Rod Holmes, of Chicago Style SEO, relies on the Chicago Manual of Style when it comes to writing blog posts. But there are some gaps between the style that the manual sets forth for print and what bloggers routinely run in to: “Everything from the small (how to format hyperlinks—do you include ending punctuation in the link or not) to proper use of sub-headers. All of these issues have SEO ramifications as well. From an SEO perspective, its best to not have the closing punctuation in the link, and liberal use of sub-headers (when properly formatted in the HTML) is vital.”

While some bloggers may want to be above the nitty-gritty details of SEO, the fact remains that you want the search engines to be able to read your blog posts. That means getting your links right, among other things.

Rod offers advice that does double duty for SEO and style:

  1. Include links in naturally written text; don’t write the text with linking in mind. This means don’t use links like click here or link:
    Good: My favorite pizza in Chicago is from Bob’s Wizz Bang Pizza.
    Bad: Click here to see my favorite pizza restaurant in Chicago: Bob’s Wizz Bang Pizza.

    Also, the more keywords the link text (also called, “anchor text”) contain, the better they are for SEO.

  2. Don’t include closing punctuation in link anchor text.
    Good: I recommend Chicago Style SEO.
    Bad: I recommend Chicago Style SEO.
  3. Use sub-headers ever two or three paragraphs. The sub-headers should contain keywords related to the article and the paragraphs below. These sub-headers are important to readers, most of whom tend to skim and scan looking for what they want to read. Sub-headers are also very important for SEO if they are properly formatted. An example would be, <h3>Important Style and SEO Tips</h3>. These tags tell the search engines that this is a third level header and should be given more weight than the rest of the text.

Not only do these points make it easier for your posts to be found online, but they also make them easier to read for human readers.