If you’ve ever looked up how to do SEO for your blog, there’s a good chance you found a very long list of things you should apparently be doing.
Put the keyword in your title.
Put it in your headings.
Write a meta description.
Add internal links.
Optimize your images.
Make sure your post is long enough, but not too long, because obviously we needed one more thing to overthink.
And yes. Those things matter.
They’re also things I pay attention to for my clients. If I’m building your SEO-Backed Blog Strategy, I’m thinking about the search opportunity, how your posts should connect, what you should write, and why. If I’m writing the posts for you through Anchor Content, I’m handling the strategy, writing, and all those little SEO details, too.
I want the title right. I want the metadata right. I want the internal links to make sense. I want the post structured in a way that gives search engines a clear idea of what the hell it’s about while still sounding like it was written for an actual human being.
But I also think we can get so focused on optimizing the blog post that we skip a much more important question:
What is this blog post actually supposed to do for the business?
Because that answer should affect the SEO strategy in the first place.
Your blog does not have exactly the same job as the rest of your website, which means it shouldn’t necessarily have the same SEO strategy, either.
Your main website is generally built for someone who already has a pretty good idea of what kind of solution she’s looking for. She lands on a photographer’s website because she needs a photographer. She lands on a therapist’s website because therapy is at least somewhere on her list of possible solutions. She lands on my Anchor Content page because she’s looking for help with her blog and would perhaps like someone else to write the damn thing.
She is not there by mistake. 😂
There’s still plenty your website needs to do once she arrives. She needs to understand what you offer, how you approach the work, whether you seem qualified, whether your personality feels like a fit, and ultimately whether you’re the person she wants to hire. But she’s already made it through a decent chunk of the journey on her own.
She knows—or at least suspects—what kind of solution she needs.
So your main website is essentially asking:
This person is looking for the kind of thing I sell. How do I help her realize I’m the right person to buy it from?
Your blog gets to back up several steps and ask:
What might someone with the problem I solve be searching for before she knows my solution is what she needs?
And this is where blogging gets really freaking useful.
What is blogging SEO?
At its simplest, blogging SEO is creating and optimizing blog content so the right people have an opportunity to find it through search.
That’s technically correct, and obviously I care about the “find it through search” part. We would not be doing keyword research otherwise. But I think that definition leaves out the part that makes blogging especially valuable for a service-based business.
Because I don’t just want to know:
What keyword can I rank for?
I also want to know what you want to be known for, what your future client needs to understand before she’s ready to hire you, what questions or problems she might be Googling while she’s figuring all of this out, and where your expertise gives you something genuinely useful to add to that conversation.
Your service pages are generally targeting someone who is more solution aware.
Your blog can meet her when she’s still problem aware.
Or frustrated.
Or curious.
Or Googling at 10:37 p.m. because she knows something about the way she’s currently doing things is not freaking working.
She searches. Your post shows up. She clicks because, presumably, the title sounds like it might answer the question she actually has.
And yes, you should answer it.
But you also have an opportunity to do a whole lot more once she gets there. You can educate her, demonstrate your expertise, introduce her to the way you think about the problem, and help her understand something she didn’t understand before she found you. Sometimes you can even shift what she believes she needs.
And then—for the love of God—you can give her somewhere to go next.
The goal isn’t just to get a blog post to rank. The goal is to create useful entrances into your business.
That’s blogging SEO.
At least, that’s the version I care about.
Blogging SEO lets you target the problem, not just the solution
This is the distinction I keep coming back to when I’m doing SEO research for a blog versus thinking about SEO for the main pages of a website.
For your main website, I’m often asking:
What would someone search if she were looking for the thing I sell?
For your blog, I get to back way up and ask:
What might someone with the problem I solve search?
Someone searching for SEO blog writing services, for example, already knows quite a bit about what she wants. She knows blogging is part of the solution. She knows SEO matters to her. She knows she wants help writing the posts. She is considerably closer to something like Anchor Content than someone who searches how often should I blog.
