Any suggestions on how to properly optimize blogs?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Sal Isme: It’s rare for a lot of blogs not to rank for anything, even if they are not optimised. Are they on the sitemap? Do they have links to and from? Have you optimised meta-tags? Are you overusing the main keywords (meta-tags, h1 and up to 6 appearances in the body is more than enough)? Are you optimising images? Are you ensuring the pages are accessible and load in a reasonable time if you’re b2c? Use mobile page test (Google) and Google dev tools to get an idea. Most importantly, is your content unique, informative and authoritative? (See Google’s E-A-T). Of course, depending on the platform it could be that your content isn’t getting rendered (seen by Google).
  
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  Mike Vanacoro: Sal Isme We are ranking for some just not as much as I would have predicted. Yes, all images are optimized. We recently updated most of the blogs, hopefully we will start to see improvement.
  
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  Sal Isme: Mike Vanacoro that’s quite normal for unoptimised blogs, obviously, it’s a combination of optimising on all fronts to get those rankings and it doesn’t happen overnight.
  
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  Ștefan Prohnițchi: Hi Mike Vanacoro It seems that you may need to look at "smaller" things on your site too. CBD is an YMYL topic, and it brings extra challenges. You need Expertise, ity, and Trust for your site. This implies:- having the social media pages setup (page bottom buttons are blank)- having Contact / Privacy / Disclaimer pages setup (page bottom links are blank)- having a "face" for your articles, building a persona that can be viewed as an authority on this subject, and place it`s bio at the bottom of each article.I hope this helps. These tips are a starting point, and you can find more EAT tips online. I checked the technical side, and there`s not much to mention.
  
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  Mike Vanacoro: Ștefan Prohnițchi Thank you
  
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  Michael Martinez: Group expertBlogs are perfectly fine for ecommerce sites. But the main purpose of the blog should be to inform people, not to sell stuff to them. Buyers look at product pages. Readers look at blog pages.
  
  The benefit of adding a blog to an ecommerce site is that it contributes toward brand visibility and value. If you`re just publishing "SEO content" for the sake of ranking in targeted queries, you`re probably not creating real brand value in the minds of visitors.
  
  While I agree that CBD is a highly competitive market, there will always be new sites breaking into those top results. No one - not even the American Kennel Club - is guaranteed ownership of a SERP.
  
  The brands that impress consumers with real value tend to do well in competitive queries. Don`t think in terms of "that`s a YMYL query" or E-A-T. Think in terms of "what are we bringing to the discussion that is missing from other sites?"
  
  You`ve got knowledge of the product and your opinions. If you`re hiring out the content to freelance writers, then you`d better be hiring freelancers who know what they are talking about and not random people who just browse the search results for "research" before writing an article.
  
  You can be the expert or you can pretend. I`m not expert enough to know what you know, but as a searcher I`m always looking for that one Website that answers MY questions better than anyone else.
  
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