This post was originally published in November 2012.
In addition to helping you showcase your expertise, becoming a business blogger is a great way to drive traffic to your site and increase your SEO (search engine optimization). How can it help with SEO? Basically, the Internet is full of search engine spiders that are constantly looking for new content. As a business blogger, you are posting new content on your website that the spiders can find and include in the search results. The more consistent you are, the more the spiders return and the higher your rank.
How do you get started as a business blogger? Here are a few tips to help you out:
- Figure out which keywords you want to focus on. In addition to helping raise your SEO by knowing which terms to use, keyword research can help give you ideas for topics to write about. Not sure how to research keywords? If you installed Google Analytics on the backend of your website, that’s a great place to look. You can also use tools like Keywords Everywhere to help you find the best focus terms for your business. Just make sure you incorporate the keywords naturally so the post is helpful to the reader in addition to helping your website’s SEO.
- Pick a day and time and have your posts go live then. The more consistent you are with when you post, the better it is for your SEO. Pick when you want your posts to go live, such as Wednesday at 10am, and then anytime you write a blog post schedule it to go live then.
- Brainstorm ideas, or write them down when inspiration hits. As blogging tips go, I find this one to be extremely helpful. Without a good idea for a topic, sitting down to write a post is next to impossible. Spend a few minutes brainstorming ideas and write down anything that comes to mind – you can always take it off the list later if you decide you don’t want to write about it. If you’re stuck, look at your keyword research to see if that sparks any ideas, or spend some time reading business bloggers’ sites from a similar industry. Maybe one of them will write about something and you have a different opinion, or you notice they left out a key element. Make sure you have a place to write down any ideas that come to you as your out and about, too. You never know when inspiration might hit! Have a list of ideas on your phone or keep a pen and a piece of paper with you for moments like those.
- Write posts in advance and schedule them out. One of the earlier blogging tips was taking your post live the same day and time every week to help with SEO, but this suggestion is designed to help you manage your time. It can be hard to sit down and write a post every week. Instead, schedule a block of time in your calendar once a month to dedicate to blog writing. Put together as many posts as you can in the chunk of time, upload them to your site and schedule them to go live one week at a time.
- Proofread, proofread, proofread. A lot of blogging tips focus on improving SEO, but it’s important to remember that one major benefit to being a business blogger is establishing yourself as an expert. If your posts are full of typos and grammatical errors, it makes you seem much less credible to anyone reading the post. After you write your post, save it and come back to it later with fresh eyes, or have a friend/colleague proofread it for you. Read these writing tips to help establish your credibility through the written word as well.
Even if you don’t have a lot of experience, becoming a business blogger is a great way to establish your credibility and raise your website’s SEO. What other blogging tips have you heard? Share them in the comments below!
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