Blogs can be a great way to bring traffic to your website, get noticed online and share valuable content with your audience in a larger scale. While other social platforms like Instagram are a great way to showcase your business, it’s not content that you own and as a business owner you shouldn’t just rely on IG to promote yourself. If Instagram ever stopped working (bless us all), all your content would be gone and where would your audience find you? Build up your community on platforms that you own and manage, like a blog or email list. The other side of it, is longevity – an average post on IG gets seen for about 72 hours and then SHE GONE! Whereas if you post a blog on your website, as long as people are searching for the right keywords, your blog can get consistently found year after year.
There are tons of reasons why having a blog is super important and we have a blog post all about getting started – but for now, we’re here to share 5 ways to optimize your blog so you’re getting found on Google and bringing traffic to your website.
1. Use keywords throughout your post
This has been said time and time again but for some reason, it’s still the common issue when it comes to optimizing blogs. There’s two sides to this – first: don’t over saturate your blog with keywords and throw them in every other word so they get picked up. You’ll definitely get flagged but it also doesn’t make for readable, good content for your audience. Second: people often think it’s a good idea to make their titles or content ‘trendy’ meaning you’re saying things in a different way instead of just being specific. It’s great if you can write a really fun post with witty remarks, but if people are searching for something specific, it’s unlikely yours will come up.
Now we’re not saying you should sound like a robot but be specific where you need to be. In your titles, headings, intro sentence, hyperlink text and meta descriptions – you need to be adding your keywords in. Think about if you were searching for what you were writing about – what would you literally write in Google? Those types of sentences and words should be added throughout your post.
2. Name your images properly
Guys, this is a peeeeeve of ours. Okay maybe not a peeve because we definitely get how annoying it can be, BUT, it’s necessary to optimize your blog post. A great way to make your blog more lively and fun to read is to add pictures. Whether you take the pictures yourself or grab a stock photo, you need to make sure you are naming it properly and adding keywords into the naming convention. Often time you see IMG_607.jpg – that’s a no from us. Take the time to add a proper name, insert alt text and any meta descriptions that you can – it will be a huge boost for your SEO and getting an optimized crawl from Google.
3. Give readers opportunity to subscribe and share
It’s great that you got people to your website and that they are reading your blogs (woo!) but then what happens? They drop off? NO! Give them the opportunity to subscribe so they are notified every time you post a new blog and also have the option for them to share your content – whether it be to Facebook, Email or copy the link directly. Making that step easy for them will enable them to share your content with more people, which means more readers!
4. Use long-tail keywords
When you’re doing your keyword research (which you should always be doing…), remember that you don’t always have to use single words. Using single words can be a really hard market to compete with because there are millions of other sites that have the same word. Use long-tail keywords – in other words: sentences, that are specific to what you are writing about. For example, if you are writing about ways to style your hair in the summer, don’t just rely on the word ‘hairstyle’ – use longer form sentences like ‘# ways to style your hair in the summer’. It’s specific enough that you have a stronger chance at coming up on top for search results when someone is searching for summer hairstyles.
5. Use internal links
A great way to get found is having other websites link back to you, so the traffic is directed directly to you. Well, unless you have a lot of blogger friends that’s hard to do when you’re getting started. What you can do is link internally – what that means is, link to other pages, posts and content on your site through your blog. Anything that is relevant to your blog post and you have on your site already, guide people there by linking the text. It gives your audience more value and it keeps them on your website for longer.
Growing your blog traffic can be a tricky mountain to climb, it really is about building organic growth and that comes with time. Continue to promote yourself on platforms that work for you, but always bring them back to a space that you own (like your blog). It’s a great way to share content in longer form and provide your audience with value.
Starting a blog is easy-ish, but getting it noticed is a whole other can of worms. There are tons of ways to optimize it so you are coming up in search and these 5 tips should help you get started!
Do you have a blog? Let us know in the comments and we’ll check it out!
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