While we recently discussed why you should focus more upon being a good writer and less upon the mechanical aspects of blogging, it goes without saying that certain technical elements of blogging remain relevant and important. Between balancing the need for quality content and ensuring that said content is optimized for search engines, it can be a frustrating experience that may result in more than one case of writer’s block, lethargy and downright anger over the careful considerations that must occur. Many bloggers need to be reminded from time to time what elements of technical or mechanical blogging are necessary to guarantee long-term success: we will outline some of these important concerns in the following article.

Keywords and Anchor Text

While search engines are quickly evolving and will soon be able to tell the difference between pinging noise versus pinging actual content, there is no reason why you should abandon the intelligent and appropriate use of keywords and anchor text to give added clarification to Google and others. At the end of the day, your rankings will play perhaps the biggest role in how often you are seen and by whom. Social media and email marketing can create intimate forms of interaction – once you have these visitors on your subscription lists and in your network. For everyone else, attracting them via SERPs means that you do need to send signals to search engines as to what your content broadly covers. Anchor text and keywords are vital in this endeavour.

Emphasize Your Text

Search engines look for clues in your posts and articles as to what are the most important parts (with emphasis on headings and subheadings). In order to stand out above the rest and give search engines a helping hand, it is highly recommended that you use elements such as italics, bolding, colour and underlining as ways to convey the importance of certain topics to search engines as they crawl your pages. It will not only help further associate these words and phrases with your content, but will make it easier for readers to skim your posts and find what they need. Poorly-formatted articles perform poorly with both search engines and readers.

Combine Various Topics

It goes without saying that operating a niche site can be a bit of a hassle when it comes to new ideas. Fortunately, there are always different ways to spin or construe a point – it usually takes a bit of brainstorming and planning, however. Within any post, you should always strive to incorporate various topics that pertain to the subject, preferably some that you have already covered. This will allow you to link back to past posts, giving them new life at the same time that you are providing users with fresh content. All in all, readers want to know all sides of an issue and understand the indirect connections that may make two or more topics related: oblige them.

Conclusion

Some technical aspects of SEO require your focus more than others. While the creation of quality content is key, you want to be able to accentuate this content in search engine results. By emphasizing your text, combining past and present posts and using proper keywords, you can retain your creativity and still please search engines on the technical front.