So… you want to write a blog. Either you have some great wisdom you are dying to share with the world… or you are just trying to promote your company and website so you can get some “hits”. Chances are, you have heard that blogs must be “SEO Friendly” and you just do not know where to begin.
We will take it for granted that you already have a subject for your blog and you are looking for some easy tips and guidelines. Here are our 5 easy tips for writing a blog and making it SEO Friendly.
- Pick a Topic. This might seem obvious, but you do need to have a focus for your article. In three to six words, describe what you want to say.
- Research your topic. Again, this may be obvious but many folks do not do the basics. Go to Yahoo, Bing, Google or any other search engine. Type in your topic and see what comes up… see if it is going to be of interest or unique.
- Write your article. All articles must be 300 to 500 words in length. Too short and the search engines will ignore you. Too long and your readers will get bored. Double-check your grammar and then make sure your topic is part of the article. I am writing on “tips for SEO Friendly Blogging”, so that appears throughout my article.
- Pictures. Yes, pictures are worth a thousand words, but they are not part of the word count. You should have at least one original picture for an article which is important for the Search Engines. Your readers will like to see a picture, too.
- Prepare the page. I hope that you are posting your blog using a content management tool such as WordPress. WordPress has SEO Plugins that take care of all of the internal nitty-gritty work of making your blog SEO Friendly, but you must fill in the blanks. We use WordPress SEO by Yost, which does a great job.
- Title: Probably your topic or a catchy way of saying your topic (but don’t get too cute).
- The article: What you are writing.
- Focus Keywords: This is your topic. It is how folks will find the article.
- SEO Title: Same as the real title.
- Meta Description: This is fancy way of saying a brief overview of your article. You get 156 characters… not words… characters… and spaces count!
- Excerpt: This is the same as Meta Description and used by some websites, so it is important to use.
- Picture Name and description: Give your picture a readable name (use “-” instead of a space) and have a one-sentence description. This is very important for the search engines.
That’s it! Advanced bloggers and SEO experts will also do Keyword research and analysis for better ways to say phrases. For most folks… just write… and then go write again.
