How to Create an SEO-Friendly Blog: Tips for Structuring Your Blog Correctly

Introduction

If you're planning to create your own blog, one of the most important things to consider is search engine optimisation (SEO). An SEO-friendly blog not only helps you achieve higher rankings on Google, it also helps you grow your audience and, as a result, increase your revenue from online content. In this description, we will discuss different strategies for structuring a blog in an SEO-friendly way.

Understanding SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising a website so that it is easily understood and indexed by search engines. SEO not only increases the visibility of your blog but also improves the user experience, which can lead to increased traffic and conversions.

Choosing the right blogging platform

An essential part of creating an SEO-friendly blog is choosing the right blogging platform. WordPress is often considered the most SEO-friendly choice on the market, with a wide variety of SEO plugins available for further customisation. However, other platforms such as Blogger or Squarespace also offer robust SEO features.

Structuring your blog correctly

Structuring your blog plays a crucial role in its SEO optimisation. This process involves organising your categories, simplifying navigation, including appropriate header tags and building strong internal links. A well thought-out blog structure can not only improve the user experience, but also help search engines to understand the content of your blog, which can improve the visibility of your site.

Creating quality content

Creating quality content is vital to the success of your SEO blog. Search engines favour sites that provide original and useful content, so investing in good copywriting can greatly improve your SEO rankings. Ideally, your content should answer your audience's questions, offer valuable information and be well written with no spelling or grammatical errors.

Choosing the right CMS for SEO performance

The choice of content management system determines a large part of your future SEO. WordPress, Drupal, Ghost or Webflow do not have the same impact on loading speed, the ease of implementing structured data or the management of internal links. For example, Brian Dean's blog (Backlinko) initially ran on WordPress before migrating to a static deployment generated via Gatsby. This transition reduced the Time To First Byte (TTFB) from 450 ms to less than 100 ms and improved the duration by 17 %. average number of sessions. These figures confirm that a flexible, lightweight CMS, or a static site generator, can provide a decisive competitive advantage. Think about the learning curve too: a complex CMS like Drupal offers granular control, but will require more technical human resources. So the ROI will depend on your team, your hosting budget and your long-term ambitions.

SEO plugins: beware of overload

On WordPress, the natural instinct is to pile on plugins (Yoast, RankMath, SEOPress, etc.). Paradoxically, this approach can slow down the site. In 2022, a study by WP Rocket showed that a site with more than 20 plugins had an average PageSpeed Insights score 12 points lower than an equivalent site using just five. To maintain performance, opt for a well-optimised all-in-one plugin rather than a patchwork of small extensions. Echo the DevOps philosophy of "less is more" by limiting external dependencies and regularly auditing those that remain.

Information architecture: silos, clusters and internal meshing

The structure of a blog determines how Google discovers and prioritises your content. The historic "silo" approach - separating topics into watertight categories - is less and less effective if it prevents robots from quickly exploring the depths of the site. In contrast, the topic cluster structure popularised by HubSpot links each article to an anchor page. HubSpot has measured that its clusters generate 22 % of additional organic traffic on average compared with isolated content. In other words, each article reinforces the relevance of the overall theme, creating a leverage effect comparable to neural networks where each node increases the value of the system.

Click depth and crawl budget

Google prefers pages that can be accessed in no more than three clicks. Extra depthessive dilutes your "SEO juice . Airbnb published an analysis in 2020 showing that reducing the number of clicks between the home page and their "City Guides" pages from five to three boosted the indexing of the latter by 30 %. Align your SEO objectives with your UX architecture: if a user gets lost, a robot will get lost too. Use a breadcrumb menu and contextual links in your articles to show the thematic hierarchy.

Optimising meta tags and headers

The title tag remains one of the main signals of relevance. However, Google now rewrites almost 60 % of titles, according to a Moz study in 2021. So write your titles so that they are clear, even if they are truncated: place the main keyword at the beginning, followed by the value proposition. For example, "Vegan Recipe: Gluten-Free Cookies + Chef's Tips" will retain its meaning even if the end is cut off.

H2, H3 and table of contents tags

Clear structuring with H2 and H3 tags influences Google's passage-based ranking, where sub-sections of articles can be positioned independently. Wikipedia illustrates this power: its long articles are systematically broken down into relevant sub-headings. Add a clickable table of contents (anchor links) to improve navigation and generate "automatic sitelinks" in the SERP, as Wikipedia or the New York Times does for its articles on file.

