Blogging has more benefits than you may be aware of, including the ability to enhance your search rankings.

Blogging has increased by 50% among Fortune 500 companies over the past two years. Why the increase? I can tell you that it’s not because they wanted an additional hobby. From an SEO standpoint, adding additional content to your site can increase crawl frequency, will allow you to infiltrate more keyword verticals and can promote back-links; which translate to enhanced rankings and more traffic for businesses. Combined with SEO strategy, blogging can produce wonderful results.

Here are 5 ways you can tie blogging and SEO into your online strategy today:

1. Host your blog under your own domain

To ensure that your website is reaping the traffic and SEO ranking benefits, it is crucial to have your blog hosted under your own domain name. This means that your blog URL should not be separate from your website’s URL, for example, ‘www.yourdomain.com/blog’ is the ideal format.

2. Leverage Your keywords

While still staying within your industry topics, blogging allows you to penetrate more subjects, and in turn, leverage more keywords and phrases. Without overdoing it, integrate keywords and keyword phrases into the body of your blog that relates to your topic. Leverage these keywords in the headline of your articles and in the title tags and meta descriptions as well.

3. Make your content easy to find

Making your content easier to find is not just important for the web crawlers, but is important to help your users more easily access your content as well. Include additional page links (pagination) at the bottom of your pages (ex. 1,2,3,4) so users can navigate from one page to the next. Also, including categories will help to organize your content, and help both users and bots find your content more easily.

4. Add additional post links

Web crawlers find content by way of links, so the more links you have to your content pages, the more chances they have of finding and indexing them. Including more links to additional posts in your blog articles will increase your blog’s overall crawlability. You can add ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links to your blog, as well as add suggested blog links at the end of your posts.

5. Add sharing buttons

Sharing buttons are a great way to get your content more exposure. Since share buttons are also a ranking signal in the algorithms, they can also help to give your content more authority and possibly increase your content’s ranking in the search engine result pages.

Blogging for SEO can be a great way to boost your existing online efforts, but it is a commitment. Staying active, posting consistently and integrating SEO best practices will help you win in the long run. Have questions about blogging or how to tie it into your SEO strategy? Contact us!

Submitted by Erica Machin, Titan Growth

Learn How To Be A Better Blogger

Blogs can often be the best tool companies have to communicate who they are and why potential clients should work with them.  The trouble is most companies are not aware of how to best go about creating a blog and how to continue properly.  Best practices for blogging do exist, however, and we want to share some easy ways to use this tool to your advantage.

One of the first steps in blog creation is determining what your “digital persona” will be.  Your communication style should be informal, direct, and conversational, but you need to decide how best to use your business’ identity and carry it over to the blog format.  Your blog should focus on keeping your readers current on your business and related products or services and should be accessible to both clients and bystanders alike.

In the actual writing of your blog, you should be editorially-focused and able to deliver good content on a broad variety of topics.  You should keep in mind short titles work best: they are eye-catching and easy to read in Google Reader or on mobile devices, and a consistent style of grammar and capitalization will ensure an easy flow and greater credibility.  As a business blogger, you can focus on many aspects of your company as blog topics, including news stories, customer testimonies, industry trends, upcoming events and sales, company videos, team introductions, philanthropic interests, and much more.  This wide variety helps to put a human face to your company, by introducing multiple facets of your business and your employees.

If your company is large enough to have a separate blog for each department, you may want to consider that too.  Keep in mind, however, blogs need to be updated at least once per week, if not more frequently, so it is best to consider whether or not each department will have enough material to use regularly.

Blogs are also great for correcting errors or misunderstandings about your company, and you can use this format to answer some of those issues directly.  If you ever need to correct one of your own posts, the best practice is to use the same timestamp and title, with the updated information clearly added and an “update as of __” where readers can see it.  Then simply republish the post.

With the heightened interest in social media and its effects on business, blogs are one of the easiest ways to “get out there”.  Like any new campaign, however, companies should consider their strategy before embarking on a new marketing avenue.  SEO agencies can also offer excellent tips and techniques on SEO blogging, such as those listed here, to benefit the integration of your blog and your business, and to help you use this tool to your advantage.

Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations

Just because social conversations have moved online, it doesn’t make them any less social.

In his book Grand Avenue, author Greg Sarris paints a picture of a tightly-knit California community where “everybody’s connected to everybody” and in so many ways, his description isn’t far off from the social networks we find ourselves using today. While the physicality of a personal connection can never be replaced, social media has been able to effectively take social connections and bring them online. Fortunately for brands, joining the conversation and embracing the following 5 guidelines can help them build better social media connections with customers on a deeper level than they ever could before.

The 5 keys to better social connections and growth on social media

1. Engagement – Social media is called “social” for a reason. In order to have that personal connection with customers and potential customers, you have to engage with them. All too often, brands use it as a bulletin board to bombard their followers with promotions and news about their brand, but that method usually ends in frustration for both parties. Social media platforms are an avenue to engage with people, start conversations and get others involved, it isn’t just about your brand. Think about fostering that personal connection. Start conversations, engage and interact with people and most of all, stay personable.

2. Listening – Don’t let your social media pages become a one-way conversation. After all, conversations are a two-way street. That means sitting back every once in a while to gain some perspective on what your community is saying. It’s amazing what you can discover if you just take the time to listen. You can learn a lot from your audience and target market about what they like and what they dislike. Take their complaints with a grain of salt and use the feedback to improve on your content, products or services.

3. Relevancy – Your social media channels are a projection of your brand and its culture. Stay true to your brand and your initiatives by carrying the same voice across all of your channels and posting content that is relative to your industry. It might be tempting to stray from the norm in an effort to post newsworthy or entertaining content, but at the end of the day, your followers are there because they like what you have to say – not to see the latest meme.

4. Timeliness – Maybe you have great, relevant content, but it missed the mark because it was delivered at the wrong time. Just as creating relevant, interesting content is important, so is distributing it thoughtfully. Take into consideration the time of day, the day of the week and the season when you post your content. If you have topical content, be mindful to post it on time before the ship has sailed, or you could miss your audience altogether.

5. Value – Whether it’s a discount, a promotion, a contest, customer service or just great information, there has to be something on your social networks that attract users, there has to be some kind of value. Value can be created in so many different ways, as long as it provides something that your audience wants. If you can provide value, you have a greater chance of attracting more followers and keeping them long-term.

Keeping social media social is the key to better relationships and connections online. By listening, engaging, and creating relevant, timely and useful content, brands can better connect with their audiences on social media and foster lasting relationships long-term.
For any questions on social media connections and growth or how to improve your social media SEO strategy, feel free to contact us.

Submitted by Erica Machin, Titan Growth