Do these 5 things so that people actually find and read your blog posts.jpg

Coming in HOT with this highly requested blog post!

A few weeks back, I asked my email list what kind of content they wanted to see more of here on the blog.

Most people come to me to learn about Squarespace SEO and as predicted, that topic topped the poll of requested blog post topics - unsurprising, tbh, but still great to see we are all on the same page LOL!

In second place, however, my newsletter subscribers requested that I write more blog posts about “SEO-focused blogging” aka how to write blog posts that people actually read and that will show up in Google search results.

More blog posts about blogging? Makes sense because blogging is a massive part of any effective SEO strategy and content marketing is often what many businesses are built on.

Personally, I know how discouraging and frustrating it is to spend hours working your butt off on a blog post that you think is amazing, but then it totally flops - we all know that feeling, it sucks.

Blog posts with no traction online. Zero shares. Hardly any visits to that post, and it definitely isn’t a traffic-driver to your website. Whomp whomppppp.

Ugh, that’s the worst and I don’t want that for you ever again!

So when you guys come to me asking for help with blogging on Squarespace with SEO in mind, I’m happy to oblige.

Ask and ye shall receive, my friend!

In this blog post, we’re going to tall all about Squarespace SEO and blogging :)

I’m going to cover 5 things that you must do so that people can actually find and read your blog posts. It’s SEO focused, naturally, but we’re also going to cover several action points you can take so that you truly maximize the impact of each set of eyeballs on your website.

This is the kind of insider info that I give to my Squarespace SEO consulting clients and students in my online course, Top Squarespace SEO. But since I’m not one for secrets and truly want the best for anyone with a website, I’m giving you the goods here totally for free!

I’ve linked to several other posts about blogging and Squarespace SEO so be sure to check those out too, so that you get a really well-rounded look at this subject. I’ve got loads of content for you to binge!

Ready to get started? Let’s goooooooo!

I have so many tips to share on the subject that it would have been crazy to put it all in one article! There are many misconceptions about Squarespace SEO which is why I've dedicate so many posts to this topic. Enjoy!

Click to view all posts in the Squarespace SEO Series

Visit my Squarespace SEO page for lots more resources.

1. Create blog posts that your ideal audience is interested in or looking for online

Before we dive into to the “how”, we must first look at the “why”!

This is something you must think about before you sit down and start typing away at random. Remember, we’re focused on strategy, and working smarter not just harder!

Blogging is all about creating content that benefits your ideal audience, which represents your dream clients, customers, and/or a particular demographic for your blog readers, etc.

You’re not blogging just for the heck of creating content - instead you are blogging to create posts that will connect you with your “people” online. You want to deliver value to a particular group of people, no matter what topic, industry or niche you’re targeting. This value comes from being practical, entertaining, thoughtful, funny, informative, explanatory, etc. It’s so much more than just a random, self-indulgent blurb thrown up on a blog post without consideration for the kind of people you want to read your stuff, and then what you want them to take away from it.

With that in mind, the next question is: what kind of blog posts does your ideal audience want to read? what are they looking for online?

There are soooooo many ways to go about this, and lucky for you, it’s all pretty easy :)

Keyword-focused blog posts

If you haven’t already, be sure to read this post: What are keywords and how do they relate to Squarespace SEO? then come back and join us here.

Basically, your goal here is to identify the keywords you want your website to rank for (i.e., what you want someone to type into a Google search in order for your website to show up in search results).

This can be a super simple 3 step process:

Grab a pen & paper or open up a fresh Google doc and make a basic lists of these keywords and search terms
Come up with a list of at least 10 blog post topics based around those keywords and search terms
Write and publish these keyword-focused blog posts

Not exactly rocket science but you’d be surprised by how many people don’t even do this basic step!

Once you’ve got that basic list taken care of, you can then take it a step further and dive into keyword research. My fave!!