Loading speed and Core Web Vitals

Since the Page Experience update (2021), the Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift) have been official criteria. The Guardian reduced its CLS from 0.25 to 0.08 by switching its adverts to temporary static images, triggered only after the main load. Result: +13 % page views per session. Keep LCP under 2.5 s for 75 % of your users. Use native lazy-loading (loading="lazy") and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to minimise global latency.

MPA and modern alternatives

Google has relaxed the requirement for AMP for Top Stories. However, publishers such as CNBC continue to serve AMP versions to guarantee lightning-fast loading times on mobile. At the same time, the Jamstack approach (Netlify, Vercel) offers a high-performance alternative for serving pre-generated content. Compare the two depending on your stack: if you're sticking to WordPress, AMP can be integrated via an official plugin. If you're starting from scratch, a static React or Hugo site plus a global CDN can outperform AMP in terms of speed.

Structuring content around search intent

The days of exact keywords are over. Google now assesses whether your content solves the underlying intention. Let's take the example of the query "best Italian coffee maker". Users are looking for: comparisons, prices, availability, ecological alternatives. Amazon's blog uses comparison tables, rich FAQs and unboxing videos. As a result, it monopolises the 0 position on various variants. Take inspiration from this holistic approach: analyse the People Also Ask (PAA), the video SERP and the images to cover the query from several angles (text, visual, infographic).

Evergreen content vs news

Alternating perennial content with topical articles stabilises your traffic curve. The Buffer blog illustrated this strategy in 2018: its evergreen guides attracted a steady stream, while its analyses of Instagram algorithm updates generated temporary spikes. Together, these formats increased annual organic traffic by 33 % while smoothing out seasonal variations. Reuse evergreen content by updating it every six months; Google interprets this as a guarantee of freshness.

Accessibility and SEO: a winning duo

Screen readers interpret your HTML in the same way as Googlebot. Optimising for accessibility therefore improves your SEO. For example, the BBC requires descriptive alt text on every image. This feeds Google Images and also increases engagement with visually impaired users. What's more, WCAG 2.1 compliance reduces legal risks: between 2017 and 2021, lawsuits for non-accessibility increased fourfold in the United States. Prevent these lawsuits by integrating ARIA labels, sufficient contrast and full keyboard navigation.

Video and subtitles

Video transcriptions improve semantic understanding for Google and broaden the audience to include deaf people. YouTube generates automatic subtitles, but their accuracy remains variable. Tools such as Descript or Otter.ai enable rapid correction. Wistia has found that videos with subtitles get 15 % more views, a metric that may translate into better dwell time, an element correlated (although not officially attested) with ranking.

Schema.org and structured data

Applying JSON-LD tags can generate rich snippets: star ratings, FAQ, How-To, etc. The Marmiton recipe site uses the Recipe schema with precision: cooking times, calories, step-by-step. As a result, it has won position 0 thanks to the Google recipe carousel and doubled its click-through rate according to an internal study shared in 2019. Another example: Eventbrite uses the "Event" type to display dates and places directly in the SERP, simplifying conversion. Implement FAQPages with caution: Google recently reduced their visibility on mobile, reminding us that no SERP functionality is forever. So maintain a modular code that you can deactivate in a few clicks without breaking the page.

Validation and monitoring

Test your data using the Rich Results Test tool. Programme a Search Console alert to spot any errors in order to avoid degradation of your rich snippets. Airbnb had 7,000 URLs switched to schema error due to a change in data model; it took them four weeks to recover their rich snippets. A simple continuous integration (CI) with a JSON-LD validation test could have prevented this loss of visibility.

Internationalisation: managing multilingualism without cannibalising your traffic

Beaconing hreflang is still a headache. Booking.com manages it in over 40 languages and 200 countries, combining 8,000 different combinations. The site has invested in an internal system that dynamically generates hreflang combinations and ensures that no page points to a non-existent version. For a blog, implementation can be kept simple: use a sub-domain (fr., en.) or directory (/fr/, /en/) rather than URL parameters. Check that each version has a fallback language (" x-default ). Without this, Google risks displaying your English version to a French-speaking audience, creating a high bounce rate and negative signals.

Duplicate content and canonicals

Duplicating the same article and simply translating it can be enough, as long as you correctly indicate the canonical of each version to itself. Shopify has published a guide in which they show that poor auto-canonicalisation reduced their impressions for the French version by 11 %. A Screaming Frog or Sitebulb audit will flush out these anomalies before they damage your international SEO.

