Before we get into it, we must caveat that the very best thing for blogging search engine optimisation (SEO) is choosing a topic and pitch that is strategically targeted at search queries relevant to your brand. That’s why our web design company writes about things like SEO for bloggers, website tips for jewellers and the technology we use to create our websites.
Even if you optimise the heck out of the structure and copy within a blog article, if it’s not directly answering something that your audience is typing into their Google search bar, it’s unlikely to be great for SEO.
But we can certainly make it good for SEO, to help all of those blog posts and articles you’ve written over the years have the best possible chance of winning you website traffic in 2025.
As a blogger of 15+ years myself both on my own website and for clients’ websites too, there’s a huge archive of blog posts for me to go through and optimise, especially as many of them were written before I started working with Studio Cotton and absorbed all of founder Aime‘s juicy SEO knowledge.
So this is a very handy blog post to bookmark for bloggers like me, but also for all small businesses that have a blog on their website.
(Oh, and just quickly, if you are a blogger, Aime’s just written a super helpful two-parter about optimising a professional blog website – check out part one here.)
SEO in the smallest of nutshells
If you’re new to the world of SEO, it’d be very handy for me to quickly explain what the flip it is. Well, despite a reputation for being mysterious and techy, SEO has a very simple goal.
It’s all about growing and tweaking a website to provide Google with as much information and evidence about what we do, so that we rank higher and more often in Google search results.
Traffic from Google searches tends to be the most engaged (and highest spending) so we generally want as much of it as possible. SEO and blogging often go hand-in-hand, so let’s get in to those tips for your blogging back catalogue…
1. Re-title your blog headline to more directly answer a search query
Simply changing the pitch of an article (rather than changing the content) can help make sure that the title at the top of the page is more similar to a search query that someone is typing into Google.
So, a lifestyle blogger might have a Keswick shopping guide titled “A day in the life” or a line from a song – a genuine thing us bloggers used to do, which is great for signposting how cool you are, but rubbish for SEO.
The title of your article is the biggest marker you’re giving Google to match an article to a searcher and their query. If an article is titled “Little girl you’re in the middle of the ride”, it could certainly help it to rank for someone searching for their favourite half-remembered Jimmy Eat World tune – but it’s unlikely to help you get found by people who want to know where to spend their money in Cumbria.
If they changed it to “Visiting my favourite independent shops & cafés in the Lake District” (or whatever specific things they are doing in that blog post) someone is Googling “independent shops in the Lake District” is more likely to have your blog post in their search results.
We want you to make your blog title way more literal and specific, and less artsy. Because SEO is cool too, actually, and Google can only use the words that you’ve written on your website to match things that people are searching.
2. Turn any existing subheadings into Heading 2s
This is something that we see all the time – people making their text bold for all of their subheadings, which, whilst it kinda looks like a heading on the page, it isn’t acting like one, because putting text in bold doesn’t move it up the content hierarchy.
If you use a Heading 2 (H2), it basically brings that heading up to the top of your content hierarchy (just below the H1, which there should only be one of per page, and in this case will be the title of your blog post) and tells Google that this is a heading, giving it more information.
Make all of your headings H2, then any subheadings should be an H3 – this applies to every single page and product on your website, so this is a rule to apply to other pages in the future. Using headings incorrectly is actually the best way to fluff up your SEO.
If you’re not sure what headings you’re using on your website and in your blog posts, we love WAVE by WebAIM, which is technically a website accessibility evaluation tool. If you pop your URL in and click on the ‘Structures’ tab, it’ll highlight how your website uses headings to create a content hierarchy.
3. Or break that blog article up into 3-10 sections with their own Heading 2
If your old blog article doesn’t already have subheadings, then we’re gonna ask you kindly to add some in – again, this adds hierarchy into that article.
Normally, it can be pretty self-explanatory when you go through an old article to think, “OK, that’s the introduction, this is the meat which I can split into these three sections, and then this is the conclusion”.
Here, we’re trying to pull little snippets up to the top of the content hierarchy, and the same rules for writing those blog titles apply to your heading – so make it literal, make it specific, and include words that are relevant to your audience in there as well.
4. Replace unoptimised blog images
Ohhhhh boy. Unoptimised images. Don’t even get us started.
Actually, do. If you have a 5MB image in a blog article, you can say goodbye to that blog article ever ranking effectively, because it will make the web page load soooo slowly.
And do you know what Google hates? Slow websites. People don’t like them very much either, and if something is taking too long to load, they’re likely to close that tab – which is also not great for SEO.
