Enhance strategic intralinking with SEO blurbs: a quick win to boost rankings. This article is primarily written for my SEO writers. I have other (even more pedantic and boring) blurb documentation for two other roles: the illustrious SEO CMS Text Maven, and the SEO CMS Heavy-Lifters, devs who implement the blurb infrastructure on the back end. If you want me to add sections for those, (doubtful,) please chirp in the comments.
How do you get several pages demonstrating deep expertise on a topic and creatively intralink them without the hassle and mess of creating several new pages? Cheat. Use SEO blurbs.
What is a Blurb?
A blurb is a keyword-focused, single-paragraph piece (around 100 words) with a headline and a link to a relevant, high-quality keyword-related asset. Blurbs often live in a site’s sub-footer, or elsewhere below the main body content, to provide contextual internal links, enhancing intralinking and SEO.
Elements of a Blurb:
- Focus Keyword (for internal use): Place the keyword on a line by itself above the blurb. It’s not shown on the website.
- Headline: Incorporate the keyword naturally. Verbatim usage is encouraged but it should feel un-forced.
- Body: A single paragraph briefly discussing the topic to provide context for the link. Don’t split into multiple paragraphs.
- Link Anchor: Include one synonym keyword instance within the body as the anchor. Which can sometimes but not always be a larger phrase containing the verbatim. Avoid terse anchor text.
E.g.: For focus keyword “potato soup”, instead of just “potato soup”, try “twice baked potato & cheese stew” or “this tasty potato soup recipe”. Provide context about what’s on the other end of the link while avoiding rehammering the verbatim, which is already represented in the header.
When to Use a Blurb:
Use blurbs to support existing content. If no quality landing page, article, or product page exists for the keyword, create that first, or modify existing assets to create it if that’s more appropriate. Avoid creating blurbs for the same keyword within two months to give search engines time to recognize the changes.
Choosing Link Targets:
- Link to existing, well-optimized assets. Use Google sleuthing (site:… syntax), SEO reporting, and your knowledge of the site and the SEO campaign to find the best link targets.
- When we publish a new page hitting on a topic we care about, unless you’re sure it’s going to need some help, please wait a month before supporting it with a blurb. Once it’s published on-site with at least a week to breathe, and reporting’s showing it still lagging, you can and should support it with a blurb or two as needed.
- You rarely, if ever, want to link to targets that aren’t showing up on the first SERP of Google sleuthing (site:the site.com the target keyword) OR some other similarly valuable report.
Common Blurb Mistakes to Avoid:
- Make the anchor descriptive and inviting without being commanding or click-baity.
- Overusing the same keyword or creating back-to-back blurbs targeting identical terms, unless it’s intentional or requested.
- Sometimes an article and a few blurbs don’t get us what we want. Throwing more blurbs at it will seldom be enough. We might want to pick a different fight in those cases.
- Instructions re: synonyms in blurb anchor text don’t apply to broader intralinking elsewhere. That is to say, while you shouldn’t verbatim-anchor in blurbs, you’re at least a little more likely to do it elsewhere. Forcing synonyms in blurbs ensures we’re thoughtful about our keyword scope, and demonstrates nuance to the increasingly semantically-wise crawlers judging our work for both AI and search engines.
Blurb Best Practices:
- Never create blurbs without first ensuring we have a strong keyword asset to link it to.
- Link only one synonym-ish keyword instance per blurb, even if multiple appear.
- Don’t bold other keywords in blurbs, please.
- Keep track of which keywords you’ve blurbed, and when, in your master tracking document.
- Let blurbs age—don’t rewrite or double down without observing how Google reacts over time.
Lorem Ipsum Example Blurb:
Here’s a blurb with mostly dummy text.
focus keyword (for internal use only, doesn’t appear on-page)
A Verbatim-ish Keyword Instance in a Totally Sweet Headline
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque in porttitor lectus. Suspendisse potenti. Donec massa purus, venenatis a congue non, interdum et erat. Sed quis lectus nec tellus vehicula volutpat. Sollicitudin great synonym-ish anchor text linking to a keyword-asset we want to boost fusce malesuada hendrerit tortor vitae ultrices. Aliquam eu velit at metus vestibulum tempor non in libero. Donec facilisis suscipit tellus sit amet tincidunt. Maecenas ac lacus quam. Pellentesque posuere sapien eu lacus consectetur vitae euismod magna tristique.
Why write about SEO blurbs now?
I’ve been using blurbs for SEO success since 2005. After 20 years, I’m blabbing about it here for three reasons:
First: I’m updating documentation for SEO Content Specialists. This blurb info was spread out over three different internal training documents. Blurb basics in the “SEO Writing Guide”, blurb nuance in the sprawling “Focusing SEO” doc, and an example blurb in the “Lorem Ipsum examples” doc. Ugh. Let’s centralize and simplify. So this is effectively an HR training doc in my riveting HR training/onboarding series.
Second: Blurbs aren’t SOP or best practices for many SEO practitioners; they’re my invention (and part of a larger SEO sub-footer strategy I often employ), so I was worried about tipping my hand to the SEO world. I feared that if SEO blurbs caught on, pesky overlord Google would attenuate blurbs’ impact—seeing them as SEO trickery to thwart. (Think: googlebombing) However, I now realize there’s nothing tricky about them in that sense. Blurbs are a minor but helpful part of the funnel. I’m not scared anymore, Google.
Third: Only a few hundred people read this blog every month. It would take years for blurbs to catch on. And I doubt they will. Not because they lack value, but because I’m a mere chirp in an increasingly noisy world. *roar*
Correction: reason three is: Because I’m a nice guy. 😀
So, world, have at blurbs! They’re part of a winning SEO strategy. ❤
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Dan Dreifort consults on thrilling corners of SEO, UX, HR, and other stuff people want to pay him to optimize. He’ll consult on stuff for free too, but nothing particularly useful, usually.
Dan Dreifort 