Your business blog is a very effective way of getting visitors to your business website.  Not only is it a great communication tool to your target audience, but if used correctly can improve your search engine rankings quicker than any other method.

Blogging experts always do the following:

• they post a frequent blog
  
• they plan ahead of time what subjects to blog about
  
• they share knowledge
  
• they want to become known as an authority in their field
  

Can a blog really help increase your website traffic?

1. A Blog should be equipped with an RSS feed and links for Social Bookmarking.  Social Bookmarking is another great way of allowing others to follow you and read your latest material.

2. Keeping your blog up to date tells the search engines that you have relevant, fresh information and that you are a good resource for the Internet.

3. Your blog is a content machine..  And content is what the search engines are all about.  Professional bloggers know the value in SEO terms of all this fresh new content and adopt the same working principles as if it were a page on a normal website.

(A note of warning – don’t, whatever you do, get into the habit of blogging for the benefit of Google – that’s a misguided reason for writing your blog and it won’t help to engage your target audience.  Your business blog is first and foremost for the benefit of your clients or business associates.)

What is a good SEO structure for your blog post?

Employ a keyword or keyphrase in the title of the blog.  Search engines give greater weighting to the words in the title.  Ensure that the title reads well.

Keywords:

Keyword research is a funamental of Search Engine Optimisation.  Always perform your keyword research, just like normal SEO.  Then identify a small group of keywords (5 or 6) and use this throughout your blog post.  Make sure They are well matched to the blog subject matter to keep things focussed and relevant.

Placement of Keywords:

The search engines give greater prominance to the first 25 words or so, so put your chosen keyword(s) at least once here.  Don’t overdo it .  You should be targetting a keyword density of 1-2%.

Linking:

Your blog is a great opportunity to create links with other pages, either internall (on your site) or externally (other sites).  This counts as much for internal linking (to your own website) as to external linking (to other peoples’ websites).  It all helps the crawlers navigate their way around your pages and your website.

Length of blog post:

It should ideally be around 300-500 words.  The key thing to bear in mind is to find the balance between long posts (which give you a great chance of being indexed for more keywords) and shorter ones (which are easier for humans).  Users of the internet have attention spans that leave something to be desired!

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