Posted by admin in How to Blog for Higher Search Engine Rankings
By: dotJenna – The Marketing Shop.com – All Rights Reserved
Tip: If there is something that you repeat over and over to your clients and/or prospects, then that is something you need to blog about. Blogging is a way to reach people and convey information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, without actually being there.
Blogging on your website is more important today than ever. If you’re not doing it, roll up your sleeves and get started today because it’s here to stay. Media Bistro says that blogging is the business card of today. Here at The Marketing Shop.com, we handle blogging for our Monthly SEO Plan clients, as well as our corporate blogging clients, so if you’re interested in outsourcing your blogging and other SEO tasks, please contact us today to discuss how we can help you.
4 Steps in Your Blogging Mission
First things first. When blogging, remember your mission.
1. Generate content for search engine spiders.
2. Provide valuable content to your website visitors.
3. Food for posting and sharing within social networks to drive traffic to your site.
4. Educate the public, your prospects and the press of your products and services.
Roll Up Your Sleeves
Even though we do lots of blogging for our clients, many times there is more blogging needed than what we are being paid to do. In that case, our clients have to pitch in and blog with us. The first question I’m usually asked is, “What do I blog about?”
8 Blogging Essentials for Higher SEO Rankings
What to Blog About?
The easy answer is, “Blog about things related to your website.” However, the better question should be “How do I blog correctly?” Blogging wrong will do you no good at all. Blogging correctly will:
- Raise the value of your website.
- Proliferate the message of your brand.
- Pull you up in the search rankings
- Generate more leads
- Expand audience and network.
- Spark buzz about your company.
- Increase the influence and credibility of the blogger.
Whew! That’s alot of work. All that for how much money per hour? Peanuts compared to the benefits. C’mon. Your blog has lots of work to do. Better get started.
8 Blogging Essentials for Higher SEO Rankings
1. Stay broadly on topic.
Stay on one broad topic or related topics. If you blog or website is about selling cans of hairspray, then you should talk about assorted hairstyling topics, not just hairspray itself. You need more content than you realize to successfully market cans of hairspray on the web. You need to post content related to hair–even posts not related to hairspray! However, you still want to remain true to your topic. You wouldn’t want to post a piece on “dog grooming” on a blog that’s about hairspray.
2. Use keywords and keyword phrases.
Try to post items that are filled with your targeted keywords, regardless of whether the post deals with everything you offer. If you write an article, be sure to weave keywords related to your topic and your geo-target throughout the text, ESPECIALLY in the title. The title is the most important place for keywords to appear. If you’re posting on a news article and providing a link in your post to the original news article, change the title to something that uses your targeted keywords.
3. Place keywords in proper proximity.
Where the keywords are positioned in your blog title and blog content is important for search engine optimization. Try to use the keyword first in the sentence, for example: “DFW Cash for Homes is experiencing a record breaking year” as opposed to “Super deal on houses today by this Dallas Real Estate Investor.” Proximity counts.
4. Link to relevant pages within your website.
If you’re doing a blog post, be sure to link to relevant pages within your site using keywords as anchor text that fit the topic of the page your linking to. If your post mentions SEO, then it’s a good idea to link to the Monthly SEO Maintenance page. Get it? It is very wasteful to post blogs without linking to a related page in your website, or related blog post. The whole point of blogging is to get people into your website and addicted to the content you’re providing.
5. Get in the right content neighborhoods.
When posting news articles, find those that have lots of keywords related to your topic. Google will pick those up and associate the terms with your site, placing you in a “Content Neighborhood,” of sorts. It matters not that you don’t do exactly what’s in the article per se, what matters is that many of your blog posts need to have key phrases related to what you offer.
For example, I found an article online about an apartment foreclosure in Dallas, Texas. This article is great for one of my clients who sells Dallas Highrises, even though she doesn’t focus on apartments or foreclosures. Why? Because it’s good optimization to have content on her blog that’s related to Dallas Real Estate–virtually of any sort.
6. Tag posts properly.
Each blog post should be tagged and categorized as thoroughly as possible, without going overboard. Tagging helps you in two ways: 1) It helps the search engines to organize the post correctly in the rankings; and 2) It helps people when searching for posts on your site related to a specific topic. You should use the main phrases within the article, while limiting the total tags in the article to no more than five.
7. Categorize blog posts effectively
Categorizing your blog posts helps you in the same way as tagging, but there is more to optimizing blog post categories from a usability and administrative perspective. Limit your top level categories to no more than, say eight broad topics–if that many. Note: The top level categories should have your targeted keywords in them, if possible. Then, you should be liberal with the 2nd tier categories by placing them within the more broad, top-level categories. You can even has 3rd and 4th tier categories if you have time to get really fancy.
Example:
TOP LEVEL CATEGORIES
Hair Biology
Hair Maintenance
Hairspray
Hairstyles
2ND TIER CATEGORIES
Hair Biology
– Hair Follicle
– Hair Pigment
– Hair Loss
Hair Maintenance
– Hair Cuts
– Blow Drying
– Color
Hairspray
– Hairspray Brands
– Hairspray Styles
– Hairspray Nightmares
Hairstyles
– Updos
– Short Cuts
– Long Styles
8. Make sure your blog posts can be bookmarked for sharing.
Bookmarking widgets allow people reading your posts to share your content with their social media networks. If you want to get the most out of your work, make sure you or your webmaster secures such an option on your site for easy sharing. You can get the AddThis code free at http://www.addthis.com/.
Conclusion
Blogging correctly will help to increase your website rankings, spread your message throughout the web, expand your blog footprint and pile up your online real estate. The more you blog, the better your results. Remember, every time you blog, you’re creating value. Every blog post you create can be read by your prospects and customers. Best of blogging to you.
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