Blogs serve several purposes, they are places where businesses share their experiences, business tips, expertise and more. A place where businesses generate more business for themselves. What started with sharing thoughts and daily experiences has turned into a business gold mind.
Regardless of the industry and the purpose, if you have a blog it’s clear that you want visitors, and not only visitors but targeted ones that are interested in your content or services. Many businesses keep their website regularly updated with new and fresh content in the hopes of educating their users along with gaining views. However, with that said, there are many businesses that simply blog for SEO and SEO only. Whether you are interested in providing great content or raising your search engines for specific keyword terms, we’re going to go over the most important blogging tips to help generate more interested visitors to your blog and website.
1.) Choose a keyword for your article
Assuming that you are writing with the search engines at least slightly in mind, this is one of the most overlooked blogging concepts. When writing your next blog article determine what the articles “keyword” is. If you are writing a post on a new product your company has, then the name of that product is most likely the keyword. If you’re writing to just update content, determine the keyword before writing the content and then base your article/post off that keyword. This will give you the structure and base to begin writing correctly to gain more visitors.
Many businesses have a set guideline of keywords with a selected date that determines what keyword is to be used on what date. This is suggested only when strictly writing your content to improve in search engine rankings and visitors.
2.)Title of your page
The title of your article/post is something that is also overlooked a lot of the time. This is a huge SEO and blogging mistake as your page title holds a lot of value in the search engines. You want to be sure to place the keyword in the title of the article and if possible also place in the beginning of the title. For example, if the keyword you are using is car stereos and if you are writing about the basics of installing car stereos, naming the title of the post “Installing Car Stereos – Learning the Basics” would make perfect sense.
When writing an article/post also keep in mind what your viewers are searching for. For this example, we will use this blog post. If you were to search for this article I would make the assumption you would search for writing blog articles for search engines, improving search engine rankings for blog posts and, you guessed it, the correct way to write blog posts for search engines. This is an important tip that we will go over more towards the end of this article.
Trying to go above and beyond? Before deciding on a title write down 3-10 choices. Then visit Googles Keyword Ranker and type in each phrase. This will give you the estimated number of searches that are performed per month for that keyword, which will show you what search term receives more traffic and help determine which keyword or keyword phrase you should choose.
3.) Website URL/Link
This is where your blog post or article is located. In many if not most cases your URL will automatically be generated by the title of the page. If this is the case, you can simply jump to the next tip. If not, you want to name your article based on both your keywords and the title of your page. Assuming you followed the above tip your title should already have been based off your keyword in mind so simply naming your article the title will suffice. If the title is long, you may want to focus on the keyword phrase instead.
4.) How frequently you post
How many articles you post per day, week, month and what time you post them is different for every business and typically requires research to determine what is best for yours. From an SEO standpoint you want to make sure your content is fresh and from a readers perspective you want to provide them with new articles that are relevant to your industry, keywords and what they want to read about. I always recommend to clients who are just starting off to write at least 1 article per month or 1 article per week but every industry and business is different. Don’t plan on doing more than your company can handle when you simply don’t have the content to write about. Although more is better still think quality over quantity.
5.) Keyword Density
If you have been following and you’ve chosen a keyword, a title based on the keyword and a URL that continues to follow that trend, it’s time to make sure your content has that keyword mentioned. This is another grey area because you want to have the search engines in mind while writing but you do not want to write for the search engines. Many writers and beginners think that shoving the keyword in the article in as many places as possible is a good idea. This is a terrible practice, Google is much smarter than that and could eventually penalize you for doing it. Your content should mention your keyword, keyword phrase or keywords as naturally as possible. After your content is created just make sure your keyword is mentioned. The recommended keyword density is around 2.0-2.5 per article. This means for every 100 words your keyword should be mentioned two or three times.
Recommended Tips: You can check your keyword density by copying your article or writing it up in a program like Microsoft word. Search for how many times the keyword term is used and document it. Then select all of the text and determine how many total words are in the article. Divide the number of words by the number of times your keyword phrase was mentioned. This will give you your keyword density.
When mentioning your keyword phrase keep in mind that a plural keyword is different than singular. If your keyword is mobile sites and you use the phrase mobile site, it holds no barring on the term mobile sites. Having related phrases definitely helps but you should not take it into consideration with your keyword density.
6.) ALT Tags for Images
Adding images to your posts and articles are a great way to spice up your content and add visuals to your writing. The image could relate to the focus of your article, a chart, graph or just a stock image to spice the content up. Regardless of how you use the image you have to name it based on your contents keyword. The search engines do not know what your image is, so you need to tell them.
These are tips that can be tailored for anyone who wants to use their blog to improve their websites ranking in the search engines and to receive more traffic to their blog/article posts. Remember, content becomes out-dated and practices change. This article was written to get you started and put your articles in the right direction or back on track. But, keep in mind, if your website is not built the correct way for the search engines to index your website, a website re-design may be what you need to improve your ranking.
Don’t want to take our word for it? Or not sure the above tips will really work? Go to Google and search The Correct Way to Write your Blog for Search Engines. (Hint: You’ll find this article)
