Promote Your Blog Posts with Ethical SEO Guide

A blog is a traffic magnet. Social media traffic, referral traffic and, yes, organic traffic.

On average, marketers and content writers spend more than three hours on a single blog post.

Organic traffic is also the source of most of our customers.

All this happens because we took the time to optimize our blog posts.

If you don’t want to miss out on organic traffic and potential customers coming through this channel, read on.

Optimize your blog posts for SERPs in a few simple steps:

1. Find the right keywords

Great SEO isn’t just a matter of ranking. It’s a matter of ranking for the right (read: profitable for your business) keywords.
How do you find these keywords, though?
Always focus on these three rules of thumb

• They’re long-tail keywords
• They match user intent
• They match your business goals

Here’s why you need all three. Long-tail keywords aren’t just easier to rank for. They are also easier to match with user intent (as they are more specific) and with business goals. 

My process is this simple: if a keyword doesn’t pass all three questions it’s booted. We move on. 

2. Use those keywords

Now that you’ve found the perfect keywords, let’s put them to good use. 
Very important: good use doesn’t mean stuffing your content with them. This won’t get you ranking but it will get you penalized. 
Here’s an example of what keyword stuffing looks like:

Image via Quora

How often is too often? Well, the ‘law’ is unclear on that.
The rule I follow is keeping the keyword density below 3% and ideally below 2%.
However, you don’t have to abuse those keywords in order to rank for them. You just have to stick them in the right places:

• Title
• URL
• First paragraph (or first 100 words)
• Last paragraph (or last 100 words)
• At least one subtitle
• Alt image tags
• Meta description
• Sprinkled reasonably throughout your content

Rule of thumb here: just write naturally. Don’t force it. If your human readers like it, so will Google bots.
Additionally:

• Use plenty of synonyms to your main keyword(s)
• Use LSI keywords – a quick guide here

3. Optimize every asset

Don’t just optimize your written content or text body. Use your keyword (and its variations) in:

• Image tags
• Meta description
• Video tags
• Social media captions

4. Promote your optimized content

Submitting it to Google isn’t enough. We already know the biggest Catch-22 of organic traffic: the most popular websites/posts, get ranked higher and, thus, get even more organic traffic.
One other thing that’s relevant to your ranking is the number of traffic sources. So help your content become the most popular kid on the block. Here’s how:

• Share it on social media. Not just once. Organic reach isn’t your friend, so make sure you share it multiple times at different times of day to reach a bigger chunk of your audience.
• Tag media outlets/influencers you mentioned. Did you link to anyone’s website in your post (you should! See below)? Email them or tag them on social media. They are likely to share your post.
• Turn it into an ad. Even a smidge of a budget on Facebook ads can boost your posts popularity immensely. Try it out.
• Email it to your list

5. Use best linking practices

There are two major categories of links that help your blog posts grow (except for the backlinks you earn, of course)

• Outbound links – links to other (preferably high-authority) websites. This proves that you’ve done your research and checked out trustworthy sources to back up your claims.
• Inbound links – links to other blog posts or web pages of yours. This helps Google better understand your content. It also helps your pages/posts rank higher. An inbound link from one of your top-performing posts to other posts helps the latter gain more traction in SERPs.

6. Be useful

I’ve said this countless times: don’t write for search engines. You’re not in business with them. Write for humans, for their pain points and needs. They are the ones you want to be in business with.
Make sure your content is neatly organized, easy to read (bullet points and headlines help a lot!) and, above all, useful.

If humans, find your content useful, they will read it, share it and come back to your blog for more. This is earned traffic aka the best kind of traffic. The kind that Google rewards with better rankings.

Wrapping things up

The most important thing about blog SEO is to never forget about its purpose. No, that’s not traffic. Traffic doesn’t pay the bills.
It’s getting customers.

Write for them. Choose keywords that match their needs and pains and write in a way that is compelling and truly helpful to them. Not to you, not to search engines.

Not sure how to achieve all that? We are! Take a look at our copy writing and content writing services. We create content that BOTH human readers and Google love. And we’d be happy to create some for your business, too.

SEO Steps to Promote your Blog for Better ROI

So many bloggers out there who struggle to get quality, targeted traffic to their websites from blogs. However, this is not uncommon because most people do not know how to implement proper SEO strategies to get noticed in the major search engines and get better Return on Investment (ROI). 

In this article, we are discussing major SEO tactics to use for getting the most exposure out of your blog. Organic traffic generated from the search results is not only free but can be some of the best converting traffic around.

Here are the essential tips to give emphasis as follows:

1. Optimize Existing Meta Tags 

Your meta tags are truly the foundation of your website when it comes to SEO. This is one of the first areas that Google will look at when trying to determine what a given page is about. It is critical that you optimize your meta tags to the best of your ability with target keywords in place (and without keyword stuffing). You may even benefit from doing a simple SEO audit of your website using a tool like Screaming Frog to scrape out your current meta tag data.

