How to Blog for SEO
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 10:30am -- Holly Wright
As a CMS provider, we believe there’s nothing more important than a good content strategy for driving traffic to your website and building credibility with your readers--whether they’re potential students or sales prospects. And an important part of any content strategy is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Therefore, when you write blog posts for your organization, you should always consider the SEO ramifications, and even plan for them.
Here’s what I’ve learned about how to blog for SEO:
Create a Search Engine-friendly URL
If you’re using Cascade Server, then each page is automatically given a search engine friendly URL. However, you can always improve it. Take out any unnecessary articles in your URL and make sure your keywords are prominent. The part after your domain name is called the Post Slug, and it is one of the most important signals to search engines about the nature of your content.
Choose your Keywords Wisely
When I am hoping to generate new traffic to our website with a particular post (like this one), I use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find the best keywords to emphasize in the post. For this post, I searched for a number of variations on the title before deciding on “How to Blog for SEO”. I chose this of the different options because it had a high search volume and low competition.
Use Images and Name Them Correctly
One way to emphasize your keywords to search engines without “stuffing” them into the body text is to name your images with your main keywords. Additionally, make sure the title tag and alt tag use the same keywords. If you use multiple images in a post, you can name them different variations of the your keywords, as long as those keywords apply to the images you are using.
Create Both Internal and External Links
This is a two-parter as both are beneficial but in different ways.
1. Internal Links
Within your post, be sure to refer your readers to other posts on your website. This is a good general practice, but it makes even more sense when you are blogging for SEO. You are intentionally trying to drive new traffic to your site. New visitors, by definition, have not seen the rest of the amazing content on your site, so make sure you mention other related posts that might be interesting to your readers. You can also put other internal links at the end of your post in a “Related Content” section, as we’ve done below.
2. External Links
SEO experts argue over whether linking to other credible sites gives your site more credibility from a search engine’s perspective or not, but that does not mean that there are no widely accepted benefits to linking to other sites. For starters, your readers will appreciate it if you refer them to other sites on the web to help them continue learning about the topic they are researching. Additionally, many experts believe that by including your keywords in the anchor text of your external links, you make them even more apparent to search engines. Finally, if you link to other blogs, there is a good chance that those bloggers will see traffic coming from your site, and if they find your content worthwhile, then they may in turn link back to your site.
One important thing I do when linking from a post is to set up my internal links to open within the same window but to set up external links to open in a new window or tab. That way, if a user clicks on a link to another site, they still have my site open when they want to keep reading.
Add Meta Data
Although it is unclear whether search engines still look at meta data to determine rank, it is still important to getting clicks after you appear in the search results. Your meta data is displayed below the link to your site, and it’s the content most searchers scan to decide whether or not to open your site. It should be under 155 characters, include your most important keywords (these appear in bold in the search results when someone searches for you), and entice the searcher to read your full post.
This was a post written in December about CMS predictions for 2012. One thing I think helped this post reach the top of the search engine results is that we published this post a few days before several other similar posts were published, giving it a leg up in traffic over the others.
Use Headers and Sub-headers Appropriately
Rather than bolding all your headers or simply increasing your font size, use the H2, H3 and H4 tags to distinguish this text as important. Search engines weigh this text more heavily in determining how relevant your content is to searchers, so don’t overlook this important step. If you’re using Cascade Server CMS, then these formatting options should be available within your WYSIWYG editor. Otherwise, you can add these tags directly into the HTML.
Finish with a Call to Action
Calls to action come in many different varieties. One thing we like to do is to invite our readers to give their feedback about the topic in the comments section, because we love to engage with our readers. Other options are to add a button or a form urging readers to subscribe to your newsletter, apply to your university, attend an open house, make a donation or buy basketball tickets today! Adding a call to action may not directly affect your SEO, but providing great content on a regular basis and making it share-able (and shareworthy) will definitely help your SEO.
For more on calls to action, check out this Call-out Crash Course from Spectate. Another great post is 10 Techniques for an Effective Call to Action from boagworld.com.
Questions? Comments?
Have you found these suggestions helpful? What SEO blogging tips have you found that I didn’t include in this post? Please leave questions and comments in the section below and feel free to share this post with others who might find it helpful.
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