blog

Many business owners have taken to writing a blog as a way of reaching out to customers. Blogs can be very effective in bringing new people to the site and communicating the company’s ideas and visions with those people. When done right, blogs can be a great way to attract and maintain a loyal customer base.

But blogs only work when people actually read them. To get eyes on your blog, it’s important for it to be optimized.

What does that mean? Simply put, “optimized” in this case refers to SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the practice of increasing traffic to your blog by changing search engine results to favor your blog more. By knowing how search engines work, you can affect search engine results, bumping your blog higher and higher, increasing the chances that people actually see it.

To optimize your blog, there are a couple of things you must do.

Use Keywords Correctly 

First, you have to understand the concept of keywords. Having and using keywords effectively is, by far, one of the quickest and easiest ways of increasing traffic to your blog. Just like they sound, keywords are important words (and phrases) that help search engines decide which websites are relevant and which aren’t. 

To use keywords correctly, though, you can’t just put random words into your blog — you need to do a little research first to make sure you’re using the right ones. For each topic, certain words and phrases are important. These words and phrases are most often used by searchers when looking for a topic, and search engines learn which ones are most often clicked on, and build a database accordingly. You can actually do a little research on your own through tools like Google Keyword Planner, which will give you an idea of which words search engines looking for on any given topic. Buy peppering keywords naturally and organically through your blog and blog title, Google will naturally list your site higher, as it will seem more relevant.

Social Media

Another way to optimize your blog is by using the power of social media. Social media has far outpaced its origins as just another way to keep in touch with people and has become one of the most important marketing strategies on the planet today. There are several ways to use social media to your advantage. Link your blog to your company’s various social media accounts. In addition to keywords, use hashtags – which act as another sort of keyword. Tricks like this will help your blog seem relevant and fresh, which are both qualities that Google takes into account when finalizing search results.

Meta Descriptions

A third important method for blog optimization is the meta description. Meta descriptions are short snippets — no more than 150 words are so — that summarize the content of a page and give users an idea of what they can find on it. When a search engine returns its search results, the web page and link are displayed, as well as a short description of that page. That description is the meta description. You can write your own meta description, which can play a big part in how these engines see your site and blog. Writing a meta description that is both accurate and optimized (again, with keywords) will help increase your blog’s standing in search results.

Fresh and Current Content

Adding a variety of fresh content is the next thing to keep in mind when optimizing your blog. Keep it current: the longer it takes for you post new content, the more of a chance that Google (and other engines) will see your blog as inactive. It is important to post new content on a regular, recurring basis. Also, when posting this new content, add a variety of digital media to it, including photos, GIFs, videos and other things. This diversity of content helps search engines see your blog as fresh and relevant, driving it up in the results.