Social Media Focal Point #3: Basic Blog SEO Strategy

This is the third part of my 7 Social Media Focal Points to Evaluate Now series. Today we will be talking about very basic blogging SEO.

You spend all kinds of time and money trying to figure out how to reach your target demographic, yet it can still be quite confusing as to what people are using as search terms. You might have talked to a few SEO companies, but the cost and process can be intimidating. So when it comes to SEO strategy , where do you start?

The good news is that Google loves fresh content, and at the beginning stages you do not need to be an expert.

Here are a 7 tips to help you get started:

1. Evaluate your blog  – What does your blog say about your company, does it represent your mission statement and core values?  You might have a great product or service, but if every post is about that product or service, it can be a turn off to the reader. Is the content clear and focused? We want to make information very easy for people to digest, any frustrations and they are lost forever. Keep it short, sweet and to the point. A blog post is not a white paper or novel, it is about getting valuable information to people very quickly. If the content is focused, it makes it easier for the search engines to index properly too.
2. Do Keyword Research – Use the Google Keyword tool to find search terms that you want to target, then write posts around those terms. Try to find terms that are not super competitive, yet are searched enough to create value for the time you invest. People are using longer phrases (long tail keywords) in their search, and that trend will continue. Also, when people are more specific in their search, they are a better lead. Think about it, if someone is searching for a generic, but highly competitive, term like “Cameras” they are probably just getting started on their path. If someone is searching for “Wide Angle Lens Canon 60D” they are probably more serious about what they are looking for.
3. Page Titles, Descriptions and Keywords – Write content that is keyword rich, but please don’t flood the information with keywords so that the post is no longer fun to read. Your readers will frown upon this practice, and Google will too. Make sure that your titles and descriptions reflect the content. Again, we don’t want to stuff words into this, but if you keep things simple and clear the Google bots will smile upon you.
4. Internal Links – When you are writing posts, try to link back to an archive posts for reference. For example, I could link back to something like writing consistent content for your blog from my previous post in this series. It is relevant to this post, counts as an internal link and will get people to click through scoring another page view. All things Google likes!
5. Create a Sitemap – A sitemap is a page listing and linking to all of the other major pages on your site. This makes it much easier for search engines to crawl your site. This is a very easy process, simply download something like the Google XML Sitemap plugin and it will generate the sitemap for you.
6. Social Media and Social Bookmarking – The search engines are putting more weight into the social media platforms, and we want to use every avenue at our disposal to make the content searchable and discoverable. Make sure to share your posts via Twitter, Facebook and other relevant social services. Set up social bookmarking accounts with sites like Digg and StumbleUpon too!
7. Commit and Execute – All of the planning and strategy in the world is worthless unless you commit to the execution. Get that content up, and often.

See, nothing here is intimidating. It is all about having a plan and keeping to it. All of the more complex SEO strategies can come into play later. The most important thing today is that you get started and build the best of habits.

Please feel free to leave your comments, questions and feedback below.

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