A reoccurring question I receive from clients is about how to improve SEO and have great looking posts without devoting hours of their time. Content that has undergone thoughtful writing, editing, and formatting should be your priority. That process should enable to you recognize the key words that are useful for both readability and SEO! Below you’ll find three of my tips for formatting a blog post for readability and effective SEO.
Penny’s Three Tips for Blog Post Formatting
- Write. Then Edit. Edit again. I start with an outline that becomes the post’s headings. They help in both readability and SEO. It’s nice when you can cross two items off your task list at once.
- Formatting is the last step before clicking publish. If you’re working through edits and also need to manage the formatting, something will suffer.
- Less (formatting) is more! I know some love to add lots of “visual interest” to a page believing it will catch the eye. That is true! It will, but I honestly don’t think in a good way. Having too many different colours and fonts and sizes on a page will distract from the readability and while I haven’t researched if SEO will suffer, it is more code for the index spiders to sort through.
I know we all write posts at the last minute and want them all to be masterpieces and immediately perform well, why else would we bother publishing them? I’m honestly filling in my outline for this post only a few hours before I’ll click publish. I believe that it’s important to step back and be mindful of the content. I hope you find these three simple tips useful!
I also wrote about this topic in more detail at Seven tips to help your post to look its best.