If you are planning on building a new website, or just looking at some ways to increase traffic dramatically to your existing HTML or CMS website, adding a blog is something every business should think about.
While a blog generally serves the purpose to give visitors a reason to come back to your site regularly, the main advantage of a blog is that it greatly increases your positioning on the search engines. Imagine the advantages for your business if you could appear in the top 3 or so listings in every search category for your business services?
By regularly posting to your blog, it can realistically achieve this result for you, which a standard website might not. The SEO benefits of a blog are enormous!
The difference between a normal website and a blog is that most websites usually only have a few pages of content, so they are limited to a number of words per page, and many of these words may not directly benefit your rankings on the search engines.
Also, most websites are rarely updated or added to, and if Google doesn’t see regular things happening to your website they will begin to push it down in relevance to websites that regularly refresh and add the related content on their site.
Adding a blog means that you have the opportunity to add fresh keyword-rich content that you want to rank for in the search results, and you are giving Google fresh content to entice them to boost you up the ladder.
Blog software such as WordPress is designed for news releases, so if set up correctly, it is possible to literally see your new content on the first page of Google within a matter of a few minutes. And if your content is good you can easily remain on the top of Google’s first page for months. You won’t even get this kind of result with paid search engine optimization on a standard site!
There are a few things to keep in mind when blogging with WordPress:
Make sure you add SEO tools to your blog for maximum results.
The ones I recommend are:
Ultimate SEO
The ultimate all-in-one SEO plugin, which helps create your keywords, metatags, and much more.
Google XML Image Map
The Google map lists all the images within your website and creates a map which Google then reads. This helps them determine placement for your listing.
Google XMP Sitemap
The Google XML sitemap is probably the most important single tool for any website that wants to be found on the search engines. The sitemap lays out a structure of your website or blog so that Google can follow through with all the links.
Every time a new page is added, deleted or moved, or even renamed, Google will be notified and the changes placed on the search engines.
Always make sure you have your Permalinks set up correctly
Permalinks turn the standard WordPress coded page names into search engine-friendly text strings. (Have a look at the name of this page you are reading for an example of what I mean.
1 Click Retweet
The 1 Click plugin is designed to work with LinksAlpha. LinksAlpha is a free online service that will automatically post every blog post on your blog to your linked Facebook, Twitter, and many other social media bookmarking networks, so each time you add a new message you spread your post much further.
When writing your blog posts/articles, make sure you add approximately 5 to 10 major-related keywords to each average length page.
The more non-related keywords you add the more you will weaken your keyword density.
Try adding longer phrases (called ‘long tail keywords’ as this can help you rank well. The longer the keyphrase gets, the fewer instances of it will be indexed in the search engines, giving you a prime position at the top.
Always make sure you have a title that is similar to what people would be entering into a Google search. The closer you are too specific searches, the closer you will be to attracting your target audience instead of just random searches.
When adding images always name them related to the product. Blog images pick up very well in Google Images and provide a direct link back to your webpage. Also, ensure you have ‘tagged’ your image in WordPress. remember, the more density your overall pages have the better Google can precisely list you.
Tags in WordPress are similar to keywords and create additional pages for you in the sitemap, interlinking related pages within your website through commonly shared tags. This creates a roadmap for Google to drive through and work out where they should place you but also how relevant your site is to them. If they love you they will put you to the top.
There is no real hard work to get a top listing on Google. Without you Google has no business, so they really have made it as easy as possible, if you make it easy for them to work with your content.
Avoid Duplicate Content
The one downfall of blogging is that many bloggers tend to get lazy. No one likes having to try and write interesting content all the time, so many bloggers use someone else’s content they have found or purchased and add it to their own blog.
This is called ‘Duplicate Content’, and Google Hates it! It is the aim for all major search engines to try and provide original content throughout their searches so people don’t keep finding the same content over and over again.
Google has a system so that whoever had the content first gets the top spot, and others are either pushed down or pushed right off the search engines altogether, so always use fresh content on your website or blog.
So before you rush off and build another website, think seriously about adding or building your website in a blog format. The extra traffic you will receive will have you wondering why you didn’t invest in it earlier!
