If you have been following our SEO Tips series you will know that over the months we have focused on lots of technical, and really quite dry SEO tips, but this months topic is one that we think you can have a lot of fun with, all the while improving your websites ranking for those all-important keywords and phrases!
This months SEO Blog is quite literally about Blogging, and how keeping your news and blog up to date with fresh and relevant content can really help your website move towards the top spot on the search engine results page.
There are lots of reasons we recommend to businesses who are serious about upping their marketing strategy and SEO to start blogging. The biggest one is the simple fact that static content on your website alone won’t attract as many new clients to your site as content that is being regularly updated and refreshed and the easiest way to do this is through keeping a well-managed blog.
What is a well-managed blog?
A well-managed blog is one that is:
- Updated Regularly – Try and commit to a news post at least once a month, but if you have the time and to post more regularly than this then do!
- Feature Original Content – Search engines know when a version of content has been published and consider this the original source. It can be really tempting to copy and paste content from another blog into your own, but this actually does more harm than good as Search Engines view this as duplicate content and you run the risk of being penalised for this.
We appreciate that coming up with original content, regularly, for a blog can be a real challenge. Historically content writing and blogging was about finding a way to stuff as many keywords as possible into a piece of writing. As you can imagine that although this content performed well in search engines it wasn’t always the most relevant information for users. This method was known as writing for search engines. The best performing content now has quite literally turned this idea on its head with the user experience at the heart of it.
Your aim with your blogs should be to find your niche and to write really detailed content about a very specific subject.
If you are struggling for inspiration on your blog posts a great place to start is by looking at your LSI keywords that we covered way back in our July SEO Tips. Using the websites and resources we covered in this blog are a great place to start as often the LSI keywords you identify can quite easily be repurposed as great blog post ideas.
I wanted to share an example of how you can use a tool like Ubersuggest to help stimulate ideas for cracking blog posts.
We are lucky enough to live in a beautiful area of the country and many of our clients have gorgeous accommodation allowing other people to come and experience this too. In our experience, there is a LOT of competition around keywords like ‘Holidays in Yorkshire’ which I have used as my keyword search.
A simple search has returned 97 keyword ideas and already in the top 10 or so results I can spot lots of potential for blogs that will not only help get my creative juices flowing, will also have the added benefit of helping me rank for my LSI Keywords!
Let’s use the high-volume search term ‘cottages in Yorkshire dog-friendly’ as my keyword to create a blog around. If I were hoping to reach more people searching for terms like this I would be looking to write blogs with titles like ‘5 Great Reasons to Take Your Dog on Your Next Holiday in Yorkshire!’, ‘Why we love welcoming pooches to our cottages as much as we do their owners!’, you aren’t going to win a Pulitzer Prize for these articles, but what you should find is that posts like this will help you be found for your chosen keywords.
Another great website for finding blogging ideas is Quora. Quora allows users to ask questions and then other Quora users can respond as well as ‘up vote’ certain subjects which is a good indicator of how much interest there is around a topic.
When using Quora I suggest being more general in your search term so instead of searching for Holidays in Yorkshire I searched for just Yorkshire. One of the top results that came back was:
Besides pudding, what is Yorkshire, England known for?
Now we all know that Yorkshire has a lot more to offer than Yorkshire Puddings, but I would take note of this being included in the question and look to write a blog with a title like ‘Yorkshire, so much more than just great Yorkshire Puddings!’ and fill my blog full of useful local knowledge that will hopefully encourage a reader to book a trip to experience it themselves.
We hope this blog has been helpful and inspired you to start writing blog posts of your own!