You can see all your pics in your media library, but if you want to check the images you’re using on specific pages like your blog posts and you use Google Chrome as your web browser, you can use Google Chrome Developer Tools.
Simply right click anywhere on a web page and click inspect, then click on the Application tab, head to the Frames section, and open the Images folder, and you’ll see the images on a page, complete with names, pixel size and kb size.
Ideally we want images to be under 400kb, but the smaller the better, without compromising on quality. You can find tips for this in Studio Cotton founder Aime’s blog post from 2018 (with 2024 edits), 5 super quick steps to manage your website images and improve your SEO.
We also have a £3 image optimisation tutorial, which shows you step-by-step how to optimise your website photography in just a few clicks, using tools that are free or come built into your Mac.
5. Replace any dated examples, info, prices, and references in your blog post
I reckon this one speaks for itself, but I will go into it anyway, because I’m nice like that.
In older blog posts, prices are by far the most common piece of out-of-date information. We don’t want to mislead anyone, do we? So make sure it’s accurate, so that your lovely readers don’t go to buy something they think is £7.50, and find it’s actually £20 now.
This can also be a good chance to replace any really dated trends and problematic references, like when Aime had to go through her old blog posts removing all of her favourite Kanye lyrics…
6. Increase the specificity of your blog copy
Whenever Aime proof-reads the blog posts I write for Studio Cotton, she always searches for the word business and makes sure the word small is in front of it, because it’s more specific and who we’re trying to target.
Or if we’re looking at our client Polina’s website Good Fabric, we make sure it says sewing patterns, instead of just patterns, because patterns could mean so many other things.
Make sure that you’re looking for every word in your blog post and thinking, can I make this more specific to my audience?
An extra tip here is to look out for words like things and stuff and products, and try to replace all of those with more specific language. This specificity hooks Google, and sends more traffic to your website.
Utterly shameless self-promotion
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7. Add in as many SEO keywords as you can (without the blog post becoming gobbledygook)
There’s a reason we put this right after specificity, because the best thing that you can do to each blog article is make that article as specific as possible, but then SEO keywords give your whole website the best possible chance of ranking.
And if you’re thinking, mate, I have no idea what my keywords are – don’t worry. We of course have a blog post for that too: The easiest way to pick and use your brand keywords.
Our main piece of advice here is don’t overthink it too much – your keywords will be the essential, literal and specific terms like your brand name, location, and products or services, with a few others sprinkled in.
8. Check for broken links in your old blog post (and fix them)
Google doesn’t like a broken website, and for most of our clients’ websites, the biggest source by far of their broken links is in old blog articles.
Things like, when a product has gone out of stock that they talked about in a blog post, or a business that you mentioned has shut down, or an Instagram account has changed their handles – that’s a huge source of broken links, and it’s very annoying.
You can check for broken links using this Free Broken Link Tool by Dead Link Checker, which runs through a website page or a full website and picks up every non-linking link.
9. Add internal links to your other blog articles, pages, and products
One thing that we know impacts SEO is the amount of engagement on your website, which is basically how long someone spends on your website, and how much they interact with your website.
We want to do as much as we can to keep someone interacting with our content, which means that if we can get them to go from one blog post to the next blog post, article, page or product, that is them further engaging with us.
So when tackling this point, as well as linking words that are already in your old blog post, we’d love you to also add more content into your blog post that gives you an excuse to add links – relevant ones only please.
With old blog content, that means you’ve probably written newer articles that you can link in there as well, which is a really easy win.
10. Add in external links to other resources and websites
External or outbound links are any links from your website to someone else’s website, and they demonstrate helpfulness, which Google loves.
When linking out to other websites, you are providing something helpful for your readers (which Google loves), you’ve created another digital connection (which Google loves), you’ve given your stamp of approval to that website (which Google loves), and boosted that website’s SEO (which they’ll love).
It can also build real-life connections with other brands and your community, which can result in collaborations, increase your influence, and cement your reputation as a very lovely small business.
When we’re writing our blog content, we try to go out of our way to namedrop people and organisations that we think our readers will enjoy or find interesting, and that we want to put under our little spotlight.
And if those people or organisations check their backlinks regularly, I’ll bet that it’ll make their day.
Phew! We made it through, I bet you’re gagging to go and optimise all your old blog posts so that they show up in more Google searches now, aren’t you?
If you’re a blogger, you’ll probably really like Aime’s recent blog series, 18 expert tips for optimising a professional blog website part one and part two, to really get all the eyes possible on your content.
And for tips more bitesize than our chunky blog posts, make sure you follow Studio Cotton on Instagram.
