The Business Blog and SEO

Posted on 28. Jan, 2009 by Pete Hollier in Search Marketing, Social Media

The company blog is one of the most powerful SEO tools available to business web site’s today. I’m sure some will think this a rather grandiose comment, well think again.

Search Engines Results change not monthly, not weekly, not daily. From tests I have completed I can assure you results have the ability to change by the hour. Small incremental changes are most common, but I have seen top 5 placements which vanish altogether. What is working for you now may not be working for you when you finish reading this blog.

Blogging does not stop this phenomenon from happening, but does alleviate the problem by creating a regular supply of highly relevant fresh content for your web site. The logic here is; the more good content you have the more Search Engines have to find, rank and place. According to Matt Cutts of Google fresh high quality content is becoming an important aspect of Google’s Search criteria. Do you really need anymore reason than this to begin your blog? It is not often Google speaks but when it does we all benefit from listening.

Creating the SEO Friendly Blog

I am a great fan of specialty landing page development and that is exactly what your blog should represent. I highly targeted landing page bringing you visitors interested in the specific topic you chose and therefore, your products and services.

So How Do You Achieve This?

As I have stated before, Keyword Professional Research is the foundation of all SEO initiatives and you can be assured I will say it again  By now you will hopefully have a comprehensive list of keywords not, 10, 20 or 30 but hundreds at the very least.

Keywords have to be used in a natural and relevant manner to be effective for both humans and Search Engines. Using large numbers of various keywords in the regular content of your web site is not always easy or practical. However, Blogging enables you to select a group of 2 or 3 Keywords or Keyword Phrases to target per blog, and as the number of blog posts increase so does the number of keywords your web site is capable of ranking for.

Some SEO Blog Basics

Okay once we have selected keywords for a specific blog there are some easy steps to take to assist the Search Engines to know you are serious about this topic and thus get listed well in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Use your Keywords Tactically

• Include keyword / phrases in Title
• Include Keyword / keyword phrases in Description Meta Tag
• Use the Keywords Meta tag (Mostly ignored by Search Engines but it does have some relevance)
• Use Headlines and Sub-headlines – preferably HTML header tags if you can
• Use your keywords in the first one or two sentences of post
• Mix selected keywords into content in a relevant manner
• Use the keywords as Anchor Text

All in all, increasing your web site traffic with targeted traffic is not all that difficult. Try this out an let me know how successful it becomes for your business. But remember, SEO takes time to work but how quickly Search Engines become aware of your blog can be helped along by Pinging. I have had notification of Google picking up a new post as soon as 2 or 3 minutes, how long it takes to get indexed and ranked however is a different matter.

Social Media lately has been a topic of much interest. To add to the knowledge base of Social Media tomorrow I will be featuring the European perspective on Measuring the ROI of Social Media by Marketing Expert Olivier Riviere

Written by: pete@seowizardry.ca a Social Media Consultant offering Social Media Optimization Services

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