The ultimate goal for many business owners is to reach the first page of Google.
The methods of achieving this goal are a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, blogging and writing great web content. So, how do you use each of these elements to get traffic, interest in your business and, ultimately, more clients?
As
you probably already know, there is no real way to cheat the search
engine algorithms. There’s no specific repetition of keywords or SEO
trick that can guarantee high ranking on Google’s results pages
However, if you have well-written and valuable content on your website, a natural attraction will occur. Sites with the same quality and type of content will link to your site. And this will mean people searching for your expertise or products will end up on your website via the search engines.
WordPress can also boast a user friendly back-end as well as a massive and helpful community. I would advise any businesses wanting to attract more organic traffic to get a self-hosted WordPress blog.
If your business involves graphic design, sure, you can write in general about graphic design. But it’s easier to talk about specifics. So, go into detail about how going the extra mile to improve the UX on a website the other day worked wonders. A potential client would be more interested in that.
The rule of thumb with guest blogging is to aim high. If you think your articles are up to scratch, contact the highest authority website you know and see if they’ll publish your articles. If your articles are good enough they surely will.
When choosing sites to guest post for you’ll need to look at the Google Page Rank of their home page and their site’s Alexa rank. You can download Chrome or Firefox addons that will give you these scores. Only choose blogs with a home page Google Page Rank of 4 or more and an Alexa Rank of 80,000 or less. This ensures not only authority of the link back to your site but traffic from it as well.
The more links back to your site from relevant authority sites the better. Make sure you vary the pages on your site you link back to as well as vary the anchor text that points to them.
WordPress is pretty well set up for SEO straight out of the box. However, there are a number of on-page SEO best practices you can employ.
The main things to remember are: Try to include subheadings, include images and write alt text descriptions for them and include keywords (the words you want to be found in the search engines for) at the beginning of your titles.
Try to write at least 450 words per article. Link to your own articles and make sure to include links to other reputable websites with similar content.
Break up your blog posts as much as you can with bulleted lists, blockquotes and use of italics and bolds.
Spend a bit of time (and maybe money) on your blog’s theme and logo. I can highly recommend any Genesis theme.
Making use of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are excellent ways to draw attention to your latest articles.
Posting articles that describe your work in detail with naturally placed keywords will keep your social media fans up-to-date on your current projects, and will provide the potential for them to share your mission with others.
Be careful of spending too much time promoting your own content. Be sure to post other relevant high quality content as well. And limit your time on social media generally – it can be a productivity killer!
Relevancy is everything in the SEO world.
While keywords should be in the forefront of your mind while thinking of topics and titles for articles, they’re not the be all and end all.
The
above graph has search terms on the x axis and traffic numbers on the y
axis. No surprises that the popular one-word terms (“widget”, for
example) get the most searches and then the less popular terms (“blue
widget”, for example) get less searches and then there is less and less
traffic for the least popular terms. Terms like “awesome product to help
me with blah” will get only a few searches a month. These low traffic,
more descriptive phrases are known as the long tail.
The important point about the long tail is this: Searches of multiple words which are hardly searched for at all are greater in volume than the “short tail” of highly competitive search queries that only the big sites will rank for. And they convert better.
Huge clients can be attracted to a blog post on something very specific. The targeting of competitive keyword terms may be difficult and potentially unrewarding. Having a really broad set of terms that people are searching for is more effective and more achievable.
The methods of achieving this goal are a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, blogging and writing great web content. So, how do you use each of these elements to get traffic, interest in your business and, ultimately, more clients?
There’s no easy way
As
you probably already know, there is no real way to cheat the search
engine algorithms. There’s no specific repetition of keywords or SEO
trick that can guarantee high ranking on Google’s results pagesHowever, if you have well-written and valuable content on your website, a natural attraction will occur. Sites with the same quality and type of content will link to your site. And this will mean people searching for your expertise or products will end up on your website via the search engines.
WordPress
WordPress is an excellent open source option for creating blogs and other web content writing and it is also particularly well structured for SEO.WordPress can also boast a user friendly back-end as well as a massive and helpful community. I would advise any businesses wanting to attract more organic traffic to get a self-hosted WordPress blog.
What should I write about?
Your company blog should be constantly updated with quality content that is relevant to your specific field of expertise. What did you do this week? What did you find difficult? Was there anything that you learned how to do? Write about it. Don’t write endless PR success stories about how amazing your business is.If your business involves graphic design, sure, you can write in general about graphic design. But it’s easier to talk about specifics. So, go into detail about how going the extra mile to improve the UX on a website the other day worked wonders. A potential client would be more interested in that.
Don’t just write articles on your blog
You should also find the time to write articles on other blogs or websites in your area of expertise.The rule of thumb with guest blogging is to aim high. If you think your articles are up to scratch, contact the highest authority website you know and see if they’ll publish your articles. If your articles are good enough they surely will.
When choosing sites to guest post for you’ll need to look at the Google Page Rank of their home page and their site’s Alexa rank. You can download Chrome or Firefox addons that will give you these scores. Only choose blogs with a home page Google Page Rank of 4 or more and an Alexa Rank of 80,000 or less. This ensures not only authority of the link back to your site but traffic from it as well.
The more links back to your site from relevant authority sites the better. Make sure you vary the pages on your site you link back to as well as vary the anchor text that points to them.
Optimize your site
WordPress is pretty well set up for SEO straight out of the box. However, there are a number of on-page SEO best practices you can employ.The main things to remember are: Try to include subheadings, include images and write alt text descriptions for them and include keywords (the words you want to be found in the search engines for) at the beginning of your titles.
Try to write at least 450 words per article. Link to your own articles and make sure to include links to other reputable websites with similar content.
Blog design
Allied to the above point. Blog posts with subheadings and images are not only better for SEO but also look better as well.Break up your blog posts as much as you can with bulleted lists, blockquotes and use of italics and bolds.
Spend a bit of time (and maybe money) on your blog’s theme and logo. I can highly recommend any Genesis theme.
Social media
Making use of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are excellent ways to draw attention to your latest articles.Posting articles that describe your work in detail with naturally placed keywords will keep your social media fans up-to-date on your current projects, and will provide the potential for them to share your mission with others.
Be careful of spending too much time promoting your own content. Be sure to post other relevant high quality content as well. And limit your time on social media generally – it can be a productivity killer!
Keywords
Keywords are what people type into a search engine. Think about your main goal and decide on which keywords a potential customer or client would be looking for when performing a search. You may benefit from passing these words through the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to see if there are any other similar words you can use.Relevancy is everything in the SEO world.
While keywords should be in the forefront of your mind while thinking of topics and titles for articles, they’re not the be all and end all.
The Long Tail
The important point about the long tail is this: Searches of multiple words which are hardly searched for at all are greater in volume than the “short tail” of highly competitive search queries that only the big sites will rank for. And they convert better.
Huge clients can be attracted to a blog post on something very specific. The targeting of competitive keyword terms may be difficult and potentially unrewarding. Having a really broad set of terms that people are searching for is more effective and more achievable.
