As any business leader knows, getting more potential customers to find out about your service or product is what makes money. Of course, you need a good team working with you, and a business plan that you’ve revised over and over, and funders you can count on, but without a constant influx of customers, you aren’t going to get anywhere. And that’s why you’ve been running a blog targeted at your customers. Not only does it make your business more professional, and help you make connections with potential business partners, but it also makes you a trustworthy authority. This means that readers who find your blog are going to be more likely to buy from your business.
But blogging, just like running a business, is an art. And a large part of that art depends on your mastery of search engine optimization (SEO). After all, the sooner your content appears on a Google search, the more clients you’ll get. So if you want to make your SEO as powerful as possible, take a look at the tips we’ve compiled for you below.
1 Use keywords
It’s likely that, as a blogger, you’ve already come across keyword usage and its relationship to successful SEO. But as Google searches become more sophisticated, you need to be careful. You can’t just guess what keywords your customers will be looking for when they search for you. You can’t overstuff keywords, either, because that results in awkward, ugly writing.
According to WordStream, the best strategies you can use include using a keyword research tool, refining your niche keyword list, and determining how competitive your niche keywords are (“to weed out superfluous (or overly competitive) terms, ensuring that you only implement keywords that relate to your business”). According to Convince and Convert, once you’ve determined your keywords, you need to include them in the right places. They explain,
“Choose one keyword, then include it in your post permalink, title, and first sentence. Make sure you have WordPress set to name the page URL as your post name (which can be changed in settings> permalinks> post name), this will automatically put the keyword in your post URL – also called the permalink. This is an essential component of SEO success...SEO magic happens when you identify one keyword to focus on, then put it in the trifecta of permalink, page title, and page description. Make sure that keyword is included in the body of post a few times, is relevant and appropriate, and then hit publish.”
2 Research your audience
And if you haven’t already, determine who your readers are. Without this knowledge, you’re only going to get so far with keywords. For example, if most of your customers are students and you’re a bookseller, you’ll want to include keywords like “used” and “cheap” instead of the “original” books that a professor might want. Considering that Google accounted for more than 79 percent of all global desktop search traffic in 2017, putting in this research will make a huge difference to your success.
Understanding your audience will also help you understand what products and services to sell, and what to charge for them. It’s all about putting together the perfect buyer persona. According to Shopify, a buyer persona is “a fictionalized characterization of your best customer(s) based on information about them and how they use your product or service. These descriptions mirror your various market segments, with names to match the type of buyer.”
To learn more about putting together a buyer persona, look at these tips.
3 Optimize for mobile and Local SEO
Now that you’ve started writing awesome blog posts for an audience you’ve researched thoroughly, your last step is being smart about mobile and Local SEO. No matter what the name of your business is or what industry you’re in, you need to optimize for mobile users. Everyone’s on their phones these days, and it’s likely your readers will find your content on a small screen. To learn more about optimizing for mobile, check out this article.
If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, then you need to use Local SEO. Did you know that, in 2016, 72 percent of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles? It’s easy to do, so if you want to use the right strategies, use this checklist from Small Biz Trends.
These are some of the most important SEO strategies for your business’s blog. What other techniques do you use to attract customers to your business?
Also, check out the trailer of SEO: The Movie - a documentary film created by Ignite Visibility, which explores the evolution of SEO.