That second person may not be looking for a blog writer at all. She might be DIYing the whole thing. She might be trying to decide whether blogging is even worth the effort.
And someone searching marketing without social media may not give a single shit about blogging yet.
She just knows she’s tired.
She’s tired of feeling like her business disappears the second she stops posting. She’s tired of coming up with something new every day. Maybe she’s thinking she needs to quit Instagram entirely, or find another platform, or get better at Reels, or finally figure out whatever the heck she is apparently supposed to be doing on LinkedIn now.
If I write a post for that search, I can meet her exactly where she is. I can answer the question she actually asked without hijacking her Google search and spending 1,500 words yelling HIRE ME TO WRITE YOUR BLOG.
But I can also help her look at the problem differently.
Maybe the answer isn’t quitting Instagram.
Maybe it’s building a marketing system that doesn’t depend on Instagram in the first place.
Now we’ve moved somewhere.
The search got me into the conversation. My expertise helps me decide where that conversation should go next.
And that’s the opportunity blogging SEO gives you.
Your website helps someone choose you. Your blog can help her understand what she should be choosing.
Your main website usually assumes some level of agreement already exists.
Your future client knows she wants a photographer. Now she needs to decide which photographer. She knows she wants a therapist. Now she needs to decide who feels like a good fit. She knows she wants help with her content. Now she needs to figure out what kind of help and from whom.
The blog can meet her before that agreement exists.
Maybe she believes she needs to post on Instagram five days a week if she wants her business to grow. Or she thinks nobody reads blogs anymore. Or SEO, in her mind, is basically cramming the same phrase into a post 17 times until both she and Google want to die.
Maybe she thinks her problem is that she needs more content ideas, when what she actually needs is to make her best ideas work harder.
Those beliefs matter because they affect what she thinks she needs—and therefore what she’s looking for in the first place.
Your blog gives you enough room to meet her inside the belief she already has, answer the question that brought her there, and then help her see the bigger picture.
Which is why I think blogging can be such an effective form of soft selling.
Blogging is soft selling—and that’s a good thing
A lot of small business owners are much more comfortable educating than selling.
Selling can feel like:
BUY THIS.
BOOK NOW.
THREE SPOTS LEFT.
50% OFF UNTIL MIDNIGHT.
Used-car-salesman energy.
Education feels different. You’re helping someone understand something. You’re answering a question. You’re giving her information she can actually use.
And when the thing you sell is your expertise, education is a form of selling.
Think about what happens when someone reads a really good blog post from you. You’re showing her that you understand the problem she’s dealing with. You’re answering questions she genuinely has. You’re demonstrating that you’ve thought about the nuances instead of just regurgitating the same five tips everybody else has already written.
You’re also showing her how you think.
What do you pay attention to? What do you think matters? What do you think people tend to get wrong? How do you approach this problem differently? What would you want someone to understand before making a decision?
She gets something genuinely useful from you before she ever pays you. At the same time, she’s getting a little preview of what it might be like to have your expertise applied to her own situation.
Your website tells her you’re an expert. Your blog gives her an opportunity to experience your expertise.
That’s a sales function.
It just doesn’t feel like being chased around a car lot.
A really good blog post can shift the reader’s beliefs
This might be my favorite part.
Your future client doesn’t necessarily enter a really freaking good blog post at the same awareness stage she should leave it.
Maybe she comes in thinking, I need to get better at Instagram, and leaves thinking, Maybe Instagram shouldn’t be responsible for this much of my marketing.
Maybe she enters thinking, I need to publish a blog post every Tuesday for the rest of my natural life, and leaves thinking, Maybe I need to build a strong library now and maintain it strategically later.
Or maybe she enters thinking blogging probably isn’t relevant to her because she’s not a content creator.
But somewhere in the post she realizes:
Oh. My blog could actually be part of the infrastructure of my service business.
That is a meaningful shift.
You answered the question she searched, but you also gave her something else to think about. You helped her see the problem through your experience and expertise.
That’s thought leadership.
