Before You Blog: An SEO Checklist to Make Your Posts Work Harder

Introduction from Cecelia Fraser:

If you need your website to actually work for you Geraldine Maclear of Happy Pedals is the one to call. She combines ethical SEO audits with conversion-focused copywriting, helping small businesses get found on Google and connect with the right audience. Geraldine makes SEO simple, transparent, and effective so your site becomes a real growth tool, not just an online placeholder.

Does this sound familiar? You’ve published a few blog posts. You’ve put in the time, shared your knowledge, and hit “publish”… and then? Crickets.

No spike in traffic. No new leads. No signs that your blog is doing anything at all. 

It’s frustrating, especially if you keep hearing “blogging helps SEO”. 

The good news? With the right approach, your posts can start working hard for you. 

Use this practical SEO checklist to help your content get found, build trust, and support your website’s performance. And in a world drowning in AI-generated guff, learn how to create something unique and valuable. 

Let’s dig in!

1: Select a topic with a clear purpose

You know your customers better than anyone else. What sort of questions do they typically ask? What problems do they have? 

Choose a topic by being obsessively focused on helping them.

For example, you deliver coffee to offices. A post about “How to choose the best coffee maker for your office” is more useful than “The origins of Arabica coffee beans”.

When you blog post answers a user’s specific question, they’re likely to spend longer reading the post. Longer “dwell time” is a signal to Google that your site is useful.

Tip: Stick to topics relevant to your business and website. If you deliver office coffee, but write blog posts about flower arranging, that could confuse Google.

2: Choose a good keyword

Wait… what’s a keyword?? Any search phrase you type into Google is a “keyword”. For example, “best espresso machine”. 

Any blog post (or web page) can focus on one specific keyword, plus related similar words or phrases. Ideally, if someone searches for that keyword, your blog post will appear in the search results.

Once you have a topic in mind, how do you choose a good keyword?

First - avoid industry jargon. Instead of “eavestrough installation”, most people will search for “new gutters”. Think about how your customers talk.

Second - think about searcher intent. Looking for “best rose fertilizer” is not the same as looking for “how to fertilize roses on the west coast”.

Experiment by doing your own searching. If you see there are all kinds of excellent blog posts focused on keywords like “best rose fertilizer” and “how to fertilize roses on the west coast”, you could focus on something more specific like “how to fertilize roses in sandy acidic soil”.

Tip: Use a private window or incognito mode so your own search history doesn’t affect the results.

Note: Keyword research helps. SEO professionals use special tools to see how many people search for specific keywords each month and how difficult it is to rank in search results for those keywords. They can also find similar keywords which may be a better choice. If you’re curious, look for “free keyword research tools” and try for yourself!

3: Put that keyword in all the right places

How do search engines like Google figure out what a web page is about? They look at special fields in the source code as well as the words on the page. Once you’ve chosen a keyword, give Google as many clues as possible by adding it in these places:

Keyword location	Notes
Title Tag	Also called Page Title. The recommended maximum length is 60 characters.
H1 Heading	This is usually the blog post title. Stick to just one H1 Heading.
First 100 words of content	Try to add the keyword so it sounds natural. Read the paragraph out loud to check.
One subheading	Add it to an H2 or H3 Heading.
Image file names	Use hyphens in image file names, e.g. coffee-maker.jpg
Image Alt text	Alt text should primarily describe an image for anyone who can’t see the image. Include keywords if it’s easy to do.
URL slug	This is the address of the blog post, e.g. /best-office-coffee-maker. (Changing the URL of existing posts can be tricky, but choosing a good URL for new posts is smart!)

What about Meta Descriptions? These are very important to increase click-through rates from search results. But they don’t directly affect search rankings. A Meta Description should be the best sales pitch you can write. The recommended maximum length is 155 characters.

4: Flaunt your expertise and experience!

With your keyword set up, it’s time to talk about the actual writing.

It might be tempting to ask ChatGPT something like “write a 900-word article on how to construct the framing for a house attic”, slap that on your website and hope for the best. But that’s unlikely to get the results you want. 

Google might decide to exclude your post from search results because it’s too similar to others and doesn’t add any value.

It’s much better to write a post including stories about problems you’ve seen in attic construction, and your experience with specific attic types. That’s unique. 

Blog posts highlighting personal stories, expertise and experience are much more likely to be loved by Google and classified as “useful content”. 

Tip: AI tools pay attention to author bios. Include the name of the blog author, and a brief outline of their experience and credentials.

5: Make your blog easy to scan

Let’s talk layout! Have you noticed you read websites by scanning them first? We’re all in a hurry, and want to know quickly if a web page is worth reading. 

Use these tips to help your readers: 

• Use short paragraphs

• Add sub-headings to break things up and summarize what’s coming next

• Use lists and tables to make information easy to visualize

• Put important points in bold

If someone lands on a blog post that looks like a dense wall of words… they might return to the search results to find something that’s easier to read. When someone bounces away from your site quickly, that’s a negative signal to Google.

Bonus: AI tools like ChatGPT understand content better if it’s well structured.

6: Don’t skimp on the good stuff

Making blog posts quick to scan is one thing, but that doesn’t mean the content should be short. 

Online competition can be fierce. In-depth articles have a better chance of ranking well in search results than short ones. 

There’s no magic word count to aim for. Think about your readers. Have you answered all their questions about the topic? Or would they need to go back and read something else to learn what they need to know?

You can look at competitors’ blog posts about your topic. How long are they? Use that as a guideline.

7: Make your post lean and speedy

Huge images slowing down websites - that’s one of the most common problems I see. 

Have you ever tried opening a website on your mobile phone but it took too long to load so you abandoned it? Your website needs to be speedy.

Follow these steps when adding images:

1. Choose appropriate dimensions. For example, if the recommended size is 1200x628 pixels, resize your image if it’s too big.

2. Compress the image. My favourite tool is tinypng.com. It can compress JPG as well as PNG images without hurting the quality. Each image should be less than about 250KB. Any single web page should be less than 1.5MB in total.

Slow websites don’t just frustrate people. Site speed is a ranking factor in Google search results, especially on mobile.

8: Add internal and external links

Now that you’ve put all the effort into write a great blog post, do you want people to stay on your site when they finish reading? Heck yeah!

Do this by including internal links pointing to other web pages or posts. 

For example, at the end of my Ultimate guide to keywords post I say “Wondering what your Title Tags say about your focus keywords?” followed by a button linking to my SEO Audits page. 

Internal links also help Google understand the relationship between pages on your site. 

External links add credibility if they point to reputable sources. They show your article is well researched. In my blog post, I added links to keyword research tool providers.

That’s it! 8 steps to better blogs. 

Following these steps will make your posts more likely to appear in Google search results, and help potential customers. Will you see great results in a short time? You normally have to wait about 3 months. But remember, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. 

I hope you found this helpful! 

Interested in learning more about SEO? Check out the Happy Pedals blog.

To find out about my services, please book a free 15-minute consultation here.

Author Bio

Geraldine Maclear helps small businesses get found online in traditional searches like Google and the growing field of AI Search. She also writes website copy to showcase what makes you unique, and to make you more choosable. A former software engineer in the corporate world, she now runs her own business in Nanaimo, BC, and can relate to the day-to-day challenges every entrepreneur faces. The name "Happy Pedals" is a nod to her love of cycling. Find out more about her services and background at Happy Pedals SEO + COPY.