When you think of blogging, you might think of millions of web pages filled with minutia or passionate posts about the latest political gaff. And while you'll find plenty of both examples in the blogosphere, blogging is one of the best things you can do for your website.
Blogging is not just a way to announce company news such as new products and services or honors and awards; it's also an easy and effective way to boost your SEO. By blogging regularly, you provide your company with fresh, keyword-rich content, which can improve your search engine placement. Also, blogs tend to attract inbound links from quality, relevant sites, which are a sure-fire way to rise in the search rankings. Here are a few things you can do to blog even more successfully.
Blog regularly.
For best results, post a blog entry at least once every week. Blogging on a consistent basis will not only provide you with a beneficial stream of new content but help you build and retain an audience. Dedicate a block of time every week to researching and writing blog entries.
Mention current events.
When coming up with blog topics, it's a good idea to look at what's going on in your industry, including news, trends, etc. Look for ways to write about these topics so that they tie in with your company's products and services. For instance, say you own a company that sells and installs artificial grass. You keep hearing about the rising popularity of bocce ball courts. You could blog about the benefits of an artificial bocce ball court and mention that your company can install custom-made courts. Also, by alluding to current events, you communicate to readers that your company keeps up with the times.
Keep blogs short.
Blog entries are not like high school essay assignments; you won't get extra credit for extra-long posts. In fact, readers much prefer blog entries that are short and concise. As a rule, keep posts to fewer than 1,000 words, if not 500 words. If you have a subject that merits more than a triple-digit word count, look for ways to break it into multiple posts. Your readers will thank you.
Incorporate keywords.
Blogs provide an excellent and natural way to target certain keywords. Always look for ways to work keywords into your blogs, and for best results, place them toward the top of your entries in the first few paragraphs.
Write good headlines.
Each blog entry should have a headline that sums up the article in a few words, preferably keywords. For instance, a good title for the bocce ball court post would be “Artificial Bocce Ball Courts: 4 Ways to Benefit.â€
Tag each entry.
Optimize each blog with several keyword terms for topics and sub-topics mentioned in the blog. For instance, with the aforementioned artificial bocce ball court entry, include tags such as “bocce ball,†“athletic fields,†“artificial grass,†“synthetic grass installation†and so on.
Include images, graphics and other media when appropriate.
To better illustrate points made in your text, add pictures, graphics, videos and other media. Engaging multimedia adds invaluable context to your post that you can't replicate easily with text. For best SEO results, make sure to add descriptive, keyword-rich ALT tags to help your multimedia get indexed by search engines.
Promote, promote and, of course, PROMOTE.
Simply posting your blogs is not enough to build an audience. Post links to your blog entries, along with a headline and a short description on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and any other social media outlets on which you have a profile. To make this super easy, you can automate updating these sites through a social media management site such as HootSuite. Also, consider sharing your blog on social news sites such as Digg, Reddit and Propeller.
CyberMark offers professional blogging services to help keep your blog updated with relevant, compelling and well-written content. Contact us today to find out more about what packages we offer.
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