Part 1 - Prep Work
In the first blog, “You Own a Business… Should You Blog?”, we discussed why home
business owners should write a blog, much like the press releases provided by
brick-n-mortar businesses. We also
talked about blog topics and how frequently you should blog.
This blog focuses more on the “how-to” aspect of
blogging. Since the point of blogging is
to connect with others to market yourself and your business, there are several
practices you should follow to increase your blog’s visibility on search
engines, which is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo,
Bing, etc modify their algorithms to determine ranking, it is possible those
who post to the interest will have to modify their SEO tactics to improve their
rankings.
However, there are several standard techniques that can be
incorporated into your blog to aid your rankings.
1.
Keyword / Keyword Phrase: once you have decided on a topic, you should
determine the word or phrase search engine users are using when performing a
search for your topic. This word or
phrase should be incorporated within a few places in your blog:
a.
Blog title
b.
First and last sentence of your blog
c.
Subheadings
d.
URL address of the blog
Do not saturate your blog with
your keyword or phrase. It should fit
into your blog naturally and flow intelligently.
There are a couple of easy ways
to see what words are being used in search engines:
a.
Google Keyword Planner: this does require an account with Google
Adwords, but the account is free and the benefits great. Sign up for your free account at: http://bit.ly/1cSJJkS.
i.
Select the Keyword Planning tool:
ii.
Select “Search for new keyword and ad group
idea”
iii.
Enter your keyword topic
iv.
Look for results between 800 and 1400. Your
goal is to get on the first page of the search engine results. If you select a keyword or phrase with a
larger search result, you are going to have a lot of competition and the
chances of you ending up on the first page drop sharply. However, if you look for words or phrases in
the 800-1400 range, you will have much less competition and a better chance of showing
up on the first page of the search results.
b.
Google Search Engine suggester: Google attempts
to help you out when you type into a search box, offering suggestions:
2.
Length – Your blog should be around 750
words. If people want to read a book,
they will read a book. Very few will sit
around and read a blog of a couple of thousand words. If your blog is that long, it should be
broken up into 2 – 3 blogs.
3.
Internal links – this ties back to the previous
strategy, length. A blog is a category,
with multiple posts within it. Providing
a link within your post to one of your other posts keeps the blog reader within
your sphere and increases your posts’ popularity on the search engine. A perfect example of this is the link at the
beginning of this post to one of my other, related posts. However, don’t get too crazy with the
links. Doing so could drive off your
readers.
4.
Add an external link if it is relevant to your blog.
When readers click on the external link, your blog link will appear on
the list of referring sites for the external link’s site analytics. This will then make your blog’s existence
known to the owners of the external site.
5.
Add relevant pictures and videos. Again, less is more. Depending on the length of your of your blog,
you should have no more than a couple of pictures and one or two videos.
6.
When adding pictures and videos, be sure to
complete the alternate (Alt.) text and Title / Caption with accurate
information. If the picture is of a man
riding a horse, than the alt. text should be “Man riding horse.” and this tells
the search engine what the picture is about.
7.
If your blogging site allows keywords or meta
tags, enter a reasonable number (5-6) keywords.
Don’t stuff.
8.
Make your blog look attractive to help draw
readers back to your site in the future.
Check your spelling and grammar.
There are more techniques you
can use to increase your ranking in search engines, but these are pretty much
the standard ones to use. Look for more
techniques in upcoming posts in this series on how to write a blog!
