A blog is a great way to engage your consumers and provide information that they would not have otherwise found on your website. Besides being a great resource, the more content you are adding to your website more frequently, the better your SEO score will be. Continue reading to find out what our best practice techniques are!
Content Creation
Sometimes, inspiration can be hard to find. It is such a simple way to say it, but stop thinking so hard! Simply think about the conversations you had with your coworkers, projects you have been working on lately. Essentially, anything that is in your day to day job.
At this point, you may think the topic is too simple to write about. However, it is guaranteed that there are people out there craving more information. After all, this is a blog on how to write a blog, isn’t it?
However, sometimes your brain really stumped. If this is the case, take a look at what other people in the industry are writing about. If multiple companies have a blog revolving around a topic, that’s probably a good sign that consumers are searching for it.
Writing Process
Well received blogs are “How To’s” or “Top Reasons/Steps/Etc.”. This is because consumers can be engaged in the article while being able to quickly find parts that really pertain to them or interest them.
Although those blog styles are well received, it is good to diversify and not have all blogs with the same format. It is also important to note that you should cater your blog style for your audience. A fashion blogger will probably have a lot different of a format than a tech blogger.
Once you have a topic down start by outlining what you want to say. By filling in the blanks, you will be able to write much more content, much faster. It will also make it easier for you to read back through the piece and adjust as needed.
This is very important to keep in mind when writing blogs: always put your own knowledge/expertise/flare into them. You do not want your blog to really be like any other, you want it to be an original. This extra personalization will bring people in because it will make your blog unlike any other.
This can change depending on what type of blog you are writing but try as much as possible to make the paragraphs short and sweet. To begin, this makes blogs easier to read for consumers. Blogs also become more properly SEO optimized the less bulk content they have in them.
The most optimized content usually has paragraphs in between 2 to 5 sentences with sentences containing less than 20 words. Have one topic per three sentences rather than one topic for one very long sentence.
Incorporation Utilization
Always be sure to incorporate some sort of introduction and conclusion. These do not have to be high school literature class worthy, simply something to give quick insight to readers.
It is important to incorporate inbound and outbound links within your blog posts. If you are new to the blogging game, strategically plan blogs so that you are quickly able to link to previous blogs. Be sure to describe what you are linking to in the text of the hyperlink as this will boost your SEO score.
It is always a good idea to link to other parts of your website as well. The only exception is that you do not want to link to the homepage. You want to direct users to a purposeful page that gives them descriptive information about a certain topic.
Read our past blogs about utilizing links and Google Search Indexing to learn more.
Finally, be sure to incorporate at least a featured image for your blog. A great site to design your own image is Canva. There are both free and purchased versions for you to utilize.
SEO Optimization
No matter the platform or the service that you use, it is important to conduct research on keywords to use. This will give validation that the topics you are writing about are being searched for on the internet. Depending on how big your company/personal brand is, it will also give you an indication on how likely it will be to appear near the top of the search charts.
It is important to have the keyword research conducted before you write the article. You may naturally find more keywords that work with your topic but it is vital for the success of the blog to have a plan before you commence writing it.
Be sure to include your main keyword/keyword phrase in your blog title, the first sentence of the first paragraph, caption to a main photo, as well as scattered throughout the blog.
You also want to be strategic than how many times you place the keywords throughout the blog. For a standard sized blog blog (700 – 1,000 words), using a keyword roughly 11 times is optimal.
Keyword Strategy
However, be sure you are not overusing the keywords. If you incorporate the keyword too many times into the piece, your blog’s SERP will get penalized by Google for “keyword stuffing”.
However, you need to do more than simply incorporate keywords into the content to expect it to rank. Be sure to include what you want to rank for in the meta title, meta description, and the slug (the part that goes after the name of the website).
Another SEO trick is to utilize long-tail keywords as well as LSI keywords. Think about it, when you search for something on the internet, how often do you just search one word? Or if you can’t think of the exact way to say something, describe it in another way? With these techniques, you will appeal to users who think in this way.
The last way you need to think about how to write your content is to optimize your content for voice search. Within the next few years, the majority of internet searches are expected to be performed via voice search. Get ahead of the game and write your content in the style that people would verbally search for it (typically much more conversational than type search).
Recap
Blogs are a great way to provide information to consumers that they might not have had access to otherwise. The more content you are providing to users the more likely they will be to stay engaged with your brand. Request a free website consultation and check out our services to see how Pulse Digital Advertising can help you!