Blogging is such a wide-open canvas that marketers are often eager to get content online without investing in the necessary planning. Big losses in search engine rankings—but also in traffic, engagement, visibility, brand awareness, user trust, and click appeal in results pages. And, just as importantly, this content will engage visitors (to do things such as leave comments and explore the page) and put the best face on your branding. Use Meta Tags These are brief paragraphs (about 150 words) that show up on search engines’ result pages. Though not related to SEO, they can make all the difference in whether a potential visitor clicks through to your blog because they advertise its content with eye-catching keywords and inviting descriptions. Include Interlinks Links within your content to other pages of your website, using your primary and secondary keywords, encourage visitors to explore and clue search engines to page priorities. Interaction creates rapport—and provides opportunities to include long-tail keywords, engagement, and fresh content. One way to prompt comments is to end blog posts with a question or an invitation to respond. Don’t Let Your Blog Get Lost! Sure, optimizing content through these eight steps will boost your rankings, visibility, and traffic.
A blog isn’t just a nice addition to an organization’s online
presence. It’s a must-have—a familiar and expected interface to
engage your brand, with more flexibility and innovation than many
traditional marketing formats.
Businesses know it. A
survey earlier this year found that more than 80 percent of
marketers used blogging as part of their online approach.
Surprisingly, only about half were clear on how that blog fit into
their overall strategy. But getting clear about how to
optimize your blog for success is vital.1 (highlight to
tweet)
A critical aspect of that preparation is SEO and related content
management. After all, if no one can find your blog—or wants to
click on it—all that brilliant content will be wasted.
Creating Cravings for Your Content
Seems like a no-brainer, right? Doesn’t everyone know to appease
the ancient gods of Google?
The problem stems from getting lost in the complexity. Blogging
is such a wide-open canvas that marketers are often eager
to get content online without investing in the necessary
planning.
Those oversights can take several classic forms. Focusing on the
quantity of posts instead of the quality is a common blunder. Blogs
also sometimes lack the fundamental ingredients for building great
SEO: a clear plan, focused subject matter, an editorial calendar,
quantifiable goals, and understanding customers. Combine these with
a failure to adhere to Google’s quality guidelines, and a gung-ho
blogging campaign ends up lost in the internet wilderness.
The result? Big losses in search engine rankings—but also in
traffic, engagement, visibility, brand awareness, user trust, and
click appeal in results pages.
Instead, let’s look at eight key actions that will give blogs
the exposure they need.
1. Be Mobile-Friendly
A
post on this blog recently discussed a survey of 1,000 users
that showed nearly 70 percent used mobile as their primary internet
portal. It’s no wonder that Google updated its algorithms to take
this into account, completing a rollout of its
second update to its mobile-friendly algorithm in May.
2. Create User-Engaging Content
Internet marketing is a competition for eyeballs. Users must not
click away without a fight.
What can you do? Focus on easy readability and
sustaining interest. Huge paragraphs—also known as “walls
of text”—are turnoffs. There’s a reason “tl;dr” is a favorite meme
of online forums.
Fortunately, it’s easy to manage. Remember to work with small
chunks of content. Use big headings and bulleted lists. For
subheaders, don’t bold the text—use the <h2> or <h3>
tags.
Start with a clear and orienting introduction. Then, with
short…
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