Follow the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO

What are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO?

“If SEO works so well,” many of my clients ask me, “why I’m recommending the use of Blogs to drive traffic to their websites?”

In order to understand why Blogs are not only necessary, but they’re an essential part of driving traffic to your website, and why you’d want to know the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO, it’s  it’s important to take a step back and talk a minute about how Google develops the rules that determine how high our pages rank in the search engines.

The Google PageRank Algorithm

Several years ago,  few people really could imagine the explosion of social media engines like Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter.

Google did.

“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” ~ Google co-founder Larry Page 

When Google modified its Pagerank Algorithm to include backlinks, it was the beginning of the Social Media Revolution (or the revolution of user-generated content). Google dictated that it’s not only structure of your code on your pages that determines your page rank, but also how many influential websites link to yours…, in other words, your search engine visibility is determined not only by the quality of the content on your website, but by who is linking to you. 

This is why why Blogging is the new strategy to attain search engine visibility - and why it’s important to know the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO - because Blogging provides a platform to share your ideas, get others to connect with you, and if your ideas are good ones, they can share you ideas with others. So you’ve got one platform that facilitates all three actions of social media: (1) Connect (2) Collect and Share, and (3) Create.

Success breeds success. If your posts are popular and they follow the best practices in blogging for SEO, chances are they’ll also achieve greater search engine visibility.

Here are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO

The page that does the best job with on-page optimization and has the most inbound relevant links will have the highest search ranking. Think of it from Google’s shoes… “Pagerank is based on relevant inbound links.” What does it mean? It means that Blogging combined with an SEO program is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website, and get your phones to ring.   

1. Focused Content ~ Create an editorial focus for your website. If your customers are small business owners, write only about things that are of interest to small business owners. Write about sales, marketing, managing people, managing your taxes, building your cadre of trusted advisors, etc.
2. Keyword Research ~ Research keyphrases to incorporate each page and post. And only use one keyphrase per page in the on-page optmization efforts (your title, in your text, and in your hyperlinks). The more specific you are the better. For example: you’ll have a much better chance achieving a top ranking for the search term: ”ISO 9001 Certification Requirements” than you will “ISO 9001″.  
3. Optimized Pages and Posts ~ Content should be relevant to a site’s core theme, products or services. Each page should be optimized around a specific keyword phrase to achieve a keyword density of at least 1% (meaning if your post is 450 words, you should use your keyword phrase at least 5 times). Make use of the keyword phrases in header tags (h1, h2, h3), use your keyword phrase in the “alt description” of the image on the page.
4. Provide Fresh Content ~ Fresh and updated content shows people there are signs of life on your website, and if you’re continually adding new pages to your website, that creates more new opportunities to gain traction with the search engines. 
5. Speed Page Delivery ~ Slow loading websites frustrate visitors. Frustrated visitors look elsewhere for their needs. They will either back click or close the search altogether and then visit your competition. You can get a CDN (Content Delivery Network) or there are plugins for Wordress like WP Super Cache that speed page load times.
6. Be Selective About Outbound Links ~ High quality outbound links are links that are relevant to your website’s core theme, product or service. Even then use them selectively. Best Practices in Blogging for SEO means to add “ref=nofollow” to most outbound links.
7. Create Quality inbound links - Avoid ‘link farming’ at all costs. This practice can result in your website being penalized. The most effective and highest rated links are those that are created organically. Organic links are links contained in relevant articles, directories, industry specific websites, news distribution sites, and most importantly, people commenting on your blog posts. If you’re using WordPress for your Blogging Platform, use a plugin like Comment Luv to give your commentors the opportunity to create a relevant back link from your website. Also, you might consider distributing SEO and Social Media enhanced press releases from time to time, for example with PR Log, a free news distribution resource; this is an excellent method of obtaining additional high quality inbound links.

If you follow these 7 Best Practices in Blogging for SEO – you’ll get a lot more quality inbound traffic, and the next things you’ll want to start working on are reducing your bounce rates (people visiting your site and leaving because you  aren’t giving them what they want), and increasing your conversion rates (registrations, downloads, requests for more information). 

If you need any help increasing your search engine visibility with Best Practices in Blogging for SEO, please contact me today.

3 Comments

• BizSugar.com August 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

  Follow the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO…

  What are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO? If SEO works so well, many of my clients ask me why I’m recommending the use of Blogs to drive traffic to their websites….

  Reply
• 
  Analyn March 25, 2011 at 2:30 pm

  Very informative post Les, and straight to the point.
  That’s why this post ranks so well on search results, by the way

  Reply
  • 
    Les Proctor March 25, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    Thanks Analyn! You’re right I optimized this page for the keyphrase “Best Practices in Blogging for SEO”.

    Reply