The meta tags that we will discuss today are Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Header Tags and Image ALT Tags.

• Title Tags: Your Title Tags hold the most weight in the eyes of Google and should contain your most important keyword phrases. These are seen in the search results as the blue clickable hyperlink when you perform a certain search query. It’s a best practice to try and keep these as close to 70 characters in length without going over.
• Meta Descriptions: Meta Descriptions show up underneath the Title Tags in the search results and are the short snippet of text that describes what that ranking page is about. Every page or blog post on your website should contain a unique Meta Description that is compelling and encourages people to click-through. Try to make these as close to 160 characters in length as possible without going over. 
• Header Tags: Headers (H1, H2, H2, H4 etc.) are the only meta tags that actually show up directly on the website. These are generally the main heading that is above an area of text on a webpage. Header tags also hold a lot of SEO weight and should be optimized with your most important keyword phrases in place.
• Image ALT Tags: When you upload an image to your website, you are able to apply a keyword rich Image ALT Tag to it. This allows for additional optimization and should be added to every image on your website. 

2. Generate Consistent Content 

Content is truly king when it comes to SEO. Writing optimized content on a consistent basis, while ensuring your meta tags are optimized properly (as discussed above), is a powerful tactic for generating floods of organic traffic. However, you want to ensure that you’re always providing immense value in the content you produce. Do not just throw anything up on your website as most people will be able to see right through it.

Let’s talk about consistency and optimization for a minute here. Your content creation schedule needs to be consistent and remain that way for the long-term. At the very least, you should be publishing one high-quality blog post per week in order to start gaining some traction. With each article you write, try to sprinkle in some of your target terms within the content and also add a few internal links to other relevant pages on your website. The internal links will help users navigate your site more efficiently and also spread some link juice from page to page. Over time with enough optimized content on your website, there’s a good chance Google will start ranking some of these articles and that’s when you can really start to see some momentum.  

3. Building Quality & Natural Links 

Now in order to bring everything together, you must build quality back links to your website. This will help drive higher search engine rankings which in return will generate more organic traffic for your website.

One specific strategy that is both effective and powerful is guest posting. This is where you would simply reach out to other relevant websites in your niche and see if they are accepting article submissions. You would generally want to pitch them 3-4 blog topic ideas for them to choose from. Once you receive the green light to start writing your article, you would simply add your website URL within the body or author bio. When this article is published, you will build yourself a natural and quality backlink!

You will want to try and guest post on websites that have a solid domain authority for the best results. You will also want to target different pages in your guest posts to diversify your link building efforts. Meaning, don’t just build links directly to your home page. Mix it up a bit.

Like generating consistent content, link building should also be an on-going effort for the growth and health of your blog. Over time, this is really how to produce noticeable ranking movement in the search engines. 

In conclusion, please keep in mind that SEO is a long-term strategy and should be approached with the right mindset. It takes time to produce quality content, optimize your tags properly and build quality back links. If you are diligent and persistent with your efforts, it’s only a matter of time until you start gaining more exposure for your website.

Blogging Inspiration, Top Blogging Ideas for Business Blogs

Even if you have the best intentions in the world, coming up with a constant stream of new ideas for blog posts can be pretty intimidating. All too soon, the corporate blog lies empty because the company has run out of ideas. Don’t let that happen to you! From company brainstorms to new ways of planning copy, we are going to provide you with some great tips on how to generate ideas for blog content.

WARNING: This is a long post, but we think it’s worth the read (and hopefully you’ll agree). If you really don’t have time then there’s a list of our top tips at the end!

Use your Colleagues

Brainstorms can be a brilliant way to come up with interesting blog ideas. Don’t limit yourself to asking only the PR or SEO teams though, invite people from across your business to contribute to a brainstorming session. They might not have the skills needed to write good content, but they may have insights and opinions that will help you generate great ideas.

Speak to your partners, colleagues, and employees, and listen to them to decide what would best suit the needs of your company. Then, come up with something you can write about which takes this on board.

You might even want to talk to some of your regular and trusted customers, to find out what they’re interested in, as there’s a good chance other potential customers will share those same interests.

Remember why you’re blogging. In the case of a corporate blog it’s usually to generate business – so put your audience first and write for them, not for your own interests. You might be delighted to finally have a platform to rave about your travels, but your corporate clients won’t care.

One key consideration is to make sure everything you write is both useful and interesting. That’s the best way to maintain a high standard for your blog.

Become a Serial Killer

Serializing your blog posts can be a great way of producing killer copy over the medium term, rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket. By producing a series of posts on the same topic, you increase the apparent relevance of your site for that subject – and give your readers some other pages to click onto.