And it’s one of the reasons I don’t think SEO and thought leadership need to live in separate little boxes.
You don’t have to choose between writing something people are searching for and writing something that demonstrates what you think. In fact, I think some of the best blog content does both.
The search is the entrance. The thought leadership is what you do once she walks through the door.
So how do you choose keywords for a blog?
This is why I don’t recommend opening a keyword research tool and letting it dictate your entire content strategy.
Don’t get me wrong. Search volume is useful. Keyword difficulty is useful. Understanding what people actually search is very useful. I use all of that information when I’m researching blog opportunities for my clients.
But those numbers don’t know your business.
A keyword research tool does not know what you’re trying to sell, what you’re particularly good at, what you wish more clients understood before they hired you, or what ideas you want your business to become known for.
So I want to understand all of that first.
What do you want to be known for? What does your future client care about? What does she need to understand before she’s ready to hire you or buy from you?
Then we can go looking for the search.
That’s the sweet spot I’m looking for:
What you want to be known for × what your client cares about × what people actually search for.
And sometimes that means targeting a smaller, more specific keyword instead of chasing the biggest number in the keyword tool.
I’m completely fine with that.
Because who cares if 10,000 people see a blog post if none of them were ever going to hire you or buy your thing?
I’d rather put the right idea in front of 100 people who are actually relevant to the business.
The goal isn’t maximum traffic.
It’s the right eyeballs on the right ideas.
Casting a wider net does not mean writing about random shit
This part is important because “your blog can target people earlier in the buying journey” can go sideways pretty quickly if we interpret that as “write about anything your potential client might theoretically care about.”
We’re not going from “Charleston wedding photography” to “10 Best Restaurants in Charleston” because brides eat food and technically one of them might hire you someday.
That’s how you end up with a blog full of traffic that has absolutely no idea what your business does.
Your blog can go wider than your services, but it should still live inside the world of your expertise.
I like to work backward from the business. What do you sell? Who needs it? What problems does she have? What does she need to know before she’s ready to solve those problems? What might she search while she’s figuring all of that out? And where does your expertise give you something genuinely useful to contribute?
That’s a much different content strategy than finding a random keyword with 2,000 searches a month and deciding you should write about it because, hey, traffic.
SEO informs the strategy. It doesn’t get to run the business.
Then yes, optimize the actual blog post
Once we’ve chosen something worth writing about, we still need to give the post a fighting chance in search.
This is where all those blogging SEO tips from the beginning come back into the picture.
I want a clear primary search target, and I want to understand what the person making that search is actually trying to find. Ranking for a keyword doesn’t do us much good if we completely misunderstand the search intent and write something that doesn’t answer the question.
I want a title that makes sense for the reader and for search. I want a clear structure with useful headings. I want the post to actually answer the question instead of burying the answer under 700 words of throat-clearing because somebody on the internet said longer posts rank better.
I want internal links connecting the post to other useful content on the site. I want a sensible URL, SEO title, and meta description. I want to use related language naturally so we’re giving search engines plenty of context without making the post sound like a robot wrote it during a keyword-stuffing emergency.
And then I want to pay attention to what happens after we publish.
That’s why I recommend setting up Google Search Console from the beginning. I want to see whether we’re getting impressions, what queries we’re appearing for, whether Google seems to understand the post the way we expected, whether positions are improving, and eventually whether people are clicking.
And if something isn’t happening the way we expected? Cool. Now we have information.
Maybe we need to get more specific. Maybe the search intent wasn’t quite what we thought. Maybe the post needs time and more related content around it. Maybe there’s another question showing up in Search Console that deserves its own post.
That’s part of SEO, too.
SEO isn’t something I sprinkle on top of a finished blog post like parsley. It’s part of the strategy before we write, part of how we structure the piece while we’re writing, and part of what we learn from after it’s published.
Internal links aren’t just for Google, either
This is another blogging SEO tactic that makes a lot more sense when you stop thinking about individual posts and start thinking about the whole journey.
Let’s say someone finds my post about how often she should blog.
