Your business blog is one of the most important parts of your website. It shows that you’re an active, informed, and community-minded person, while also giving you a subtle opportunity to market your business and products. But none of this matters if no one can find your blog — that’s where search engine optimization comes in. SEO is essential if you want your customers to find your blog and for your business to get the most from publishing blog content. Here’s how you can leverage SEO to your advantage when blogging for your business.
Recommended reading: 8 Ideas to Help Your Customers Actually Buy Online
You know that your business needs a blog. Your competitors have one and not including one on your website makes your company look amateur. But keeping up appearances isn’t the only reason to have a blog. You know that it:
But the SEO benefits of publishing regular, relevant is one of the most important reasons to have a blog for your business – your authority, activity, and marketing potential will be clipped significantly if you don’t keep to a regular publishing schedule.
SEO isn’t a techy, impenetrable cheat sheet that’s penalized by Google. SEO is the reason blog posts rank well and you need to use it to get the most out of your business blog. If you’re still not convinced about its importance, watch the video below:
Rule number one of business blogging (and any writing you want to be read online) is to write for your reader. I won’t get dogmatic about this, but I will tell you the SEO secret to writing blog posts your audience wants to read: keyword research.
Keyword research isn’t much of a secret – you may be using it already – but it is an SEO tactic that works. While its principles are constantly evolving (you can’t hide keywords behind white text and can’t crowbar them in anymore) some features are consistent:
Finding the right keywords is a lot simpler than you think. It’s a scientific process that anyone can pick up and employ, one that is based on using the right tools and your own judgment. Here’s how your business can get the most out of keywords:
There are many schools of thought about SEO – what works, what doesn’t work, where it’s going, where it adds most value. The one lesson you’ll hear from every industry expert is that your title tag is the most important element of on page SEO. If your title tag isn’t well-optimized, your blog post won’t rank in Google, undermining all the other SEO tactics you’ve used.
There are two reasons your page title is so important:
Google and your audience are looking for the same thing in your page title – relevance. If your audience don’t think your title is relevant, they won’t click on it. If Google doesn’t think your page title is relevant, it won’t rank your blog posts in its SERPs.
Your title needs to fit onto a SERP (if it has too many characters then it will be cut down). Your CMS may come equipped with the tools to help you with this. If you use WordPress then adding the Yoast plugin lets you see the length of your title. If you use a store builder like Shopify you’ll get the option to preview your title before you publish it.
However, if your CMS doesn’t allow you to see how your title will feature in Google, use SEOmofo’s Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool.
For more title tag best practices, watch the video underneath:
Your business blog posts should always be split into segments. Web users spend less time reading articles and will often skim blogs to find the sections relevant to them. Adding subheadings to your blog lets your audience find the information they want. But that’s not all. Adding subheadings has the SEO benefit of making your blog posts feature more prominently in the SERPS.
One way you get this benefit is by using H1, H2, H3, H4 etc… — headings have a proven SEO benefit. By giving your subheadings an H2, H3, or H4 tag you are optimizing your blog posts.
You can get even more SEO value you get from your subheadings if you tie them to keyword research:
SEO isn’t one of the dark arts of blogging. It’s an essential tactic for every business blog that wants to rank well in Google and be popular with its target audience. If you want to get the most out of your business blog you need to employ basic SEO principles in your posts. Now that you know what the best practices are, go away and start using them!