Simple & Best Blogging Practices to Help You Get Found

There’s significant value in using a blog to reach out to consumers in ways that cannot be easily done via your average business web site.

By implementing these simple, yet best blogging practices, you’ll carve a whole new path that will let your consumers find you.

Business’ that blog receive 67% more traffic than those that don’t. Consider this. If your website does not have a blog, there’s very little reason to return once a visitor has done the requisite looking around. Unless they’re coming back to check prices or make an additional order, most people won’t visit a site over and over again. By blogging, you’re always adding fresh content and your visitors know it. Consequently, a visitor who likes your content is far more likely to come back or subscribe to receive post updates via RSS or email than they are to subscribe to a marketing message they’ve already heard. If you’ve decided to get on the blogging platform, here are some (simple) best blogging practices to help you get started:

1. Keyword Research. If you’re writing about your business’s topic, you need to be sure you’re doing keyword research. Find out what people are searching for that’s related to your industry. Then use those keywords phrases (now termed “long tail keywords”) in your title as well as the body of your blog posts. The more you write using the most common long tail keywords people use to find you, the more opportunity you’ll have to bring in targeted traffic to your blog via the search engines.
2. Share your knowledge. People love sharing information and on the web, information is shared with links. The more helpful your blog posts are, the more likely they’ll be passed on or linked to. The more links you get, and the more your blog posts are passed around and/or read, the larger your reach will become. Moreover, since frequent content additions leads to frequent visits by search engines, blogs are pretty attractive in the eyes of a search engine spider.
3. Provide visual appeal. Great images give blog posts visual appeal and draw readers down past the title. They also help break up lengthy blocks of content which tends to be a turnoff for users. And although search engines can’t read images, they can read alt text, so make sure that you don’t miss this SEO opportunity.
4. Check for errors. A quick read-through for grammar and punctuation is wise (spell check too). You’ll lose credibility if it appears you don’t know how to spell and no one wants to read something that is filled with errors. Have someone proof your work and at the very least, take advantage of the many tools available!
5. Quality over Quantity? It is true that the more content you publish the better your blog ranks in the search engine results. However, people still have to want to read your posts in order for your blog to be successful. Putting out mass quantities of sub-par content might work initially but it won’t take long for people to lose interest. Take time to know your product and/or service and convey it in such a way that positions you as an expert.
6. Consistency is key. So, what is your optimal posting frequency? Consistency is key. Obviously, the more pages for search engines to index, the better. But also, your readers want fresh content and will check often for it. So, instead of putting out, say two mediocre blog posts per day, try to shoot for just one great post per day. Of course, what constitutes a quality post is subjective, but by focusing on fresh,quality content that provides useful information is a great place to start.