Successful Business Blogging Blogs are a great for businesses. Besides being a way to engage with customers, encourage feedback and build brand, done correctly business blogging is a relatively easy way to achieve high Google rankings with a minimum level of SEO expertise. Google’s recent algorithm changes – commonly referred to as Panda and Penguin – have increased the importance of unique and relevant content for websites, and regular blogging is an excellent way to introduce this level of regularly updated content without continually changing the structure of the site.

Many blog platforms such as WordPress are SEO friendly and free, so here are some common sense tips which will help get your business blogging off the ground:

1 – Use your keywords at every opportunity

Firstly, you need to know your relevant keywords. If you don’t know them you are largely wasting your time. An internet marketing agency or SEO specialist company can help you determine the correct keywords. Once these are known, ALL your blogging needs to be centred around them and the same single keyword or phrase should be included in the following:

• The title – with as few other words as sense will allow
• Your headings and sub-headings
• Your URL i.e. www.yourcompany.co.uk/blog/relevant-keywords
• The content

Don’t try to fool Google – you need to make sure the title reflects the content which matches the URL which reflects the content, etc.

2 – Develop great content

Write interesting, unique content that includes your keywords. Don’t write solely to cram in the keywords as this will create boring copy that reads like it has been written by a computer for the SEO purposes only. Some SEO advisors talk about ‘keyword density’ but there is no magic formula for great content. The greatest SEO benefit is for the blog to be shared, liked and commented upon – and that relies on brilliant content, not a mathematical formula.

3 – Encourage Comments

There are two ways to do this.

• Firstly, content – write the copy so that it invites feedback – ask for customer’s views/experiences/opinions.

• Secondly – ensure that ‘Comments’ are enabled. You may wish to moderate, but you will certainly wish to respond and develop ‘conversations’ with those leaving comments.

Your SEO is greatly helped by this type of social engagement

4 – Encourage Sharing

Again, writing copy that encourages people to pass the blog on/share with friends etc. will help but likewise there are a whole series of social sharing widgets that make it simple for people to share on social platforms. These will include links to Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest etc. SEO friendly blog platforms and CMS websites will make this kind of social sharing easy, and once again sharing is a big tick for your SEO. You don’t need to be an SEO guru to give your blogs the best chance to top rank in Google – common sense, good blog design and imagination will go a long way.   If you found this tutorial helpful then please click Like or Tweet or leave a comment. Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of internet marketing blogs over the coming months. Our readers can also find our Opace Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/OpaceWebDesign. For all the latest goings on, you can keep up-to-date with Opace on Twitter https://twitter.com/OpaceWeb. And we also now have an Opace Googleplus page live at https://plus.google.com/111516148099633923012/posts.

Image credit – Leo Reynolds