Having a blog for your business is great, but if you’re not integrating SEO into it, you’re just wasting time and energy.
While a blog can provide a great outlet for information, news and other updates, they are, most importantly, an SEO-building tool. They offer a valuable opportunity to increase exposure to your website and improve your search engine rankings with each and every post you create.
This guy knows SEO!
Not SEO savvy? Don’t fret. Here are five simple tips to ensuring your business blog is being used to its full potential.
1. Pick your keywords carefully.
Use a free keyword tool (try Google’s) to track down applicable keywords for your site. Ideally, you’ll want to start with a handful, and really focus on those to start. Then, as your SEO begins to pick up, you can add more and more. When looking at potential keywords, try to focus on ones that really describe your brand, your products and your services. These will bring in the most qualified, ready-to-buy leads. Also look to see that they have a high number of searches and, if possible, a low or medium level of competition. This will allow your goals to be more attainable.
2. Utilize titles, headings and subheadings.
Search engines give great weight to content that’s housed within title and header tags. It recognizes these as important, over-arching themes of the page and will give significant ranking consideration to any copy located there. Knowing this, it’s integral that you work your keywords into these areas every time you post. An added bonus? Titles, headings and subheadings help break up text and make it more enticing for users to read.
3. Include an image with every post.
Images help your SEO efforts in two primary ways. First, they afford you another opportunity to work your keywords into the post. Integrate keywords into alt text, captions and titles for any images you include, and these will help give your on-page SEO a definite boost. Second, images have the ability to appear in a search engine’s image search; a function completely separate from the typical organic search results. That means, when you include an image, your post has not one, but two opportunities to appear in search results for customers. And in the end, the more exposure your site gets the better.
4. Integrate at least 2-3 links every time.
On every blog post, include a link or two out to valuable or pertinent information on other sites. Also be sure to include internal links, and point readers to other places on your site (or past blog posts) that are applicable to your content. These not only increase the number of links to your pages (a huge factor in search engine rankings), but they also give you a chance to integrate those keywords again. Include a keyword in each link’s anchor text and title for an extra SEO boost.
5. Keep an eye on keyword density.
Most importantly, keep an eye on how often you use your keywords. Too few, and they won’t have an effect on your search rankings. Too many, and search engines will think you’re spam. Try to shoot for 1 to 3 percent keyword density, or about one keyword every 100 words. This ensures your content is still readable for a user, but that it also delivers the SEO value you’re looking for.
About the Author: Eric Stauffer is a search engine marketing professional and has worked with many small businesses. He currently works with Card Payment Options, which reviews processing companies like Leaders Merchant Services.
How do you track your SEO efforts? Share in the comments section below.
Image via Flickr
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