Keyword research tells you what your target audience is searching for online (i.e., what they’re typing into Google) and what the intention is behind their online searches. For example, pros/cons, a comparison of two products/services, reviews, browsing lifestyle content, ready to make an online purchase now, etc. Your ideal audience’s online search queries are basically the starting point that you’ll then create blog post content around.

I LOVE keyword research because it gives you the chance to creep the heck out of your ideal audience - in a totally not creepy way, of course ;)

We use keyword research to look over our ideal audience’s shoulders and see things from their eyes, their point of view or perspective. Keyword research is queen/king because it’s a fool-proof and QUICK way to create blog posts that your ideal audience will find interesting, relevant and timely (i.e., interesting to them NOW, not 6 months ago).

Let’s use an example to see keyword research for blog post ideas in action.

Imagine you are a therapist and you want to attract more clients for the “couples therapy” branch of your business. Your ideal audience is couples who need therapy to strengthen or repair their relationships, and they are looking for support and resources online. Your most obvious keyword is “couples therapy” but let’s do a little keyword research to see what else comes up when people are doing related online searches. Remember, you want to write about “couples therapy” on your blog but you also want to rank HIGHLY for that topic. So we need to go a little further and find long-tail keywords that you can use to optimize your blog posts.

Step 1: Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner. Under Discover new keywords, type “couples therapy” into the search box, set the Location and date fields (if applicable) and hit Get Results.

Step 2: Review the Keyword ideas results

Now that you’ve found the keywords to target, you can then come up with blog posts around those searches and include them in your headlines/blog post titles:

How couples can use EFT therapy to repair their relationships
Marriage counselling: 5 tips to get you through the pandemic
What every couple with kids needs to know about relationship counselling

See what I mean about doing keyword research and then using the insights to come up with blog post that your ideal audience will actually be interested in? It’s FUN, eh? 😂

Annnnyways, to reiterate, our goal is to come up with blog posts around topics that our ideal audience is actually searching for online, and then from there we can naturally include references or pitches to our products, services, offerings, etc. in a natural way.

2. Format blog posts for quick and easy reading

Alright, once you’ve got those strategic blog post topics all figured out, the next step is to write them in a way that is beneficial to both search engines AND humans.

Proper formatting is a HUGE SEO factor and it’s also really important for a real live person’s user experience as they read through your blog posts or webpage content.

Remember above how we talked about how valuable long-form content is? Well we can’t just slap together 2,000 words into one giant paragraph and call it a blog post. OMG LOL can you imagine 💀

This is where proper formatting comes into play, so that the blog post content is easy to read or skim. 43% of people admit to skimming blog posts so you want to make sure that they can easily find the info that they are most interested in!

Sometimes you’ll hear this called “on-page optimization” but basically some things to keep in mind are:

Blog post title
Headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
Images / video content included
Bullet points or numbered lists
Paragraphs to break up the text
Etc.

Write amazing blog post content that your ideal audience actually wants to read…. but also make sure that it’s formatted in a way that they can actually read or skim it easily!

I cover formatting in depth in my online course, Top Squarespace SEO, so if you want to learn more about this topic, be sure to check that out.

3. Include visual content

Visual content in blog posts is sooooo important and it’s sadly something that MANY people overlook!

Visual content includes:

photos
images
illustrations
graphics
gifs & memes (lol)
data driven visual (e.g., pie charts)
infographics
videos
screenshots
etc.

From a user experience point of view, it’s super helpful to include visual content in your blog posts because it adds an additional level of quality and value to the post content. Duh, right?

But from an SEO point of view, there’s also MASSIVE value in including visual content in your posts! Be sure to read this post: How to get images on your Squarespace website to show up in Google image search results. Basically what you should know is that blog posts that contain text AND visual content are more likely to rank higher than comparable blog posts that only contain text (i.e., no visual content). This isn’t a hard rule, of course, but generally speaking SEO experts all agree that including visual content in blog posts can only benefit how search engines “see” your content.

Related:

4. Include a teaser or call-to-action in the introduction

You know the saying “you never get a second chance at a first impression”? It’s true in life but also in blogging!

