Let’s Back It Up a Little Bit
Blogs are only as good as the stage you set for them. Some of the most important work you’ll do for your SEO strategy will happen before you actually start writing. That starts with creating a data-driven buyer persona. You can only optimize blogs to reach your audience if you know who that audience is in the first place. An SEO expert like the ones from Gekkoshot.com can guide you. A buyer persona will represent your ideal audience member, providing guidance for all of your content strategies and allowing you to tailor the voice and information in your content to be as relevant and resonant as possible.
Focus Keyword
Once you know your audience, it’s time to develop your content strategy. This is a blueprint of the blog posts you’ll be writing for each campaign. You should aim to post about once a week on your website, and each of those blogs should have a focus keyword that’s both relevant to your campaign and likely to be searched on Google by your target audience.
Your focus keyword represents the search term that your blog post is aiming to turn up as a result for on search engines. For example, if you’re a family medicine physician running a campaign about the attentiveness and quality service at your practice, some great focus keywords might include:
- attentive family medicine doctor
- family medicine doctor in [INSERT CITY]
- primary care doctor with long appointments
- Primary care doctor who cares
You’ll want to incorporate focus keywords that are likely to be Googled into blog titles that make sense. Your blog titles should be short and engaging. For example, great blog titles for each of the keywords above include:
- 5 signs you’ve found an attentive family medicine doctor before your first visit.
- How to tell it’s time to find a new family medicine doctor in [INSERT CITY].
- Why having a primary care doctor with long appointments makes all the difference for your health.
- Looking for a primary care doctor who cares about your long-term health? Pay attention to these 3 qualities.
Generally, your focus keyword should be included in your blog title, meta description, and a handful of times throughout your blog copy. Avoid over-using the focus keyword; incorporate it into the copy in a natural way that doesn’t feel overdone. Also, don’t neglect the benefits guest post providers can give that’ll dominate SEO.
Readability is Key
- Avoid large clumps of text and opt for shorter paragraphs instead.
- Include images throughout the post, and make sure you provide meta descriptions and captions for all of the images.
- Use lists as much as possible whenever it’s fitting.
Avoid run-on sentences, and repetitive sentence structures. Switch it up; use compound sentences. Then use shorter sentences. Search engines love variety in sentence structure.
Call to Action
Some great blog posts that incentivize clicks include:
- SEO tips that you can incorporate into your business right now.
- 5 underrated ways to drive growth to a small business that you should know about
- Is your website bringing you enough customers? Here are 3 ways to help it do a better job.
Some not-so-good examples are:
- Need better SEO? Read this now!
- The topic is vague, non-descriptive, and comes across as overly aggressive.
- Click here to find out how to grow right now.
- There isn’t a verifiable focus keyword here; this blog wouldn’t help you attract members of your specific target audience.
Always keep your target audience in mind; think about topics with real, useful applications. Brainstorm keywords that are specific and relevant. Share your knowledge without asking for anything in return. By doing this, you won’t just appeal to search engines; you’ll build thought leadership with your audience.
