Most brands now appreciate the importance of SEO and content marketing. They often have an active website and may even post on a company blog from time to time. However, it takes both creative and technical skill to run a successful blog. In addition to a well-written blog, you need to leverage SEO to get your blog posts out in front of your potential clients and customers. Here are four SEO techniques to focus on when blogging.
1. A Title Is Crucial For SEO
However good your writing is, no one will read it (or maybe even find it!) if it doesn’t have a compelling title to draw in readers. Planning plays a pivotal role in each new blog post you write. A haphazard approach to content wastes time, but planning ahead gets you the results you want.
Think about a theme for your content, possibly taking time to research trending topics. Once you have a topic, consider your most relevant primary keyword and include it in your title. The rest of your title should be concise but intriguing for readers, not giving too much away. You yourself should be subscribed to a variety of blogs to get a good idea of what is a great title and what is not.
2. Keyword Placement Vs. Keyword Stuffing
Some that are new to content marketing may place keywords all over their content, assuming the more it occurs, the better it will perform in Google searches. While it’s an understandable conclusion, it actually does the opposite of what you want. This process is known as keyword stuffing, and search engines may penalize you for such a practice.
You want to gain results fairly rather than trying to play the system. Instead, use proper keyword placement, placing keywords a few times through the content in a natural way. Doing so means you will see the benefits of SEO without awkward, grabby keywords.
3. High-quality Content is King
As suggested, there are many aspects to getting SEO right. It’s not merely a matter of placing some keywords in your articles and hoping for the best.
Instead of focusing on how your content or website ranks in Google, the most important thing really is the quality. Building your company blog means gaining the trust of your readers. You want them to keep coming back and engage with your content. Therefore, you need to write content that is popular and relevant to your audience. Follow a clear structure, and pay attention to details like spelling and grammar so your readers look at you as professional.
4. Include External Links
Of course, it’s easy to write content without linking to other sites. However, there are plenty of good reasons to add external links. It helps establish more credibility to the quality of your content. Opinions do have weight in blog posts, but if you can back that up with information from other sites, then your credibility will be enhanced.
It’s also worth noting Google takes notice of the quality of your articles as well as including links to other sites. As a general rule, links are seen as a positive thing as long as you don’t overdo it. If you link to other sites and communicate that to the site in question, not only will it boost your SEO ranking but that site may return the favor in their next blog post.
Content marketing is something that most brands are now involved with in one form or another, so continue to create great content and boost your SEO to stand out from the crowd. Many things go into successful SEO, but this article can be a useful starting point. Therefore, you should think about SEO keywords in your titles, ensure you are using keyword placement rather than stuffing, focus on high-quality content and remember to link to other sites when possible.