Serial articles can help keep people interested in your blog and encourage them to return for more useful content on a relevant subject. You could consider writing a series of how-to articles, or reviews of products, industry publications, or even Twitter accounts from within your sector.

At its best, this approach can encourage readers to come back for the next instalment, creating a steady flow of visits. So, if you’re relying on serial posts to get people back to your site, you might want to stick to a regular schedule for maximum effect.

One caveat – don’t flog a subject to death. There is nothing worse than reading a series of posts which do nothing but re-iterate the same ideas over and over again. If you have nothing new to say on a topic then it’s time to find something new to write about.

Please Read.......

Simple enough to be summed up in a single word, ‘read’ is one of the best pieces of advice that can be given to any writer. The more you read other people’s blogs – even if they’re not relevant to your industry – the more you’ll understand what makes for engaging content.

You also need to read people’s blog comments and take on board what they’re saying, both on your blog and other people’s. This will help you to understand which sort of posts are good and which aren’t.

Once you’ve gained this understanding, as well as gathering some new ideas, the trick is to turn them into something that is not only engaging and entertaining, but which also meets your marketing or lead-generation needs.

Remember, it’s not just new ideas that you can pick up by reading other blogs – you might also improve your grammar and style along the way.

Invite Guest Bloggers

Consider asking an industry influencer if they’d like to contribute to your corporate blog. They are likely to be flattered, so it could be good for networking, and they will publicize it to all their Twitter followers and online circle, which can lead to some new traffic for your blog.

Just one word of warning: agree how you’ll edit their copy in advance. People can be very protective of their work and may not be happy if you’ve gone through it with a red pen. Edit their work lightly and send it back to them for approval before publishing.

Break the Rules.......

Finally, a fallback option is to go out and break all the known rules about corporate blogging. But, if you take this option, on your own head be it! Every so often you will find a corporate blog that has almost nothing to do with the company that publishes it, but focuses on something like environmental sustainability or charity work instead.

You might also see ‘corporate’ blogs that are purely for entertainment purposes, filled with jokes, or comic strips, or pictures of cats. When you’re this far outside of the box, there are very few hard and fast rules left to break, but get it right and you could give your brand a huge boost in positive perception as a result.

The only caveat to this is that it’s always wise to have plenty of plain text along with any images, info-graphics, videos, and so on. If you can get some relevant language into it then so much the better, even if it’s just ‘After a hard day working on our new landlords’ insurance document, we’ve been relaxing with some polecats. Enjoy!’

That way, even if you’re giving your visitors something fun to look at, you’re still delivering the search-visible text content that will help to get you into the search engine results.

However, I wouldn’t recommend this as a good way to write a corporate blog. Nine times out of 10 it’s not a clever quirky marketing strategy, it’s down to ego, and it brings little benefit to the business.

Five golden rules.......

Ultimately, there are just five things you need to consider when writing corporate blogs.

Your posts need to be:

-- Relevant -- Timely -- Frequent -- Personable -- Useful

These are the golden rules for great blog content so never publish anything without considering those first.

Top Blogging Tips......

If you’re still struggling for blog ideas, try some of these top tips:

1. Look at current trends, extrapolate them, and make a prediction for the future of your industry.
2. Do an introduction to 10 of the best up-and-coming bloggers in your field.
3. Find a current topic of debate and express your own, new, different view on the issue.
4. Make a list of common myths and misconceptions about your industry and then debunk them.
5. Satirise a well-known personality – it can be someone inside or outside your industry.
6. Look at a big brand, and analyse both their good and bad points – show where they’re using best practise techniques and where they’re making mistakes.
7. Find a recent piece from a high-level personality in your industry, disagree with it, and prove them and their opinions wrong.
8. Do a case study of something that went wrong in your business. Analyse the mistakes and explain how you fixed them.
9. Break some news about your company, e.g. revealing a new product.
10. Write a list of the vital web tools and software people in your industry can’t do without.
11. Compare the old and new ways of conducting your business.
12. Write an allegory about your idol doing your business e.g. “How Steve Jobs Would’ve Done SEO” or “The Bruce Lee Approach to Marketing”.
13. Go to a trade fair or industry event and report on it.
14. Do a comparison of your national market to markets abroad.
15. Review a book which deals with your industry – particularly if it contains some interesting outside the box thinking.
16. Find out about something new for your industry – a tool, a website, a method etc. – and write about it.
17. Identify industry leaders in your area and ask them to do a guest post.
18. Write a code of business ethics for your industry.
19. Conduct an interview with a prominent or rising industry figure and write it up.
20. Check Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Quora to find out what’s most popular right now, and what questions people are seeking answers to. Then provide the information they want on your blog.