She came in with a tactical question. I answer it. But somewhere along the way, she realizes frequency isn’t really the biggest issue.
She needs an actual blog content strategy.
So I link her there.
Now she understands that the goal isn’t just publishing more. It’s building a connected body of content around what she wants to be known for, what her future clients need, and what those people are actually searching for.
And maybe after reading that she thinks:
This sounds great. I absolutely do not want to do all of this myself.
Hello, Anchor Content.
That journey isn’t accidental.
Internal links help search engines understand how your content relates, yes. But they also help people move through your ideas.
Someone can enter your site through a fairly small tactical question and then move into a bigger idea. She can go from the thing she searched, to the thing she needs to understand next, to the offer that helps her actually do something about it.
The keyword gets your reader through the door.
Your content strategy shows her where to go next.
And the more strategically connected content you create, the more ways someone has to enter your world and keep exploring it.
And for the love of God, give your blog post a CTA
Soft selling does not mean being so afraid of selling that you spend 2,000 words demonstrating exactly why you’re qualified to help someone and then say:
Okay bye!
Please give the woman a door.
Your reader came to you with a question. You answered it. Maybe you helped her understand the problem differently. Maybe you shifted something she believed. Maybe she now trusts you a little more than she did ten minutes ago.
Tell her what to do next.
That’s not used-car-salesman energy. That’s good communication.
And the right CTA is going to depend on where the post leaves her. Sometimes the logical next step is another blog post because she still needs more education. Sometimes it’s a free resource. Sometimes it’s joining your email list so you can keep the conversation going.
And sometimes you’ve gotten her far enough that the most useful next step really is your paid offer.
You are allowed to say that.
A CTA doesn’t erase all the value you just gave someone. It helps her figure out what to do with it.
Your service page can generally be more direct because the person landing there is closer to buying. Your blog CTA may need to account for the fact that she arrived much earlier in the process.
But please do not spend an entire blog post warming the sale and then get shy at the exact moment you’re supposed to tell her where to go.
Blogging SEO is bigger than getting a blog post to rank
Do I want your blog posts to rank?
Obviously.
I am not spending all this time researching what people search because I enjoy spreadsheets that much.
Search gives your business an opportunity that I think is incredibly valuable: You can show up in front of someone who has never heard of you before, at the exact moment she’s actively looking for information related to what you know.
And unlike your homepage or service page, your blog gives you the ability to create a whole bunch of those entrances.
Your homepage cannot rank for every problem your future client has. Your service page shouldn’t try to.
Your blog is where you get to expand the number of searches your business can meaningfully show up for.
But getting the click is still only the beginning.
The bigger opportunity is what happens after she arrives.
You answer the question she searched. You educate her. You demonstrate your expertise. You introduce your perspective. Maybe you shift a belief. You help her understand what she needs next.
And then you give her somewhere to go.
That’s why blogging SEO needs a different strategy than the SEO on your main website.
Your website helps someone choose you. Your blog can help someone understand what she should be choosing in the first place.
The keyword gets you into the conversation. The education builds trust. The thought leadership can shift the belief.
And somewhere in that process, the sale gets a whole lot warmer.
Want a blog that does more than bring in traffic?
That’s what I help my clients build.
If you want to keep the writing but need someone to figure out what the hell you should be writing in the first place, SEO-Backed Blog Strategy gives you the research, strategy, and roadmap for building a blog around what you want to be known for, what your future clients need, and what they’re actually searching.
And if you would very much like to skip the writing part, Anchor Content is where I handle the strategy, search research, writing, SEO details, and repurposing angles for you.
Because I don’t want to hand you a pile of SEO articles whose only job is to chase clicks. I want to help you build a body of work that casts a wider net around your expertise, gives your future clients useful ways into your world, and answers the question they searched while helping them understand what they need next.
I want your blog to help the right people find you, yes.
But I also want it to make them think, Oh. She gets it.
And ideally, eventually:
Oh. I want her help with this.
Your blog can bring people through the door. Let’s make sure there’s something worth finding when they get there.
