In today’s world, many small companies reach new clients primarily through the internet. One way for business owners to regularly provide new content to their target consumers is through a consistently-updated blog.
Usually in a longer format than traditional advertisements, online articles can be both entertaining and informative, but without the proper strategy behind them, blogging probably won’t deliver the desired results. It is imperative for small business owners to artfully use SEO strategies, or Search Engine Optimization, to ensure success. Without this crucial step, your blog will go unnoticed by search engines, and consumers searching for your products and services will be led to the competition instead.
Be an Expert
The first strategy that should be implemented when starting a blog isn’t purely SEO-related: Be an expert in your chosen field. The only way that your domain will move up in the search algorithms is through high quality content. Even if you were to pay for clicks, a common advertising practice, if the content you produce is poor you won’t build an effective online presence. Your articles should be engaging and accurate, written with proper grammar and punctuation.
Search Keywords
Likely the most important step to achieving marketing success through a blog is to complete keyword research. Finding out what words and phrases consumers are searching for when they are trying to find your products and services and including those keywords strategically throughout your blog articles is an inexpensive way to increase the visibility of your website. If you don’t do any keyword research, you’ll be flying blind.
With a blog, particularly if you are just starting out, it is going to be fairly difficult to rank highly in Google search results. If you search the subject you blog about, it’s likely that there are going to be a plethora of other results coming up first. It is going to be very hard to push these results out of the way for your own blog, but you can garner more traffic by using Google’s related searches to come up with some keyword ideas, both in your articles and in the metadata for each blog page.
Establish Links
Another integral part of being successful with your blog through use of SEO strategy is to ensure that you are building a web of links within your content. While including links to other reputable domains will help enhance your online appearance and help you build relationships with other businesses in your field, you can also link to your own product or service pages in relevant blog articles, or create a series of articles that tackles different aspects of the same subject. Linking to additional content on your website can lead users who have been searching for specific terms to view pages they might not have otherwise.
An additional way to build up some links to your site is by answering questions on Q/A sites. As an expert in your field, when you thoroughly and descriptively answer a question for someone, with a provided link to your own content, you will gain traffic. This can lead to additional visits/clicks on your website and perhaps some product purchases.
These are just a few suggestions that can help start driving traffic to your blog. If you are interested in fully utilizing this powerful marketing strategy, the experts at Strunk Media Group can help you navigate through the process. Contact us today to get started!