Having a blog is important for B2B tech and telecoms companies. According to HubSpot, marketers who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on investment (ROI).
Blogging can help you establish your brand, as well as increase the number of website visitors and improve conversion rates. This is where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes into play.
What is SEO?
SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
Quality of Traffic: Attracting visitors who are genuinely interested in the topics that you explore, and are therefore potential customers.
Quantity of Traffic: Once you have the right visitors clicking through to your site, you want to ensure that you are getting enough visits to increase your chances of turning some of those visitors into actual customers.
Organic Search Engine Results: Organic traffic is traffic that you don’t have to pay for. This is established through SEO. So rather than paying for an advert to appear on a search engine, your ranking will be high enough in the list of results that people will click on your website organically.
Allocating time for SEO is key to attracting more visitors to your blog and website. This can be done in a variety of ways. We’ve put together 5 SEO tips to help your business improve its website traffic.
According to Seocopywriting, the minimum word count of a blog should be 500 words. While Google doesn’t specify an official word count, research does show that longer posts can position better in organic search.Blog posts should be compelling and well researched. Producing useful and relevant content will bring your audience back for more.
Searchable keywords are crucial for your SEO. The more likely people are searching for these words in search engines, the higher your blog posts are going to rank if they include them.
How to Find the Best Keywords
Keywords are single words or phrases that people type into search engines to find a specific topic. For example, if you type ‘SEO’ into Google you can see the suggestions based on popular searches. Websites like Moz Keyword Explorer and Google Trends help you to quickly research keywords that will be relevant for your blog post by understanding what terms people are using to search.
Using the most popular keywords will instantly make your content more visible. They need to be in the main body of your posts, as well as in the title, the URL, the meta description, and the slug. Many marketers forget about the slug, which is the part of the URL that explains the page’s content. For example, the URL for Ilex would be https://ilexcontent.com/blogs and ‘blogs’ is the slug.
Adding images to your blog posts not only breaks up the sections making your text easier to read, but it helps optimise your content for search.
For your images to contribute to your SEO two things must be adjusted. Your alt tag needs to be filled out, along with the keyword included. You will also need to save the original image with the keyword in the title.
This way, when people search the keyword that you’re using, your image will also rank in search. This ultimately leads them to your blog, which increases visitors to your website.
By providing additional, relevant and high-quality links, your blog posts automatically become more authoritative and useful. There are two types of links you can use to boost your SEO:
External Link: An external link is a link to a site outside of your own. This can be used to help your reader get further information on the topic you are providing or reference source material.
Internal Link: An internal link is a link to somewhere else on your own site. For example, a link to your contact page could be useful if you are providing your readers with information about your services.
External links can build authority, expand your reach, and demonstrate that you are including valuable resources for the purpose of your readers. Internal links make your site user-friendly by providing extra information.
Using external links will help search engines see your site as more valuable, ranking you higher in search results. Internal links do the same, but they also encourage visitors to spend more time on your site.
What are meta descriptions?
Meta descriptions are the text snippets that conclude what your content is about. On search engines like Google, this is the first information viewers will see about your post.
Viewers will only see your meta descriptions if you are using keywords and you are ranking high enough through the use of other SEO best practices.
Meta descriptions have the maximum space of 158 characters. Writing a compelling description that uses keywords and instantly tells the viewer what the post is about is crucial. Having a good meta description can increase your blogs’ click-through rates.
Utilising SEO best practices is key for your blog posts to rank higher in search engines, increasing the number of new visitors to your site. By establishing your brand through blogging, you’ll be able to engage a loyal readership with visitors, which can lead to ongoing sales. Our expert team are here to help you create quality content and boost your SEO.