Hi, I’m Nikki Pilkington. My site is https://nikki-pilkington.com/ and in this episode of “SEO F**king What” I focus on the harsh reality many business owners face: pouring hours into writing blog posts only to see:

• No results
• No traffic
• No engagement

A talk about solid SEO foundations, not just good writing, to ensure blog content gets found and drives results. Some common mistakes include; clever but unsearchable titles, missing metadata, weak or absent internal links, and lack of clear calls to action—that hold back otherwise strong content from ranking on Google.

You'll get a practical, no-nonsense SEO checklist to transform your blog post process, boost visibility, and finally see your efforts pay off.

📍REMEMBER:

• Ditch clever titles for clear, searchable ones
• Don’t skip the basics—metadata matters
• Structure and internal links are your secret weapon

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You spent two hours writing a blog post, you're really

fucking proud of it. You hit publish and then

absolutely nothing happens. Sound familiar?

Let's fix it. This is SEO. Fucking what?

I'm Nikki and I've been doing SEO for over 30 years,

before most people knew what it was, before it was even called that.

I help small businesses and B2B companies get found

on Google and actually make money from their website, not

just traffic money. Today we're doing something a little

bit different. There's no rant about a LinkedIn guru,

no horror story about an agency charging you three grand a

month to do fuck all. Today, I'm handing you something

useful. A checklist. No waffle. Work

through it before you publish every blog post you ever write.

Because here's what I see Constantly, business owners put

in real time and effort into blog content. Writing

it, agonizing over it, getting someone to proofread

it, and then publishing it in a state that means Google and

other search engines are never going to find it. And it's

not because it's badly written. It's because the SEO foundations

aren't there. So I'm going to walk you through every single

thing that needs to be right before a blog post is published.

Keep your phone out, write this down, or go to my website and grab

the checklist version. But don't just listen to this and do fuck all

with it. That's exactly what most people do. And then they

wonder why their blog has 47 posts and no traffic.

So let's get into it.

First thing before anything else. Your title.

Is it something people will type into Google? It sounds

obvious, but it isn't. I see clever titles all

the time. Witty titles, titles the business owner

loves because it's a bit of wordplay or a cultural reference.

And Google and other search engines has

absolutely no fucking idea what it's about.

If your blog post is about how to choose an accountant for your small business,

your title needs to say something like, how to choose an accountant for your

small business. Boring. Yep.

Effective. Absolutely.

Clever titles don't rank. I'll say it again,

because people hate hearing it. Clever titles do

not rank. The words someone types into a

search engine are the words that the search engine looks for in

your content. If those words aren't in your

title, you're making Google's job harder. And

Google doesn't appreciate that. Think about the words

a human being would type into a search box when they have a problem

your blog post solves. Use those words.

That's your title. That's your H1,

then we have metadata. There are two things here. You met

a title and your meta description. Your meta

title, sometimes called an SEO title, is what shows up as

the clickable link in Google search results. It should be

written as something people search for,

ideally a question, because questions match search intent.

It should not have your company name in it. Nobody's searching for your

company name when they're looking for the problem you're writing about.

Keep it under 60 characters or Google will chop it off and

replace the end with an ellipsis, which looks awful and wastes your

click potential. Your meta

description is a little bit of text underneath the link in search results.

It's not a direct ranking factor, but it absolutely

affects whether someone clicks on your result or scrolls past it. It

should make someone want to click, tell them what they're going to get.

Keep it under about155.5 characters.

Write it like a human, not like a robot. Summarizing the post

if you're using a plugin like Rank Math or Yoast, and you should be

using one if you're on WordPress, this is where you fill those fields

in. Don't leave them blank and let Google guess. Google's

guess is usually worse than yours. Every

blog post really needs an image, and the image needs two things.

One, it should be relevant to the post, not a generic stock

photo of a person smiling at a laptop. Something that relates

to what you're writing about. And 2 the alt

tag needs to describe the image accurately. The

alt tag exists for accessibility. It's what a

screen reader reads out to someone who can't see the image. Get that

right first and then give your keyphrase

fits naturally into that description. Put it in. If

it doesn't fit naturally, don't force it. An alt tag

that reads Blog post, SEO Checklist, Keyword, Digital

Marketing Tips is not a description of an image. It's

spam. And let's think about the structure,

because this is the stuff that most people get wrong, and this is where it

gets a little bit more involved. So stay with me. Your

H1 you get one one H1 per page. That's

it. Should include your target keyphrase. Should make clear what the post

is about. If you've written a title for the post and then your

H1 says something different, sort that out before you publish

your introduction. First one or two paragraphs. Get your key

phrase and search intent in as early as possible. Ideally

the first sentence. Definitely the first paragraph. And

for the love of everything that is holi do not open

with this blog post is about I don't know who started

that, but it needs to stop. Just get into it.

Your first H2 your H2s are your section headings.

The first one should ideally include your keyphrase or a

close variation of it to match search intent.

