How to write SEO-friendly blog posts that rank and drive conversions

The B2B SaaS industry is a crowded digital marketplace where everyone is struggling to get noticed, and your online presence can make or break your success. That's where the power of search engine optimization, or SEO, comes into play.

By strategically optimizing your blog posts, you can improve your rankings in search engine results, attract more targeted traffic, and, ultimately, drive growth and revenue.

Now, many people know how to write blogs, but not many know how to write SEO-friendly blogs.

Writing SEO-friendly blog posts involves careful target keyword selection, strategic placement of these keywords, and creating high-quality, relevant content that search engines deem valuable. This increases the likelihood of attracting and retaining your target audience.

If you’re struggling to gain visibility on search, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve rounded up all of my writing tips and included a step-by-step process you can follow to create a solid piece of SEO content for your blog.

Is SEO effective for B2B content?

While some may argue that SEO is only suited for B2C businesses, the truth is that B2B companies can reap substantial benefits from a well-executed content SEO strategy since potential clients and decision-makers are increasingly relying on search engines to find solutions to their business challenges. They need to see the business they deal with as trustworthy and thought-leaders and are likely doing more research before purchasing.

Investing in content SEO will help you position your B2B SaaS company as a trusted industry leader, ensuring that your target audience finds you when they're actively seeking the products or services you offer.

Here are a few reasons why SEO-friendly content is highly effective for B2B blog posting and content creation:

• It helps increase brand exposure and visibility.
• It attracts targeted visitors who are more likely to convert into leads and eventually customers.
• Strong SEO content sharing can establish your B2B SaaS company as a trusted and reputable industry player.
• Compared to other marketing channels like paid advertising, SEO can provide a high ROI. Once your content ranks well on SERPs, it can continue to attract traffic for months or even years.

How to write an SEO-friendly blog post

If you’re just getting started on a piece of SEO-friendly content, here is a step-by-step process you can follow.

1. Start SEO-friendly blog creation with effective keyword research

Start by brainstorming topics and keywords that your audience may type in their search bar to find you. See tips on how to conduct SEO keyword research here.

If you're looking to write an informative blog post, long tail keywords are the best approach. Long-tail keywords are specific search phrases that typically contain three or more words.

These can be less competitive and can help you rank higher in niche topics relevant to your SaaS business. Ranking for a generic term like "CRM" would be extremely difficult for a SaaS company due to high competition, but ranking for a long-tail keyword like "CRM for real estate agencies" is likely to be more achievable.

Long-tail keywords are usually very specific, indicating that the searcher has a clear search intent. For instance, someone searching for "cloud-based CRM for small businesses" is likely in the market for this exact type of software.

Most importantly, the B2B buying process often involves a lot of research and consideration. Long-tail keywords often align well with informational and comparison-based queries that are common in the B2B research process.

Actionable advice: you don't need expensive keyword research tools. Use Google's free Keyword Planner to do keyword research and stay ahead of your competitors. This is a fantastic strategy for locating keywords with high search traffic and low ranking-difficulty.

Make sure to dive deep into comprehensive topic research

Research your keyword and topic and gather information and best practices from top-ranking articles, then write something better.

2. Outline your post for a better structure

Outline your post with headings, subheadings, and an FAQ section.

Structure matters. Make it easy to read! If you're writing a long post, it needs to be easy to read. Otherwise, you're risking a high bounce rate. Your blog post structure should include multiple headings, images, and inbound and outbound links that include your keyword or keyword variations for easy reading.

Actionable advice: Reduce exit rates by configuring outbound links to open in a new tab.

As you structure your blog post, subheadings and images should fit within the post naturally. Subheadings and images not only make your post easier to read, but they make it more engaging and invite your readers to stay on your website longer.

Think about it, would you rather read one long post with just text? Or a post broken up into sections with clear subheads, images, and graphics so you can skim and find what you are looking for?

3. Prioritize your reader's needs

Make sure the post and language you use are always focused on the reader's needs. You can follow a pain, claim, gain model.

Write in searcher’s terms 

While you might want to use descriptive writing techniques to grab a reader's attention, your ultimate goal should be to provide them with the information they need. Sometimes, an extensive backstory or introduction is unnecessary.

For example, if you're writing about a particular topic you know your customers are searching for, you should get to the point and address it early to reduce the risk of losing their attention. 

To write in searcher's terms means to think about how you might search for the topic you are planning to write about. This will also come naturally if you follow your SEO keyword research and the keywords your audience and intended customers are using.

Make sure to infuse your blog with value

The more valuable a post, the more engagement you will see. Make sure all of your posts are filled with value. This could include stats, lists, tips, images, downloadable assets, and more.

4. Optimize your post to boost your SEO

Make sure your post is optimized for the right keyword and keyword variations. This should be a new keyword (one you have not yet used), as you don't want to compete with yourself.

If you already have a post ranking for the keyword you are trying to target with your new entry, you have a couple of options:

• If the post already ranking is relatively up-to-date, reoptimize it to make it better.
• If it is outdated and needs a rewrite rather than a few tweaks, write a new, more optimized post, combine the old one into it, and redirect the existing URL to the new one. This will ensure that you only have one page ranking for your target term.

5. Polish your post through review and revision

Like any content piece, you should always go through a series of revisions. If you're working on an SEO piece, this is an excellent opportunity to make sure keywords and links are used appropriately.

