Blogging For Search Engine Optimization
byI Don’t Know What To Blog About!
When we consult with clients about marketing their website we educated them about the importance of blogging and how it helps with search engine placement. Most business people claim they don’t what to write about.
What do I blog about? “Write about what is unique about your business and how your business benefits a potential customer in an educational way”
It really is that simple. Of course, the challenging part is understanding and staying focused on the most important, otherwise known as highest payoff, topics.
Today it’s not enough to simply write brilliant stuff. Yes, that’s certainly one aspect, but you’ve also got to write brilliant stuff that addresses what your prospects want to know in ways that search engines and searchers alike find relevant.
A little bit of research can go a long way when trying to develop a content strategy based on winning search results for phrases and topics related to what you do.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is a fundamental practice in the search engine optimization and marketing world. It’s how you determine what your pages need to say, it is how you determine what your competition for important search terms is doing to stay at the top of the rankings.
It’s also a great way to develop a body of primary topics for your editorial content calendar.
Below is a routine business owners should use over and over again to help sort out the precise body of topics that will produce the highest payoff in terms of search engine results.
Google Keyword Tool
Next I take this list to a free tool like the Google Keyword Tool . I run the words or phrases into these tools and quickly start working on revising my brainstorming list based on actual search volume, competition and a host of related phrases that these tools feed me.
Conduct Searches
Now take my revised list that is probably no more than ten phrases, to the Google. Plug each phrase in and note the page one results.
Analyze the top results to make sure this is a place you want to land and create a list of what is now called “competition” for these phrases.
Website Content Feature
One last step to use is to return to Google Keyword tool and use the website content feature that allows you to run a keyword analysis not on a search phrase but on an actual URL.
Do this with many of the competitive sites to learn why Google thinks what they do about this page and drum up more related search term candidates.
From all of this research you can generally come up with a meaty list of topics that you need to blog about in a very optimized way. The only task now is to find ways to say some of the same things over and over again in highly interesting ways. I also employ a tool like Scribe in my writing to help keep me laser focused on the content strategy.
This isn’t the only way to do keyword research and I’m sure many of the SEO folks have great strategies and routines for accomplishing what was described here, but this is a way that works to find a natural balance between content and optimization.
We offer easy to follow and FREE Internet Marketing Workshops in Ventura, CA. Call us to today and learn how to blog like a pro and get more customers online!