Anytime you write a blog post, the goal is to capture the reader’s attention from the very beginning so that they actually stick around and read the post without bouncing away.

This is where the introduction comes in: often times, it’s a visitor’s very first time reading one of your blog posts let alone visiting your website, so you want to hook them in from the opening sentence! Obviously you want to tell people what they’ll get out of this blog posts (by briefly outlining what you plan to cover) but also you can tell them WHY they should read it and WHAT you’re offering. This could be an incentive such as a discount code, a chance to sign up to your email list for exclusive content, work with you, buy a new product, etc.

Teasers are a great thing to include in your blog post’s introduction because people will be on the lookout for “the goods” that you’ve promised and it gives the reader a reason to actually read through the entire post.

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are another popular feature of blog posts that perform well, because you’re clearly instructing the reader on what next steps they can take.

Be creative but also, don’t reinvent the wheel :)

5. Send the blog post out to your email list

If you want more eyes on your blog post, especially right away once you hit “publish”, then I strongly recommend sending it out to your email list!

No matter what type of business or website you have, every single online marketer agrees that you MUST have an email list - here’s why. Personally, I use my blog and email list to compliment each other. New people often find me through my blog and from there, they opt-in to my email list and then I nurture them over time to either purchase my digital products or work with me through my Squarespace SEO services.

But when it comes to blogging, don’t keep the value to yourself! Even your most adoring fans probably don’t check in on your website every day and they are bound to miss your blog posts ever now and then. But to increase your odds of getting more eyes on this blog post content, send it out to your email list and watch those post visits go through the roof!

Here’s an example of a blog post preview I recently sent out to my email list:

Personally, I have used MailerLite as my email service provider for years and it’s a very simple platform that I love and recommend. I will often send out a new Campaign to my list when I have an awesome new blog post that I want them to see. I start the email by letting readers know that this is a recent post on the blog and then after a bit, I include a button & link to the full post (as you can see in the screenshot below).

Side note: You can sign up for my email list HERE or read the blog post previewed in the screenshots above HERE.

Final Thoughts

Et voila, those are 5 things you can do to make sure that people actually find and read your blog posts!

It’s a mix of practical SEO tips but also a few online marketing strategies that you can get started with today. Use these tips on blog posts moving forward but for extra value, I recommend going back to past blog posts and updating them for added SEO benefits!

Remember you can log into the back end of your Squarespace website and check out the Analytics tab for lots of insights into how your blog posts are performing: traffic, referrals, keywords, etc. Squarespace Analytics is a true goldmine so be sure to check that out and see how your hard work is paying off!

Now it's your turn to tell me, do you blog? How do your blog posts perform? Do they get you in front of the right people online or are you still trying to reach your ideal audience? Have you ever thought about blogging strategically or including these SEO tactics?

Leave me your questions down in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them. As people are spending more time online than ever before, it’s SO important that your website shows up properly in search results so that you can reach your ideal audience online - but you can’t do this without SEO! Blogging is a non-negotiable part of Squarespace SEO and I want to do everything I can to help you do it right from the start.

If you want more SEO goodness, be sure to check out my Squarespace SEO page for all resources on the topic.

My signature online course, Top Squarespace SEO, will be opening for enrollment again soon - sign up for the TSS waiting list here!

You can also sign up for my newsletter (right here or below), where I often share Squarespace SEO tips, tricks and high-quality exclusive content. I send out emails to my list every Wednesday, mostly focused on Squarespace websites and SEO, and I can guarantee that you’ll find the newsletter topics interesting, entertaining and worth your time. #humblebrag

Finally, shameless plug: hit me up with any specific questions you have about Squarespace SEO and your website because I’m your girl. You can reach out to me directly if you’re interested in working together on your website and we can talk about whether or not you would be a good fit for my consulting and ongoing services. I can’t take on every request to do Squarespace SEO consulting but I do pick a few websites and businesses to work with every month and I’d love for you to be one of them.