TheSmartLocal SEO Blog Writing Guide

Singapore SEO Blogging Tips

This tutorial is aimed to help TSL writers. It will serve as a really simplistic introduction to the world of SEO – which basically means speaking the language of google so they rank you at the top of search results. It will also cover how to write with more clarity for your readers.

Our articles should be written in a way that they are easily found through google. This leads to more people reading our articles. These tips do not apply just to TheSmartLocal, but to all blogs. If you have your own blog I highly recommend you also read this guide to blogging which uses ladyironchef as a case study.

1. Using Headers

This serves two purposes. First, it breaks down the content into a more organised structure for readers. It becomes clearer for them to read and scan through. People love lists. People love organisation.

Second, it gives structure to your article and tells google what is important.

• The “TheSmartLocal SEO Blog Writing Guide” you see up there is Header 1.
• The “Singapore SEO Blogging Tips” you see is Header 2.
• “1. Using Headers” is Heading 3.

These headers are written deliberately with the appropriate keywords people would likely be searching for. I.e I want Singaporeans who are searching for Blogging tips / Guide / SEO to come across this article. They are also structured in proper hierarchy, something google deeply appreciates. Header 1 is most important followed by header 2 etc.

First make sure the header text is on a separate new line of its own. Next, highlight the text then choose Header 3 in the box. You always want to use either header 2 or header 3 since header 1 is already the article title. Be sure to bold the words too, that makes the words even more important.

2. Five Formatting Tips for Clearer Writing

The whole goal of formatting your articles is to provide clarity for your readers. Lists are so much neater, wouldn’t you agree?

1. As mentioned above, using headers provide clarity.

2. Short sentences provide clarity. So write in short sentences. Break them up. Like this!

3. Lists are easier on the eye. If you have a list of things, LIST them, like what I’m doing here. Use the “List icon” which you can see just under the [B] icon in the picture above.

4. Never write paragraphs with more than 4 sentences. Look above at all my chunks of text. It’s much easier to read this way. Otherwise people just see a wall of text and lose interest.

5. Add pictures. This is a must for the above reason. You want your articles to be engaging. Don’t go overboard with it though. Show only the best pictures.

3. Know your Meta Descriptions and Keywords

These are extremely important. They are not the same. Meta Description is what appears when you search for things in google with keywords. In this google search, I searched for “Ritz-Carlton Singapore Staycation.” Ceteris paribus, Google returns you results based on what is in your title and meta description, and then they bold it, like in this picture.

Click to Zoom in

So ALWAYS make sure you have important keywords that people will search for written in your meta description. Have it flow like a proper paragraph describing the article. It has to be under 160 words. Try to  add some personality to the writing. The more engaging it is, the higher chance someone will click on your article after seeing it in google search results. 

What happens if you leave it blank? Then it simply uses the first words you type in the article, which is definitely not good because it will be more of an introduction then describing what the article is about.

Meta Keywords: This used to be important but now its relatively useless because people kept abusing it and google took away its power. I would say just putting 3 keywords would be enough. This is the place where you use commas to separate the keywords.

4. Abuse Deep Linking

You should build links internally throughout your site to strengthen your existing articles. For example, I linked the ladychef writing tips article at the top. Make sure they are set to open in new tabs. This does two things:

1. It gives readers other relevant topics they may like – that also makes them stay longer on your site.

2. It passes on its own link juice to the articles, making them stronger. Yes, you’re basically backlinking yourself and it works.

Sometimes I may throw up a random link I want to promote articles like this Inspirational Singapore plastic Surgery Examples (hey look i just did it!) because I want that article to rank in google. But if you don’t want to annoy your readers keep this to a minimum and link relevant articles.

Jensen’s recent article of Traders Hotel, Puteri Harbour (look i did it again!) was a good example of this. I added links to relevant articles that he was already talking about. Hellokitty Land, Hotel Renaissance and even Wei Ling’s recent Penang Buffet at Trader’s hotel.

This is also one of the reasons you use tag. If your blog has a tag feature, USE IT!

Lastly, do not ever be afraid to link out to high authority sites. Google actually rewards you for this. That is why its always good to link to the official websites of places. There is an SEO blog i read regularly by Neil Patel who is one of my favourites to learn from. 

5. Google Authorship

Look, Nicole has her own picture in google! So does Jensen! Authorship has two very important purposes.

1. It makes your writing stand out in results – people are more likely to click on your articles, especially when you look as gorgeous as Nicole or as suave as Jensen.

2. Google uses Authorship as a metric that affects your search results. Keep writing well and this score adds up giving you more relevance in search results.

To find out how to add your picture like this read our TSL authorship guide. Note that both Jensen and Nicole didn’t fill up the meta descriptions that’s why it used the starting text of the article. But don’t worry over 90% of bloggers don’t know about this. That’s what I wanted to write this article to help you guys out with your blogging.

Anyway this is just scratching the surface. There are 50 other topics I could easily write about SEO, content marketing and blogging. Anyway if you enjoyed this article please share and like it below and I will be encouraged to write more 🙂

P.S It’s also because google uses social media engagement as a metric in your search rankings.