One of the best things you can do for your company’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to have a blog with regular posts. It will give you a good quantity of content on your site. It will increase your organic searches with targeted keywords, tags, titles and links. And, it will give you fresh content added to your site regularly. All of these things—and more—are great for SEO.
Here are some tips to follow for maximizing the SEO appeal of your blog:
1. Post Often
Large corporations may post at least once a day. Most small businesses are fine with one or two blog posts a week, but the regular influx of fresh content on your site will help your SEO rankings.
2. Post Quality Unique Content
Never copy and paste from other online articles. Write (or rewrite if repurposing another article) everything to be unique to your site. Copied or obviously plagiarized content can actually work against your SEO.
3. Write Articles a Certain Length
Usually 300-600 words is a good target length for most business blogs. Articles that are too short won’t have credibility and won’t help as much with SEO. Articles that are too long may decrease readership.
4. Targeted Topics
The beauty of a blog is that you can cover various topics relating to your business/industry or target consumer base. This allows you to cover a lot of ground and attract a lot of organic search results without your primary website feeling like it’s too overloaded with content.
5. Use Tags, Titles, Keywords and Descriptions
Most blog editors will have sections to fill out where you can customize the article title (and URL), add search tags, list keywords and write a meta description. Use all of these resources to your advantage!
6. Focus Keyword/Phrase
Most articles should center around a focus keyword or key phrase. Make sure it is repeated in the title, in the custom URL, in the first paragraph of the article and in the meta description. Incorporate it into the article repeatedly for optimal targeted SEO appeal.
7. Use Links
Use plenty of internal links to pages on your website or other blog articles. Also, use a few external links to source articles or other businesses. This adds credibility.
8. Social Media Integration
Share your blog articles on all social media channels that allow links. This will create inbound links to your site and the social media activity is also important to your overall SEO.
9. Pictures and Graphics
If placing in a picture and/or graphic on your blog posts, make sure and rename the image file with something relevant to the story (ideally incorporating the business name and the focus keyword/phrase.
10. Stick With It
Blogging requires a great deal of commitment. Hire a professional blog service or designate a staff member to handle the blogging duties. The worst thing you can do is start a blog, post a few articles and then forget about it. You have to keep at it and post articles regularly to get the full SEO advantages.
For more information about blogging for small businesses or to start your own custom blog campaign, contact NextGear Marketing today.
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