Security and trust: HTTPS, SSL certificates and E-E-A-T signals

Since 2014, Google has favoured HTTPS. A SEMrush study from 2023 found that 98 % of first-page results were in HTTPS. But security doesn't stop at the protocol. The E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Reliability) have a particular influence on YMYL ("Your Money Your Life") topics. The Healthline blog highlights its doctor-editors and systematically cites PubMed sources. This E-E-A-T approach allows it to dominate high-risk health results while other sites have been hit by Medic Update in 2018. For a travel blog, you could display your collaborations, agency certifications or recognised guides to reassure the user and the algorithm.

Moderation policies and UGC

If you allow comments, moderate them. TripAdvisor almost lost Google's trust when several studies revealed false evaluations. Set up a verification system and a file ugc in nofollow links helps to maintain quality. Google now differentiates between "sponsor", "ugc" and "nofollow" links. Apply them to avoid manual penalties for unnatural links.

Monitoring, analysis and continuous improvement

Measuring is progress. Combine Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console to track your high-impact but low-CTR URLs. Software publisher Ahrefs publishes internal reports every year revealing that optimising the title tag sometimes increases CTR by 20 % without creating any new content. Set up a Looker Studio dashboard displaying your main metrics: impressions, clicks, CTR, positions, Core Web Vitals. Add annotations during updates or A/B tests to attribute variations to the right causes.

A/B content testing

Vox Media tested two versions of the same article (CTA placement, paragraph length) on equivalent traffic segments. After 30 days and 100,000 impressions, the shorter version generated 12 % more social shares, but the longer version kept visitors for an extra 40 seconds. The final decision depended on the objective (awareness vs. reading time). Adopt the same methodology: set a main KPI before any experimentation; otherwise, you run the risk of optimising one signal to the detriment of another more important one.

Technical deployment, CI/CD and secure rollback

Every structure or template change carries an SEO risk. GitLab has set up a pipeline that runs Lighthouse and crawling tests on each merge request. This approach makes it possible to detect an accidental "noindex" meta robots tag before it reaches production. Even on a small blog, a free GitHub Actions workflow can check the HTML files generated and block publication if the title is empty or duplicated. In 2020, the Moz blog lost traffic for 48 hours because a template variable was missing from the title tag of 3,000 articles during a redesign. Automating the audit reduces these human errors.

Mobile optimisation: beyond responsive

Since the Mobile-First index, your mobile version is the reference version. But responsive design alone is not enough. The weight of images remains the main culprit. The photography site Pexels has migrated all its images to the AVIF format and seen a 30 % reduction in average weight without any visual loss. Use srcset and adaptive images to avoid serving a 4K visual on a 360 px wide screen. Also check tap-target spacing: on mobile, buttons that are too close together increase the rate of frustration, an indirect signal measured by Google via pogo-sticking.

PWA: Progressive Web App

The Washington Post converted its site to PWA and recorded an 88 % improvement in loading times. Service Workers allow the pre-caching of visited pages, which reinforces the loyalty of offline or 3G readers. If your blog publishes tutorials that users consult in their workshop or on the move, offline mode can become an undeniable competitive advantage.

The importance of community and social signals

Although Google denies taking any direct account of social signals, there are strong correlations between sharing and ranking. Rand Fishkin's blog (SparkToro) systematically relays its articles on LinkedIn. An internal analysis shows that 28 % of natural backlinks come from contacts who discovered the article via a social network. So set up a Slack, Discord or Newsletter community: these social hubs generate discussions, which turn into editorial backlinks - always more valuable than link exchanges.

Influencers and co-marketing

Trello co-created a series of articles with Buffer, each linking to the other. This crossover operation brought 40,000 extra visits to the two blogs in one month and boosted the authority of both domains. The alliance of complementary communities increases reach and diversifies link anchors, reducing the risk of over-optimisation.

Conclusion: building a sustainable SEO ecosystem

Creating an SEO-friendly blog isn't just about ticking technical boxes: it's a marriage between performance, relevance and user experience. From the choice of CMS to the implementation of CI/CD pipelines, every decision influences your visibility. Take inspiration from the successes of Backlinko, HubSpot or Healthline, but adapt them to your context. Measure everything, iterate often and stay alert to algorithm updates. In this way, your blog will not only become an SEO asset, but also a lasting value centre for your audience and your brand.

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