Google knows that job hunting and finding a job mean the

same thing, so you don't need to stuff the exact phrase in robotically.

Subsequent H2s should make sense. You might

have to use variations of your keyphrase. They might not even have the key

phrase in them, but they have to make sense. The heading and the

content beneath it work together. Don't write an H2 about

one thing and then write content about something else underneath it.

H3s they only ever sit underneath an H2,

never on their own. Use them where a section has distinct sub points.

Don't create H3s just to break up a wall of text. If you

need to break up a wall of text, write shorter paragraphs.

Bullet points. Use them where content is genuinely a

list or a sequence. Don't use them to break up every

paragraph. A blog post written entirely in bullet points

is not a blog post. It's a slide deck that got lost.

And one more thing on structure. Have a look at your H2S and

ask yourself honestly, did I create any of these just to break

up the page, rather than because they introduce a new section?

If the answer is yes, delete them. They're dead weight.

You should be using variations of your keyphrase across the whole post,

not just the exact phrase every time. This avoids over

optimization, which is a real thing and can actually hurt

you. Google doesn't like keyword stuffing, and it

reads more naturally for human beings who are also, you

know, reading your content. Think about all the

ways someone might describe the thing you're writing about. Use those

words throughout. Don't Write SEO checklists 74 times.

Write checklist for blog posts what to check before you publish blog

post SEO Mix it up

and then we go to internal links. And this one is so fucking

underused it makes me want to cry. Every blog

post you publish should link to at least two other

relevant pages or posts on your site. More if possible,

make them relevant links, links that genuinely help the reader

go somewhere useful. Next. And it works both ways.

And this is the thing that most people miss. When you

publish something new, go back to existing posts

or pages that are relevant and add a link to

the new one. Your new post shouldn't be sitting there in

isolation with no other page on your site pointing to it.

That's not how a well structured site works. And think

about your anchor text. The clickable words in your link need

to describe what the link to page is about. Not click

here, not read more, not find out more about our services.

Something specific. If you're linking to your Executive

Coaching services page, the link text should say executive

coaching services or how our executive coaching program

works. That tells Google exactly what's on the other end of that

link. Click here. Tells Google fucking

nothing. If your blog post mentions another post

you've written, link to it. If it mentions one of your services

or programs, link to it. Every time you name

something that lives on your website, ask yourself whether there's a link

there. If not, add one. These internal

connections are free, they cost you 30 seconds and they do

real SEO work. I will make a point here.

Don't link every version of the keyword to your page.

One link, one page is enough.

And then call to action. Every post needs one.

One call to action at the end. The Internet has made

us all fucking stupid. We have no attention span.

We get to the end of something, we don't know what to do next. We

click back. Tell your reader what you want them to do next.

Link to a relevant service page, link to a course, link to your

contact page, link to your social media profiles. Link to where

the hell you like. Just send them somewhere. Because if you leave a

reader at the end of a post with no obvious next step, they close

the tab. You've done all that work and then you've let them walk out the

door. The call to action doesn't need to be pushy or

salesy. It just needs to exist. This

was useful. Here's where you can find out more about working with me. Done.

So that's the checklist. And I know what some of you are thinking. It's a

lot of stuff. Yep, it is. But most of

this is stuff you do once when you set the post up. Not stuff you

rewrite for every single paragraph. The structure, the

metadata, the alt text, the internal links. Before I get to the

homework, a quick word from me.

I'm available as an SEO speaker. If you've got an event,

a conference, training day, team workshop, and you want

someone who really knows their stuff and won't bore your audience to tears

with slide after slide of jargon, get in touch. Find me

on LinkedIn or through the website at nikkihigh from

pilkington.com right, let's get back

to it. Here's your Homework. Take

your last three blog posts, not future posts, the ones already on your site,

and go through that checklist. Against each one, there's a link to a

PDF version in the show notes. Start with the title.

Is it something people search for? Or is it something you just like the sound

of? Then the metadata. Is the meta title there an under

60 characters? Is there a meta description? Does it make someone

want to Click? Then the structure 1. H1 key

phrasing the introduction First, H2 using the key phrase

internal links pointing to at least two other pages. And finally

the call to action. Is there one? Where does it go?

You'll probably find that at least one of those three posts is missing something.

Probably more than one thing. Fix them. Don't publish three

new posts while those three are sitting there broken. Go back and fix

them first. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes a

real difference to whether your content ranks. It's not writing

more, it's not publishing faster. It's getting the foundations

right on what you've already got.

And that's it for this one. If it was useful, don't just keep it to

yourself. Share it with whoever writes your blog. Share it with your

marketing manager. Share it with the person on your team who hits publish.

They'll thank you for it. Probably make sure you're following

SEO fucking what wherever you listen so you don't miss the next episode.

And if you want me to take a look at your blogs and tell you

what's working and what isn't, you can find me in the show notes.

Until next time, get found, make money. And for

fuck's sake, check your alt text.