Blogging has been an integral part of the online landscape for a number of years now, but do you know how to write a blog for your own company’s website so that it offers real benefits as part of a search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign? Here, we give you our handy tips.
‘Content is King’
As the age-old SEO saying goes, ‘Content is King’, and this is as true of a blog as it is of any other area of SEO copywriting. As much as we keep repeating it here at Precise English, it’s true that your website, of which your blog is a part, only exists as a way of attracting more business, so your blog can only serve its purpose if it not only lures visitors to your website, but also keeps them there so that they purchase your products or services.
It is therefore imperative that you engage readers who have an interest in your products and services to the point where they are encouraged to further explore what your own business has to offer. To do this, you have to provide them with high quality content that is, above all, relevant to their needs. Relevance is vital to building a strong reputation, both amongst the search engines and the human beings who make use of them.
Write to your target audience!
To write good quality, relevant blog content, you need to constantly bear in mind your target audience. This may sound obvious but it is actually easily forgotten by those who are unaware about how to write a blog. You therefore need to get into the minds of your readers, targeting them by writing about the topics that they will be interested in.
Rather than spamming your visitors with keywords and links to your website, you need learn how to write a blog that imparts genuinely useful information, as well as how to use language and terms that are easy for your target audience to understand. Otherwise, neither human users nor the search engines will have any interest. As a result, you also won’t benefit from any of those all-important backlinks from impressed visitors that can so greatly influence your search engine ranking.
Above all, to achieve the desired effect on your SEO, always remember that the blog is for your readers first, and for the search engines second. The trick, of course, is to gain indirect interest in your company as a result of a fantastic blog, rather than advertising your business so forwardly that users get bored and head elsewhere.
Stand out from the crowd!
If you are a regular reader of our blog, you will be aware that updating your website frequently is one of the most vital elements of SEO. To rank highly in the search engine results for a particular keyword, you need a constant stream of fresh, high quality and relevant content, which not only attracts a following from human users but also lets search engine spiders know that your website is active and therefore up to date.
Nonetheless, it can be difficult to find new material to write about each time your blog needs updating. Try exploring rival companies’ blogs, forums, websites and social networking profiles for inspiration, but don’t copy them directly, as you will end up being penalised in the search engine rankings if you do. Instead, build a reputation for communicating your own ideas and thoughts, in your own way.
As you write an article or page of web copy, consider your use of keywords. You could use different forms of the same word – such as “change” and “changing” – in the title and URL respectively. Category names for blogs can also be useful keywords, allowing you to once again subtly mention a brand or product. Consider the many search terms that people who would be interested in your article may use. Many users, for example, type “how to” followed by whatever it is they want to do. Incorporate different word variations so that your article matches what a user searches for, to the word.
