Have you established a company blog? A blog is an effective marketing tool for small business owners as it allows you to have a voice in your industry. You can finally keep customers informed about new products, conferences and events, and job openings. Blogs help to reinforce branding with your customers by building trust and credibility. However, without the right SEO techniques, your blog may end up hurting your website ranking. Here are some ideas to keep in mind when blogging to help preserve your company’s reputation.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
A common mistake people make when blogging is keyword stuffing. Keywords are a great way to help the search engines find your blog, but keyword stuffing can kill your blog. Your blog content needs to be readable to gain the right attention. A great way to identify useful keywords is by signing up for a Google Adwords account. This will help you narrow down the list of popular keywords for your market.
A great tip with keywords is to select a few localized keywords to reach your intended audience. Adding the city name, state, and zip code to your website can boost local rankings, and will help you reach out to the targeted customers. To maintain a balance of keywords, select a few and use them for your posts. Start by adding the keyword in the title, within the first paragraph, and in the last paragraph of your blog post to help boost your rankings. You might find that the keyword naturally integrates itself into the content. This is the best practice for SEO success as you want the content to be natural, original, and engaging.
Create Original Content
Search engines have started to crack down on duplicate content. If you are not creating original blog posts, your blog will suffer. Take the time to create new blog posts that are different from all of the recycled content on the internet. You need to express your point of view on different trends related to your industry. This can get the customers to leave comments and start a discussion feed. When you start showing customers you have a voice, it will distinguish your company from the competition. Create goals for your blog to increase the likelihood of your customers reading it weekly. Remain active with your posting and place new content on the blog 2-4 times a week to keep your blog active on search engines.
Effective Marketing
It’s common to see companies spending too much time marketing their blog while failing to market their website. A blog is a marketing tool that will boost interest in your company, but your main goal should be to point people to your website where they can purchase products. Use your blog as a way to get people to sign-up for email lists and other promotional offers. Use social media sites to help build trust and credibility with customers. A blog will assist in reinforcing branding that you have already launched. You must be accurate and honest with the information posted on your blog and social media sites to effectively market to customers.
This article was submitted by Sheldon Armstrong, a regular contributor here at The Tech Scoop. He writes this on behalf of Marketing on the Web, your number one choice when looking for help with SEM, SEO, PPC, and a wide variety of other areas of web marketing. Check them out at http://www.marketing-ontheweb.com for more information!
The post Your Company Blog and SEO appeared first on THE Tech Scoop.