As a Solopreneur myself, I totally understand the tug-of-war that you put yourself through trying to prioritise where you are going to spend your time working on your business or doing your business. Even I struggle to dedicate the time to writing blogs for my websites even though I know how important they are when it comes to potential clients/customers finding your website! So, let’s dive in and see why blogging for SEO is so important.
Why is SEO Important for Your Business?
In this day and age, most people understand that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is important for your business from a marketing perspective. When potential clients/customers are searching for your type of business on the internet, if you appear on the first page, you are likely to get them to contact you. If your business doesn’t come up on the first page of their search, firstly, you won’t even be seen by them and secondly, you don’t stand a chance of being recognised as an authority in your field.
Blogging for SEO achieves two things. The first is that it gives you a chance to provide content that demonstrates your authority in your field. You create your content around what you can provide your clients/customers. Secondly, it provides you the chance to populate your website with keywords/phrases that potential clients/customers are searching for so that you will be on that first search page.
What is Blogging for SEO
Blogging for SEO consists of two parts. The first part is about continually having fresh content on your website so that when the search engines crawl your website, they can see that it is active which will keep the bots returning to your site more frequently to catalogue the content. More frequent crawling of your site will mean that you have the potential to rank higher in the searches.
The second part the Blogging for SEO equation is ensuring that the content you are providing is giving a great solution for your clients/customers. This is what will help establish your authority in your field and allows the potential client/customer to start to get a feel for who you are as an individual. The more they feel they know you, the more they will trust you and more likely to purchase from you.
How to Optimise Your Blog for SEO
Step 1 – Determine Your Keyword
The first step in optimising your blog for SEO is to determine what keyword or phrase you are going to focus on for your blog. Phrases, particularly long-tail keywords are best as these aren’t as competitive as single words. To find the best keyword/phrase to use, you should conduct keyword research.
Step 2 – Using Your Keyword in Your Content
The trickiest part of this step is to get the balance right between using your keyword enough to be seen by the search engines and not overusing it so that is penalised as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing can make your content look unnatural and be seen as spammy. If you write your content as though you are talking to a human, you should be on the right track.
Step 3 – The Technical Use of Your Keyword
Once you have your keyword or phrase, use it in the title of your blog as well as the URL for the article. You’ll also want to use in the Meta Data for your blog. This will all help the search engines find your article. Another tip is to use your keyword in the description for any graphics you’ve included in your article.
Step 4 – Linking Your Blog on the Web
You don’t want to go to all the effort of researching and writing your articles for them not to be seen by anyone! If you already have a following for your blog, update some of your other articles to include links to your new article (and include links from within your article to other articles you’ve already published).
More importantly, share your article on your social media platforms, share it in social media groups you belong to and where possible, have other websites link to it. The more links to and from your article, the more favourable SEO it will have.
Developing a Content Plan for Your Blog
With the amount of information continually being added to the Web, it is easy for your articles to get lost in the crowd. By putting a content plan in place for you to regularly add more articles to your blog, you can be keeping your website optimised for SEO. If you’re not sure how to develop a content plan, check out this article.
A content plan will allow you to map out how you are going to link different topics together and the frequency of when you are going to publish articles. Having a content plan in place will take a lot of the stress out of writing your articles for your blog allowing you to keep on top of regular posting.
So, let’s get blogging for SEO!
