Let your blogs live their best lives
Blogs are a key part of your company’s digital marketing strategy
You want sales, so you need traffic to your website. According to a HubSpot survey, 60% of businesses who blog get more customers.
An effective blog post follows search engine optimisation (SEO) rules that include keyword-optimised titles and sub-headings, a good keyword ratio, the use of your targeted keywords in the first paragraphs and links to at least 3 other pages on your website.
If you’d like our help getting effective blogs up on your site, for just $75.00 per post, our blog services can take some of that work off your hands and make sure your blogs live their best lives. Interested? Get in touch to see how we can help.
Making your blogs work for you
According to online marketing guru, Neil Patel, the websites that grew the fastest in their latest four-year study were those sites with a large focus on keeping content up to date.
Updating blog posts takes less time and money and can deliver faster results than writing entirely new pieces. It is a cost-effective and often overlooked content marketing strategy and I can do it for you. Instead of languishing in the background somewhere, get your older web real estate – your blog posts – working hard for your site.
Updating blogs is an easy way to build your traffic
If you’d like help, I can spend an hour per post, so your blogs continue to live their best lives. I can add content, update links, swap out images and make everything nice and fresh. Interested? Get in touch to see how I can help.
Let’s explore the critical elements that make up an effective blog post.
1. Blog length
In a nutshell, longer is usually better. In terms of blog post lengths and their purposes,
- 300 to 750 words is a standard blogging length and is recommended by many bloggers. 750 words is the standard length for professional journalism, especially newspapers.
- 1000 to 1500-word blogs tend to get more shares on social media. According to HubSpot the highest-ranking articles on Google are around 2300 words.
2. Keyword topics
Each post you write should focus on a specific keyword or key phrase. A topic that people search for a lot on Google, yet not one with loads of other posts or sites that compete to provide answers. In a 500-word blog post, you should include your keyword phrase in your title, and at least three times in the copy, but no more than seven.
3. Appealing, well-named graphics
Search engines can’t read images. Alternative text (alt text) is a way around that issue. You should add the alt text to images using keywords relevant to your blog, and name the images the same way, so that search engines know how to interpret them.
Include graphics in your blog posts to illustrate points and break up text to make your pages more attractive. Google measures the time spent on your pages, so your images should work together to encourage visitors to stick around.
4. Powerful calls-to-action
Every blog article should have some kind of call-to-action. You should always end a blog by asking your readers to do something. Always encourage feedback. “Would you like to get in touch? Just hit reply. I’d love to hear from you”. “Call us on 027 6025 178”. Your final paragraph is there to inspire your readers.
5. Relevant internal links
You should include links to other articles on your site in every new article you write. One of your main goals is to get people to stick around your website. Once visitors see the link as relevant to their visit, they’ll click on it, and spend time on the resulting page.
Further, internal links have always been considered good for SEO. They benefit your SEO because they help Google crawl your site.
6. Good meta details
Meta tags are HTML tags that describe your page content to search engines and website visitors. They are the first impression for all search engines. Websites that lack meta tags are missing out on a key opportunity to rank in search results. You need to include a unique title tag on every page.
Title tags should be under 65 characters, and you should try to start your title tag with your main targeted keyword. Don’t stuff your title tags with keywords. For example, Google could very well punish your site for the following: “We sell custom websites. Our custom websites are tailored. If you’re thinking of buying a custom website, please contact our custom website specialists”.
The meta description is the snippet Google displays in search results. It appears in search results and informs users what your page is about. The average length of a meta description is around 165 characters, and you should add your targeted keyword phrase in your description.
7. Magnetic headline
Studies suggest 80% of people will read headline copy, only 20% will read the rest. Your headline needs to make your readers curious. So, when you’re presenting great content, spice up your headline with a word or two that will grab readers and make it stand out.
8. Compelling lead
The first sentence or short paragraph of your blog must compel visitors to read your second paragraph and from an SEO point, it should contain your focus keyword phrase for the post. Don’t take forever to get to the point. In a good introductory paragraph, you empathise with readers’ struggles and try to help them with a promise, benefit or solution. Put your readers first.
9. Useful subheads
Google loves H2 subheadings and so do humans. Subheads break up the type to make the page more visually appealing. Readers are scanners. Too much text without breaks, they’ll feel overwhelmed and vanish. Your H2 sub-headings help readers navigate to important sections, and they boost search engine optimization (SEO). Sprinkle them through your blog every few paragraphs. Well-written sub-headings should contain keywords to keep readers interested.
10. Informative and engaging body
Blogs should serve a purpose. Well-written articles demonstrate your company as an industry leader and should be valuable to your readers, offering a solution, advice or interesting facts. If you are a retailer, for example, write blog posts about your products. By posting topics highlighting your knowledge and expertise your customers get to know you as the source for the information and products they want.
When writing on a topic you know well, you can write an effective, quality post on topics to:
- Provide easy-to-implement tips, advice or solutions
- Explore one or two myths
- Compare products.
11. Easy reading
A blog post should be easy to read, so avoid gobbledygook, jargonese or trying to sound overly academic or technical. Make your paragraphs no more than one to three sentences long. Vary your sentence length. Short sentences are very effective.
Effective blog services
Owning a small business means big work. We get that. You already have too much to do, so let our blog services take some of that work off your hands.
For just $75.00 per blog, I’ll load your post, format the article content so it is optimised for search engines using current SEO best practices, check for spelling and grammar, add meta details, name your images, or include a royalty-free image of our own to complement your article content. All you have to do is send us the article content in a word doc.
Interested? If you’d like to get some good blog content up and working on your site, get in touch.