Typically, one of the first things attorneys and advisors will think about when it comes to their internet presence is whether or not their website ranks highly with the search engines. Beyond that, however, they may not understand what needs to be done to improve those rankings.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the ongoing process of making a website relevant enough for the search engines to rank it highly for specific keywords.
Notice how we use the words “ongoing process” to describe SEO. That’s because it is not a one-time change or an update that can be made to a website, but rather a strategy of content creation and content management that must occur often and regularly with a website. Depending on a business owner’s knowledge and resources, it could be a daunting task.
If you’re relatively new to digital marketing, it might surprise you that you can bite off a big chunk of the SEO “elephant” with regular blogging… if you do it properly. At the same time, you can educate and engage with your audience. This means that when done correctly, your blog can make your audience happy AND make the search engines happy.
Follow these content marketing steps and you’ll be well on your way:
Use Keywords Appropriately
You might already know that search engines pick up on keywords used throughout your site. Before creating website content, you should research long-tail keywords and incorporate common ones into your blogs.
At the same time, “keyword stuffing” (using as many keywords as possible on each page) can make your website look nonsensical and unprofessional. Even though they’re important, overusing keywords will just drive away visitors.
So, your goal should be to strike a balance: Provide relevant and readable content to your visitors, while appeasing the search engine algorithms that look for keywords. You can accomplish both of these objectives by blogging frequently, using relevant keywords each time, while also providing real value to your readers.
Use Meta Tags Correctly
When search engines understand the content and purpose of your blogs, they can better gear search results to user queries. Meta tags serve to tell search engines what content is contained within a webpage, so make sure you understand and utilize these four types of tags:
- Title tags – This is the tag you see in search results, and you click on it to navigate to the page.
- Header tags – This is the information displayed just below the title tag, which viewers might use to determine whether they want to visit your page.
- Meta descriptions – this is the first sizeable chunk of text that viewers will see.
- Image alt tags – these provide information to search engines, regarding your images, so you can use keywords here to help search engines understand your content better.
Link to Internal Content
By linking to your own content throughout blogs, you encourage visitors to navigate to several pages per visit. Plus, you will help Google to locate and correctly index all pages associated with your website. Anchor links to your business’s key search terms to help search engines better understand your website.
And now, the Number One way that blogging can boost your SEO…
Update, Update, Update
We can’t stress this enough: Google loves updates. Their search result algorithms strongly prefer websites that are updated frequently, and blogging is one of the most natural ways to accomplish this goal. Not only will your website display fresh content several times per month; you will also continue to capitalize on the effects of keywords, internal links, and meta tags. Therefore, frequent blogging allows for a sort of snowball effect upon your search engine optimization.
Plus, once your readers realize that you’re providing valuable content on a regular basis, they will continue to return on their own. Now you’re building those relationships that are so vital to any form of marketing.
As you can see, there is a big difference between blogging, and blogging correctly to boost your SEO. If you need more clarification on any of the above points, please contact us. We will be happy to review your blogging strategy with you, and make recommendations for better online visibility.