By jason on 03/11/2016
Writing an SEO friendly blog post begins with a good plan.
Here’s our basic formula: Keywords + Topic + Creativity.
First, we select which keyword/key phrase we’d like to target. Think of the search terms that users use to find your website. For example, SEO Boise, SEO Companies in Boise, etc. Ideally, we’ll target just a single keyphrase in a post.
Once we’ve selected a keyphrase to emphasize, we’ll now pick a topic to write about. We like to brainstorm and compile a list of a dozen or so topics that we can pull from anytime. It may be informational about the nature of the business, or announcing an event, discussing a recent client success story, spotlighting a capability, comparing and contrasting the competition, common advice or challenges that customers face, and so on.
When we’ve chosen our keywords and our topic, it’s now time to craft a masterpiece. Our goal is two-fold:
1. Engage readers enough to improve the likelihood of converting them to customers.
2. Let search engines know the content is valuable, and our site is an authority on the keywords/phrases we’ve targeted.
There’s a variety of research and resources available to help with #1. Things such as understanding your target audience, appealing to the value hierarchy of the audience, benefit oriented headlines and content, primary and secondary calls to action, impact sentences at the start and end of paragraphs, and taking advantage of persuaders, will all help.
With regard to #2, we have a much simpler approach.
1. Use the key phrase at/near the beginning of the title.
2. Use the key phrase at/near the beginning of the main heading.
3. If you have a sub-heading, use the key phrase in it.
4. Use the key phrase in the first sentence of the post.
5. Use the key phrase in several paragraphs.
6. Use the key phrase in the last sentence of the post.
7. Emphasize the key phrase somewhere (bold, italic, underline).
8. Link using the key phrase in the link text.
9. Add an image, naming the image using our key phrase, and adding alt and title attributes.
10. Add a list (bulleted or numbered) that uses the key phrase somewhere.
11. Craft a description/summary of the article, 150 characters that uses the key phrase 1-2 times.
Now that makes for good search engine optimization!
Sometimes, websites are setup so that the title of the article is also the main heading on the page. This is what we like to do.
Successful SEO is about being visible in front of your target audience, as well as communicating to them in a way that engages and influences them to become a customer.
We're proud to offer the best SEO in Boise, Idaho. Contact us to get started today!
-Jason
