What are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO?

Google wants to deliver what you're looking for

“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 on WordPress 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.

Could you benefit from a Website Makeover? Or should you just start over?

Does your website need to go?

When you discover you’ve made a bad hire, you usually don’t hesitate to fire the person–or to provide coaching and training to fix the problem(s), so that your employee is a happy, productive, contributing member of the team.  

The same should be true of an unproductive website. You should assess your website so that you can determine whether you can fix it with a Website Makeover — or junk it, and start over.  

Your website represents you. Some might even say, it is you. A finely tuned website could be working for you around the clock–helping spread the word about what you do, how you do it better than anyone, and creating opportunities with customers and prospects who need your products or services.  

I realize that others have put together lists of factors that create a productive website, but I put this list together specifically for small business owners to help them determine if they could benefit from a Website Makeover. If I’ve forgotten anything please feel free to add yours in the comment form!  

7 Factors to Determine Whether a Website Makeover would work for you:

1. Code/structure: Is the website coded properly to build keyword densities for the main key phrases on each page?
2. Backwards Links–Do other influential websites link back to yours? Along with the code and structure, this is the #1 factor that influences your search engine visibility. 
3. Usability–Does your website follow accepted conventions of usability? Is it easy to use? Can the website be viewed in all browsers? Are there any bottlenecks or broken links? Or information that needs to be updated?
4. Identity/positioning–Does your website accurately capture your identity and position you as a leader in your field? Does it accurately and positively reflect you and your business?
5. Content–Does your website offer fresh, relevant content to engage your readers? Does it speak directly to your customers and prospects and accurately communicate what you can do to help them?
6. Capture/convert–Is your objective to generate inquiries, leads, or sales? Does your website help you achieve your objective? Does it have web forms, invitations to chat, and/or social media buttons? Do you offer an e-book or something else of value to get prospects to sign up for your newsletter?
7. Measure–Are you using Google Analytics, WP Stats, or something else to measure your success? You can’t improve what you can’t measure.

Do a Website Assessment

One of the best ways to assess where your website is in relation to other websites is the Website Grader, a free tool from HubSpot that provides an Internet Marketing Report for your website. It tells you how well your website is working… if it’s getting traffic, if it has SEO problems, how popular is it in social media… it’ll give you a step-by-step guide to fix it so you can start getting more inbound traffic. [This website scored a 97.8 of 100].  

How does your website rank? Is it time to give your website the Pink Slip, or can you fix it up with a Website Makeover so it’s working for you? What do you need to do to fix it up?  

No matter how good your website is, there is always room for improvement.

If you need help either analyzing your website, fixing up your current website with a Website Makeover, or building a new website, please contact me.

You want to know how to get better results?

"I don't want to..."

Everyone says they want better results.

So why aren’t companies more adventurous when it comes to trying new things? Do they want to know how to get better results?

It’s the “I hate brocolli” syndrome of marketing and business.

If you ask the average CEO, “What’s the rationale for the way you’re currently marketing your services?”  Many say: “It’s what we’ve always done.”

The sad truth is that many companies are engaging in the same old tried marketing tactics rooted in strategies that were developed eons ago (a.k.a. 2007).  They’re wasting money on tactics that are not rooted in any real, current strategy – or based on the realities of today’s marketplace.

How to get better results: Higher response rates and higher conversions

“Nothing fails like success.”

There an old saying: “Nothing fails like success.” People get a little taste of success. They get lucky because they tried something, and it worked, so they naturally think that if they just keep doing whatever it was that made them lucky, they’ll keep enjoying success.

Unfortunately, times change.  So what worked once, at one moment in time, may not work today. That’s why it’s important to continually test new ideas. 

Any Direct Marketing old timer will tell you that the secret to getting and maintaining high response rates and higher conversions is: “Test. Test. Test.”

In fact, there are some who say that  30% of your budget should be set aside for testing.

If you’re testing new ideas agains the old ones it’s the only way to know for sure that you’re marketing is continually improving. That’s how to get better results.

Apply the principles of continual improvement to your marketing. In Direct Mail it’s called “A/B Splits and Multivariate Testing.” In Google Web Optimizer it’s called “Marketing Experiments.”

Test everything. Test in order of importantance. Your offer, your keywords on your pay-per-click ads, your landing pages.

Or if you don’t really want new and better results, you can just keep doing what you’re doing — what you’ve always done.

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• 12 Marketing Ideas to Grow Sales

If you’d like someone to help you test some new ideas and show you how to get better results, please contact me today.