The importance of having a business blog is undeniable now. It is an important tool for engaging your customers and positioning your company as an expert in your industry. A business blog is the most effective and efficient way to drive quality traffic to your website and rank well with search engines.
While creating blog articles and posting them on your website is great and definitely a step in the right direction, it is unfortunately not enough. A strategic approach to each blog article is essential. One of the main goals is to create relevant, educational content that people can apply in their business or personal growth. But that can only happen if people can find your content, and finding your content requires that you show up in search engines. Your blog should have strategic content that is easy to find through search engines, so it’s time to talk about SEO optimizing.
7 SEO Tips to Optimize Your Business Blog
- Research your audience. What does your ideal customer want to read? What are the daily, weekly and monthly issues that they face? The blog articles you create should be answering questions that your ideal reader wants answered. When you have the answers to their questions then you are able to produce blog titles and topics that address your customers’ pain points. We always encourage our readers to create a buyer’s persona to assist in learning more about your customers. The good news is that if you are customer-centered in your marketing and business practices already, the blogging portion of your approach is just another arm of what you already know is working.
- Optimize your Images. Always use an image or two with your blog articles. Be sure to fill in the alternate text and title fields, and make use of the keywords for both fields.
- Include internal back-links. Don’t forget to include at least one back-link that refers to a static page on your website or another blog article on your site. Emphasize certain keyword phrases such as “ SEO tips for optimize your blog.” Back-linking to your website helps with link indexing, which means higher rankings for your blog article.
- Include external back-links. Create at least 2 external links to websites or blog articles that reinforce a statement or an idea in your article. This gives your blog post validity and shows your readers that you are knowledgeable in your field. Now I should make a note here that if you are simply regurgitating something someone else has already written about, you will lose credibility with your audience. Make sure your content is original—your thoughts, your ideas—and then you should include back-links to posts that support what you are saying.
- Call-To-Action—entice your readers to take action on your blog.Perhaps offer an eBook, invite them to a free consultation, or simply offer them free coffee when they visit your store from now through Christmas. Whatever it is, give your readers something they value in exchange for their basic information such as name, and email. This allows you to convert a certain percentage of the website traffic into leads.
- Share your blog article on your social media platforms. You want your content to go viral, so share, share, share. And ask your followers to share the posts as well, because they will if you ask them to. The more your content is shared, the more exposure you gain, then the more potential business you will receive in turn.
- Research keywords. This is very important. You will need to know the keywords and keyword phrases your ideal customer is using in search engines to answer their specific questions. There are a number of free keyword tools that you can use to build your own custom keyword list.You should target one or two keywords for your blog article. The keywords should be mentioned at least twice, but no more than 5 times in the body of the blog article. Also be sure to incorporate the keywords in the blog title and in the meta description.
Strategize. Optimize. Blog. Repeat. This should be your mantra when it comes to business blogging. The fundamental issue with business blogging is reaching your customer and potential customers, and taking advantage of these powerful tools to boost your business. SEO optimization is the key to unlocking the potential of those tools.