As
you work to grow your business blog, you’ll notice that the traffic that comes to your blog from search engines can be significant. How do you get more of that search engine traffic to your blog?
By using search engine optimization techniques as you write your business blog posts, you can attract more search engine traffic to your blog. Following are five steps you can employ as you write each post you publish on your business blog to make your posts more search-friendly.
1. Use keywords in your blog post title.
First, do some keyword research to learn what keyword phrases related to your business blog are attracting traffic, and select the keyword phrases that you want to focus on to increase targeted traffic to your blog from search engines. Then, use that keyword phrase in your blog post title. Following are suggested tools for keyword research:
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool: free
- Google AdWords Traffic Estimator: free
- Wordtracker: free trial available before fees are incurred
- Keyword Discovery: free trial available before fees are incurred
2. Focus on specific keywords in a post.
Pick a keyword phrase that best suits the blog post you’re writing and focus on that one keyword phrase in that post. Attempting to stuff a single blog post with multiple keyword phrases is likely to do more harm than good.
3. Use keywords in and around links in your blog post.
Search engines like Google value text within and around links higher than other body text in your blog posts. Therefore, try to use keywords in hyperlinks when you can.
4. Use keywords at the beginning and end of your blog post with a sprinkling within your post, too.
Try to use your keyword phrase within the first 200 characters of your blog post, several times throughout your post (depending on the length of the post), and near the end of your post.
5. Use keywords in images.
Search engines like Google use the text included in the image HTML Alt-tag (the alternate text that displays online if an image cannot load) as part of their search ranking algorithms. Therefore, it’s important that you take the time to name your image files with keywords in mind and use those keywords in the Alt-tag when you publish those images in your blog posts.
Whatever you do, don’t sacrifice the quality and readability of your blog posts just so you can fit your keyword phrases. Remember, much of your business blog’s success comes from writing amazing, shareworthy content that people want to write about, talk about, and link to. If your blog post quality suffers because you’re trying desperately to fill it with keyword phrases, no one will want to write about it, talk about it, or link to it, and you won’t benefit from the compounding effect of blogging.
And of course, be sure to read about the 5 easiest ways to get banned by Google and avoid committing those wrongs on your business blog.
Image: stock.xchng
