Are you an entrepreneur who’s just getting your new business off the ground? If so, you need to know about SEO.
Short for Search Engine Optimization, SEO is a critical make-or-break factor in any online business. In this post, we’ll cover five things that every new business owner should know about SEO for their blog.
What is SEO?
As an internet user in the 2020s, chances are you’ve at least heard of SEO before. Essentially, SEO is a type of organic advertising that uses blog posts and other content to rank your page higher on a search engine than a competitor’s. This high ranking generates site traffic, which you can convert into sales.
To do that, you’ll need to create high-quality content that readers find helpful. You can’t just spam an article with a bunch of keywords and expect it to rank well. Google’s too smart for that. Instead, you’ll need a more nuanced approach.
Five Ways to Improve SEO with Your Blog
Below, we’ll break down five of the most important things for new business owners who want to use their blog to optimize SEO.
First Things First: Conduct Keyword Research
You can’t optimize for SEO keywords if you don’t know what your keywords are! Before you can write an SEO-optimized blog post, you need to perform keyword research.
To perform keyword research, you’re going to need some kind of keyword research tool. Webapps like SEMrush and ahrefs are the industry standard here and can help you find high-ranking keywords, low-difficulty keywords, and associated key phrases. Once you have 2 or 3 keywords, you’re ready to get writing!
Optimizing Page and Heading Titles
Once you have your blog topic and keywords figured out, you need to put them into your blog. That doesn’t just mean inserting them into the body of your text, though. Search engines also like to see keywords displayed in headings, titles, and subtitles.
Whatever you do, don’t put the same keyword in every heading, though. Over-optimizing is a surefire way to get a search engine to flag your site for keyword manipulation.
Don’t Forget Meta Descriptions
One important part of SEO that doesn’t occur on your page involves meta descriptions. These short snippets appear under your page’s title on a search engine. They give readers an idea of what the page is about, generally in 160 characters or less.
However, meta descriptions do more than just help readers. Search engines also comb them for keywords. Make sure to include primary keywords in your meta description for better SEO!
Learn to Love Links
Keywords are definitely one of the most important aspects of good SEO. But they’re not the only factors that search engines look at to rank your page.
Links to and from other high-ranking pages also play a huge part in your search engine rankings. Try to include links from high-ranking sites in your own blog posts to help pump up your own numbers. And whenever possible, see if you can get another high-ranking site to link to your own pages.
Don’t Overdo It
While it might be tempting to just cram as many relevant keywords as possible into a blog post, don’t do it. Google has some of the best minds in the world (both human and computer) working on ways to prevent blatant search engine manipulation.
As a result, you’ll need to create content that’s actually helpful for your users. By meshing reader usefulness with the rest of the SEO best practices in this post, you’ll be ready to get your new business the attention it needs to get off the ground!
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