Blogging for Online Marketing

Blogging has become almost “de rigueur” in the online marketing industry, with seemingly every company website hosting a blog designed to connect with their audience, improve their search engine listings and drive traffic to the website.

But as with every mass-uptake of an online technology there are varying degrees of success and competency: there are those examples which are executed well and produce impressive results, and those implemented poorly which inevitably fail.

While blog copywriting is a huge topic, far beyond the scope of a single article, there are some basic principles and techniques which can vastly improve the chances of success when followed.

Benefits of a Blog for SEO

A regularly-updated blog containing high quality content will improve SEO performance through 2 separate areas:

1. Gathering inbound links.
With high quality articles you should develop a following or “audience” who are likely to link to your articles for the benefit of their readers.

2. Search engine content
Blog posts are great content pages, naturally littered with keywords – these will start appearing in the search results when relevant to the users’ search query.

So when writing blog posts bear these two factors in mind:

1. Write quality articles which will interest the reader, pass on valuable information or opinions to help develop your audience.

2. Ensure the important keywords are present in the required areas, in a manner that doesn’t impede the flow of the copy.

SEO vs. Brand Tone

“Brand voice” may be more important to your blog strategy than outright content optimisation

If you are creating a blog to build an audience or subscriber-base as part of an SEO strategy, developing a “brand voice” may well be a more important factor than outright content optimisation.

Increasing the number of regular readers will help gather links, which may be the most important factor in your web strategy, as link weight is one of the major factors in today’s search engine algorithms.

As the blog content increases, the sheer volume of content will help Google identify common themes across the pages – helping clarify the SEO topics without large amounts of SEO-specific work on your behalf. Use tagging and categorisation to cement the ties between topics and themes by linking related posts together.

Keyword Use in Blog Articles

Identifying Keywords within Articles

By placing keywords in the important areas such as the page title, URL stub, headings and subheading, bullet points and block quotes, you can help Google and improve the chances of pages appearing in the search results.

The first step is to identify the keywords in a given blog post. For example, a blog post about shoe maintenance and caring for footwear would probably require the following keywords:

boots, shoes, footwear, leather, care, maintenance, wax, polish, brush

These are common sense keywords people might use as compound phrases when searching for this topic – “shoe care”, “leather maintenance”, “footwear care”, “caring for boots” etc

Further research using the public Google keyword research tool can help identify common search phrases – but it is important to let your copy develop naturally, in a manner consistent with your brand voice, rather than to artificially try and create keyword-rich copy, which can sound forced and off-brand.

Keyword Use in the HTML Page Title

The HTML Title should reflect the subject in as succinct and pithy a manner as possible

What is you post / web page about? What is your main point or topic?

Your HTML page Title should reflect the topic / subject in as succinct and pithy a manner as is possible without losing clarity or context. Use the most likely keywords that users are going to use to search for the subject you are discussing - this is obvious but often missed by bloggers!

Because the HTML Title will also appear on the search engine result pages you must also consider a hook element in addition to clarity and context. What will entice users to click through to your blog post? What are you offering them in information, interest or helpful advice? What exclusive or unique offering do you have?

Please note, the HTML Title and H1 heading are often taken from the same article heading / title field in some blogging platforms.

Keyword Use in H1 Tag

Descriptive headings will help visitors appraise post content at-a-glance

The H1 page heading fulfils a role similar to the HTML Title in that it explains to users what the page is about when they look at it. The keyword(s) identified with the primary topic / subject should be present in the H1 heading (for both usability and SEO purposes). Descriptive headings are useful for visitors to appraise post content at-a-glance (this will also help you when managing and organizing blog content).

Summarise the post, using the most important keywords naturally, eg.
“Footwear Maintenance – Caring for Shoes & Boots” or
“Shoe Care – Maintenance for Leather Boots & Footwear” etc

Subheadings (H2 - H6 Tags)

Copy will often benefit from being broken down into sections using subheadings to help users easily extract what the following paragraphs are discussing. Use relevant keywords in the copy which will help Google further in analyse and categorisation the content.

Keyword Use in Body Text

It is important to use the keywords throughout the page where it makes sense. Do not try and “force” the keywords in, just write naturally and you will use them in a manner which doesn’t interrupt the flow for your readers…

It’s not just the targeted keywords that count, but the mix of all the words on the page that help to determine what the page is about.

When thinking about the vocabulary in your post use semantically-related terms e.g. synonyms, related terms, polysemes, homonyms, meronyms, paradigms, passive / active relationships, locative relationships, associative relationships.

So for the keyword “boot” we would probably want to use “shoe”, “sole”, “tongue”, “laces”, “heel”, “instep”, “zip” etc within the copy to help associate your page with other topical pages.

Expanding your post’s vocabulary in this way helps your page rank for many long tail keywords - this will significantly assist in raising search referral traffic.

Keyword Repetition (Stuffing & Spam)

Writing interesting articles aimed at your readers will produce results through the benefits of inbound links created by those readers

It cannot be stressed enough that the key factor should be naturally-written content, aimed at producing interesting and useful content for a human audience – rather than trying to write for search engine analysis. But do make sure you mention the keywords you think are important to your search visibility strategy.

Ensure that 1 or 2 synonyms (words meaning the same thing, eg. sports shoes, trainers, sneakers) or related terms (eg. boot, shoe, sole, tongue, laces, heel, instep, zip etc) are included elsewhere in the text.

If you are writing naturally, then this should happen as a matter of course – to summarise, don’t worry too much about trying to include the right amounts of keywords, as the benefits of writing interesting articles aimed at your readers will produce better results through the benefits of inbound links created by your readers.

Blogging Basics and Good Practise

Make sure your article is relevant to the blog theme
- is there a connection to your business or your industry?

Blog with passion
- Blogging needs conviction to make it work, put the effort in…

Make headlines snappy
- Contain your whole post summary in your headline. Check out national newspapers to see how they do it.

Write less
- This does not mean less information – just keep it simple, no need for one hundred words if 10 will do. Time is limited on the internet – keep posts short and informative, and they will keep returning…

Make your posts easy to scan
- Include Bullet point lists and block quotes, they impart the most information in the least time. Short paragraphs are far easier to read than long ones – break them down into shorter ones.

Do not write short posts all the time
- Short posts are great for a regular update, and can bridge a gap – but mix up with longer articles as this demonstrates depth of knowledge; longer posts that tackle subjects with meaning and insight will be much more likely to attract links long-term as the post is seen as a resource; longer posts also tend to perform better in the search engines.

Mix your marketing message with your products
- Don’t be too strong with your marketing message, it won’t work. It puts people off, because no one likes pushy marketing thinly-disguised behind a flimsy blog-post.

Be consistent with your writing style
- You are the voice of your company. Present a consistent style and tone; your posts are an ambassador for the business, and may often be the first contact for potential clients. If you have multiple authors contributing to your blog, then use bylines to identify who’s who so stylistic differences don’t jar with the reader.

Let the audience learn about the workings of your business
– This promotes trust through familiarity, and being “transparent”.

Don’t be scared of offsite linking
– Linking to other sites is a great way to provide “further research” opportunities for your readers, and they *will* return after reading.

Edit your post
- Good writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need. Better still, get someone else to edit your posts!!