It may or may not shock you to learn that over 65% of business owners with a blog on their website will not have updated it even once in the last year! It’s understandable in most cases, as we appreciate that many business owners are incredibly busy, with a million and one things to do! It’s hard to set aside time for something like blogging, particularly if you’re not all that aware of how valuable content creation is.
This is why we do what we do. At TBS Marketing we are dedicated to helping businesses both large and small, actualise their goals and grow their businesses. We do this through education and assistance, helping people to improve their brand awareness online via a number of specialist practices.
In this post however, we are going to share a few basic tips on how to get the most out of your blog. This is for those who are interested in doing as much in the way of SEO that they can to get ahead of their competitors.
1 – Keyword Research
Of course, just as keyword research is important for your onsite content, it is equally as important when blogging. You should thoroughly research the keywords that relate to the topic that you are writing about. This will give you the opportunity to see what some of your competitors are working on and it will also help you shape your content into a more relevant, targeted piece of literature.
2 – Place Your Keywords Wisely
Finding the right keywords is only the beginning, next you will need to optimise them well throughout your blog post. Here are some of the areas that you should endeavour to include those keywords for the best possible results:
- Title
- H1 Headings and Subheadings
- Within the first sentence or paragraph of your post
- In your conclusion
- Anchor text
- Title tags and metas
Another important thing to remember is not to go overboard and hammer your blog post with keywords. Let it flow naturally and your readers will be very grateful for it.
3 – Well-Optimised Images
Besides the fact that blog posts with images see far more success, ensure that you optimise those images well. This means including keywords in the file name, alternative text and the description – everything counts.
4 – Referencing and Link Building
Much of the time when you’re blogging you will likely be recycling information or writing about something which you learned from another source or someone that you met. In this case it is good etiquette to reference them with a link back to their website. This is also a great way of keeping the search engines such as Google happy with you.
5 – Create a Way for Your Readers to Subscribe to Your Blog
If you would like your readers to subscribe to your blog and come back to regularly for content, then you should create a way for them to subscribe. There are a number of different ways that you can do this including prominently placed RSS and subscription buttons.
6 – Always Use Social Media When You Write a New Blog Post
The importance of social media in terms of SEO cannot be understated. Every time that you write a blog post you should endeavour to share it on as many social media platforms as appropriate (especially Facebook and Twitter) This will certainly increase the amount of traffic coming through to your website!
Summary
If you manage to find the time even to do the one blog post a week, you’ll certainly begin to notice a difference over time. The idea is to cover as many bases as you can. Please feel free to get in touch with us for more information, or if you would like assistance with developing rich and unique content for your blog.
