a handful of local searches for some of its satellite offices. We've built a new site and are slowly building domain authority. My question is this: at what point do I swap out the new site's location URL for the old URL in Google places? I don't want to risk the existing local placement which is all they have left for the time being. Thanks, John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
What is the best way to close my blog?
I have a blog on a separate address to my website. http://cheshireweddingphotographyblog.co.uk/ and http://celynnenphotography.co.uk Now I'm going to have a new website which is going to be wordpress based and it will sit on the main website (http://celynnenphotography.co.uk ) and include both gallery and blog. now the blog does well enough on google, etc.. so i wanted to mix their SEO juju and all that, but what happens with my blog? Do i: Stop paying for hosting, nice and simple. OR Do I need to do something?
Technical SEO | | IoanSaid0 -
Wordpress SEO Errors - Any advice?
Hi all! My site is on the WP platform and I'm having a crawl error. Wondering if you guys could possibly help me figure out what's going on? I have a good number of 404 errors where the links seems to be appended and I can't figure out why. I've scoured my individual posts and cannot seem to find the broken link? The crawl error looks a bit like this: http://preciousthingsphotography.com/2007/12/10/chicago-family-photographer-welcome/http:%2F%2Fpreciousthingsphotography.com%2F2007%2F12%2F10%2Fchicago-family-photographer-welcome%2F You can see that my original link is somehow being doubled with the slashes being replaced? This is happening on all of my posts. Any ideas as to what could be going on? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | ptpgen0 -
Ecommerce SEO with 130 keywords
Hello everyone, My name is Davys and I'm what you call a newbie...so the question may sound stupid....But where we go. In this campaign I will be targeting around 130 to 150 keywords to my store. So here is the technical question. What is the right way of indexing 150 keywords? Should I attempt to have all 150 going to www.mysite.com or should I break it down into smaller pages if I can put it that way. Like www.mysite.com/pages/bikiniwax for example. Even if I break it down, what is the right amount of keywords that I should SEO per page? Or do 150 pages? Please helppppppppppppppppppppp.... 🙂 Thanks a lot for your help.
Technical SEO | | Davys0 -
Which is best blogging platform from SEO POV?
I am curious to find out what is the blogging platform of choice for enterprize level companies (employees more than 500, revenue more tan 150M). What would be the best solution from SEO point of view? I have used Wordpress in the past for small companies and feel that is the best. We are currently using Telligent. Is anybody using it?
Technical SEO | | Amjath0