SEO & Blogging Strategies: They Really Aren’t So Different

Last week we posted some information about how to best align your SEO and social media efforts. We didn’t talk about how that can relate to your blogging strategies because we wanted to touch on that as a separate issue. So, here goes.

For many of you out there, you use a blog as a way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. It is a great way to strut your stuff and to talk about what is going on in your little corner of the world. What you may not realize is that your blog can (and should) help your search strategies.

The idea of using good content for social media updates was brought up in our last blog post and it is absolutely relevant when it comes to blogging. Back in the day it was all about pushing out as much content as possible (either on your website or your blog) and that would create traffic to your website. Nowadays search engines are smarter and they actually can weed out the good content from the bad. So, our first recommendation for blending blog and search strategies is to post high-quality, polished material to help your company receive better search standings. No more fluff!

Something else to consider when you are blogging is your keywords. Now we won’t go too into keyword strategy here (that is as conversation for another day) but it is logical that the words you want associated with your company and your brand ought to be in your blog posts. In other words, using the same words, terms and phrases from your keyword strategies throughout your blog content will only help your company appear higher in search results. If you have one person publishing your blog and one person working on your keyword strategy, make sure that they are talking to each other and working from the same list of words and phrases.

Another recommendation is to make sure that people can easily click from your blog post back to your website to read additional content. Remember, it is all about building links so people have a way to get back to your website. And the more people you have going to your website the better you will turn up in search results. Same goes for the reverse. Make sure that when people are browsing your site that you have many ways for them to click to your blog for more information. (Again, think of those keywords that you are using in your search strategy and how those are talked about in your blog.)

Finally, think about interacting with other blogs to help your blog and search strategies. What we mean is consider participating in some guest blogging where you respond (again, with great content) to other blog posts in your industry. It is just another way to draw attention to yourself and your business that will ultimately aid in your search strategies.

Coming up for next week we continue our discussion of blogs with a quick best practices post.