6. Make sure to add a compelling and powerful call to action (CTA)

If not in all of your posts, the majority of them should have a CTA or action item so readers can learn more and move down the funnel.

Here's how to make sure you're creating SEO-friendly content strategies

1. Write SEO-optimized blog posts in topic clusters

Instead of writing single blog posts about random topics, build topic clusters to grow authority in your niche.

Following a topic cluster approach to your SEO and content strategy will do wonders for your brand's visibility and website authority.

Topic clusters are formed during your keyword research and should be aligned with your company's value propositions. You want a good, solid balance of topics you're targeting.

Try narrowing it down 5-10 main topics from your keyword research with hundreds (if not thousands) of keywords and long-tail keywords for each. The more manageable your topics are, the better chance you have of producing high-quality content and capturing your industry. In other words, don't go after 20 topics, you'll only burn yourself out and hurt your strategy.

If you don't know where to start, look at your solutions or services.

Let's suppose your project management SaaS company offers task management, collaboration, and reporting and analytics tools. You’ll want to create content around those topics to gain organic momentum.

Here's how we would do it:

Cluster 1: Task management tools

Blog 1: Why are Task Management Tools Important for Project Management?

Blog 2: Top 10 Features to Look for in a Task Management Tool

Blog 3: The Role of Task Management Tools in Successful Project Delivery

Cluster 2: Collaboration tools

Blog 1: Why are Collaboration Tools Important for Project Management?

Blog 2: Top 10 Features to Look for in a Project Management Collaboration Tool

Blog 3: The Role of Collaboration Tools in Successful Project Delivery

Cluster 3: Reporting and analytics tools

Blog 1: Why are Reporting and Analytics Tools Important for Project Management?

Blog 2: Top 10 Features to Look for in a Project Management Reporting & Analytic Tool

Blog 3: The Role of Reporting & Analytic Tools in Successful Project Delivery

It took me five minutes to come up with nine attractive blog titles that, if written well, will boost your organic traffic.

Now, each of your topic clusters should have a pillar page, typically a guide or long informational post that covers a broad topic. The shorter pieces of content or "subtopics" that link back to your pillar page to build authority are called supporting articles.

Your pillar page should be optimized for the highest volume keyword in that topic cluster. As a rule of thumb, high-volume keywords should be your pillar pages, while low to medium-volume with high priority for your market is where your opportunities lie.

2. Improve your internal linking

Internal links are imperative when creating an SEO-optimized blog post. The more content you have, the more opportunities you have to create internal links. Regularly publishing high-quality, valuable content should be the foundation of your internal linking strategy.

If you already have some content on your site, even if it's only a few entries, link to other pages from inside. This helps search engines with understanding the structure of your site and may increase rankings.

Actionable advice: Identify the most important pages on your site (like your product pages, contact pages, or high-converting blog posts) and aim to link to these pages more often. This can help boost their visibility and authority.

Also, make sure to use descriptive anchor text (the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink) instead of generic phrases like "click here".

3. Optimize your blog posts’ metadata

By metadata, we mean information about the data on a webpage, including the title tag, meta description, and headings. This information can help search engines understand what a blog post is about and how it should be indexed.

Additionally, when a person searches for a term or keyword, it appears first in the search engine results pages, which may or may not cause them to click on your page.

Here's how to quickly optimize your new blog posts' metadata:

• Start with titles: The title tag is perhaps the most important piece of metadata. It should clearly and accurately describe the content of the page, ideally within 50-60 characters. Including your main and most important keywords can help improve your visibility in search engine results.

Example of a well-optimized title: "A Guide to Selecting a Cloud-Based CRM for Your SMB"

• Write descriptive meta descriptions: Meta descriptions can influence click-through rates. Therefore, they should accurately describe the content of a page in a compelling way, ideally within 150-160 characters.

Example of a well-optimized meta description: "Need a cloud-based CRM for your SMB? Check out our detailed guide to understand what to look for and how to choose the best system for your business."

• Use a variation of your main keyword in your H1: Using a variation of your main keyword in your heading 1 (H1) can be an effective SEO strategy to indicate to search engines what your content is about.
  
  Let's assume your main keyword is "cloud-based CRM for small businesses." A variation could be "cloud-based customer relationship management for SMBs". Here's how you could use it:
  
  Example of a well-optimized H1: "A Guide to Selecting Cloud-Based Customer Relationship Management for SMBs"
  
  The variation maintains the main concept of your keyword (CRM for small businesses) but presents it slightly differently. This way, you increase the possibility of ranking for both "cloud-based CRM for small businesses" and "cloud-based customer relationship management for SMBs".

• Optimize image metadata: Image metadata includes alt tags, which describe the content of an image. These are especially important for visually impaired users and can also help improve your visibility in image search results.

Actionable advice: Review each of your website's most crucial pages using the SEO META in 1 CLICK Chrome Extension to ensure that each page contains unique metadata. Duplicate metadata might cause problems with SEO.

By implementing these strategies, you'll pave the way for better rankings, increased organic traffic, and a stronger online presence in the competitive B2B SaaS market.

4. Think about funnel stages

Depending on the stage of the funnel the searcher is in, the keywords they’re using will vary, which ultimately drives your content strategy. Make sure you have keywords and content to drive your audience down the funnel. In other words, don’t focus all of your efforts on the awareness stage or top-of-funnel content.