3 Tips For Better SEO Blog Posts

SEO for Columbus, GA

Writing blog posts is one the healthiest things you can do for your website. But let’s face it, it’s also not the best utilizing of time for a business owner. To sit down and throw down 500 words of delicious SEO copy isn’t the first thing on everyone’s list. And besides, your website may “look” decent, but who knows what your previous web design team left you with “under the hood” that could be holding you back.

We’ve been working on our website for 8 years and have achieved some great results. As you may think there is a magical recipe to getting found higher on the search engines, you would be surprised how understanding these three fundamentals tips that we use can improve your outcome when it comes to blogging for SEO purposes.

1. Check your Overall Site Health

Let’s all just say it together…ALL WEBSITES ARE COMPLICATED. And Google doesn’t help much by keeping its algorithm secret. The best we can do is learn about the existing issues your current website has and determine a cost-effective approach to cleaning up any bad programming. Even choosing functional and clean instead of the indifferent web designers choice of ‘cool’ feature of the month can make a difference.

Many websites underperform. Your website SEO Site Health is a cornerstone to your performance on Google and other search engines. Your Google AdWords campaigns can also suffer from a lower quality score and you could be paying more for those sought-after clicks.

Your Site Health is a score that includes your missing meta tags, oversized images, duplicate content issues, canonical HTTPS warnings, and plenty of other items preventing your site to reaching its peak performance. Cleaning up these items can take the existing website content and set a solid foundation for any future blog postings. You wouldn’t put shiny rims on a busted up pinto, right? Well, maybe…

2. Understand Keywords and their Role

Keep in mind that Google works much like the human brain and sometimes will find itself chasing a squirrel. But in this case, it could be because you’ve mentioned squirrel too many times on your page.

The good news is that if you’ve already crafted that snappy elevator pitch you’ve laid the groundwork for this tip. Keywords and keyword phrases are the language of your business in the eyes of your customer.

Imagine if you are an attorney. You write a blog post about ‘divorce’ and start to wonder why all the traffic (leads) are asking about ‘quick’ $500 options. Another attorney, your direct competitor (you know who they are!), starts writing about ‘family law’ and ‘dissolution of marriage’. Well, they start getting calls from a different type of customer.

Let me explain.

A customer that uses the term ‘divorce’ may not be well educated about the marriage process. Which may mean it’s the customer’s first marriage. The person may be young; uneducated even. The customer searching for ‘family law’ and ‘dissolution of marriage’ sounds like they’ve done their research. They could be more educated and earn more income from the previous customer (based on actual client results).

The roles keywords play in introducing quality phrases into your marketing strategy also introduce quality leads, with a higher value, into the business. On the other side, you may also want the quick, cash-on-hand items like the $500 divorce. It helps fill the coffers (pay the bills) while you are taking the long stretch on a complicated ‘dissolution of marriage’ case.

On top of understanding keyword roles, using tools for WordPress can help focus in on keywords and their usefulness on the site. But if no one is working towards introducing high-value keywords into your blog posts, then you may end up with a less than desirable customer. But who doesn’t want a customer, no matter the value, right? (Answer me again after you’ve been in business 2-3 years.)

Lastly, use the keyword(s) a lot. Not A LOT a lot. But understand the on-site opportunities for earning better rankings have more to do with the right amount of keywords in all the right spots. So, a rule of thumb for our team is to create a keyword density of 3% for each keyword phrase we want to score well for. This means that in 500 words of copy, you can safely introduce 3-5 keyword phrases with a frequency (count) of 5-7 times throughout the copy. Lot’s of controversy on the web about this…

3. Getting Participation from Others

Ok, so you’ve written some blog posts before. The keywords were exactly what the customer is searching for. And the website was programmed by a “renowned SEO expert”. But your customers are NOT rolling in and you’re certainly NOT #1 on Google. What is going on?

Well, blog posts are meant to be shared. They are meant to be relevant and trendy. Your posts will survive and accumulate ranking, but without the off-site SEO connections, your ranking is only half-way there. A lot can be said about this subject so I will make it simple.

Utilize your social media channels. Use LinkedIn (Personal and Company Page), Facebook (Personal and Business Page), Twitter (Personal and Business), Instagram (Personal and Business) and put it out there. Make sure you have print-friendly features on your post and, of course, share buttons that allow the user to like, share, pin, and post your content to their networks. The fastest way to increase ranking is to have someone generously write their own post and link back to your site while they have higher rankings than you; better known as a backlink.

Unfortunately, buying backlinks or building ‘false’ sites to connect them all is a quick fix that never lasts. Quality content, to the right audience, will produce an organic sharable post leading you to a better outcome.

These tips won’t guarantee that you’ll garner that first position on Google with a smile. But it will provide you with the details necessary to consciously create your next SEO blog post. If the content isn’t programmed correctly on the back-end, it will produce poor results. If the keywords aren’t researched and your missing the…squirrel! Then you’re out of luck.

Most importantly, if your content isn’t getting likes, or being shared, or doesn’t represent a remarkable stance on a relevant issue. You may need to reconsider your approach.

And that’s where we can help.

If you want to know more about your Site Health, Keyword Research, and SEO Strategy, we have services that dig deep and utilizes many tools to gauge problems and put together a plan of attack to get your results. Contact us today at (706) 225-9235. 

 

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