Everyone wants their blog or website to come up first when someone is searching for a particular topic or product. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But generally speaking, that is not going to happen unless several factors are in place for your site. Some of these factors we are going to explore here.
What you do need to know is that Google frequently updates their search algorithms. There are resources that say they do this over 600 times in a month so the search outcomes you receive are always going to be changing. Utilizing some knowledge of SEO will help your small business blog perform better in the ranking system.
SEO is a term that has become very important over the past few years on the internet. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this term, loosely translated, means a system of knowledge that websites and bloggers use to try and get better ranking in the search engines. For a more in depth description and more basic background, see the post on Understanding SEO for Beginners
There are a few basic must-haves when blogging.
1) Traffic plays a big part in the important of your seo and ranking in the search engines. Get quality content on your blog regularly. At least 2-3 times a week is good, but be consistent with your postings. Don’t skip months at a time. You want the spiders to scan your site on a regular basis.
2) Keep your content on topic and offer at least 300-600 words per post. Articles of 800-2000 words are very effective too, so say what you need to say that offers substance and not fluff. If it is a short post, then it is. If it is longer article, that is great too. Mix it up for best results.
3) Use images that work well with your content and use “alt” tags and descriptions so the search engine spiders can “read” the image to know what the image means and how it correlates to your content. Use key words when describing your image.
4) Break up your content with headers (h1 codes) and subheadings (h2, h3 codes). This technique makes your posting easier to read and breaks your content into in-depth sections. It is a necessity especially if you are writing a long article. This technique will makes it more valuable to the reader and the search engine.
5) Use keywords properly in your blog posts. Scatter them in your post but focus on one keyword and topic per article. You do not have to repeat the same keyword over and over. Use similar words that can mean the same thing. Google’s algorithm is smart and will understand synonyms.
These 5 quick tips are basics for content writing on a blog. Small businesses are harnessing the power of blogs more every day. Using tips like these will begin to help your business blog in the long run.