If you’re trying to improve your search engine rankings, blog post marketing is one the quickest and most effective methods of link-building. Use your blog to build your reputation as an expert in your field and, provided that you put effort into providing unique and interesting content, you’ll find it easy to accrue thousands of inbound links by means of having your content shared and re-posted. SEO? Check.
Here’s a few easy rules to follow when writing blog posts for marketing.
1. Use a catchy title
Remember that the title may appear as a link on other websites, as a tweet, or in a Facebook stream. Focus on creating a title which is short, concise and intriguing. I could have called this post “How to write good blog posts” or “Tips for better blog marketing”.
Apply the “Would I click that?” test, and be honest.
2. Use a short title
Long titles run the risk of being truncated by Twitter, or being too long to quickly summarise your post. Although by no means a hard-and-fast rule, use 4-7 words as a rough guideline.
3. Use a relevant title
When choosing a topic to write about, use Google Insights or Google AdWords Keyword Tool to identify what people are searching for. As you come up with potential titles, punch them into Google and see what you get back. If the search reuslts are an entire page of articles with similar titles, try again and keep going until you get something less crowded.
4. Stick to lists
Readers love lists. I’m not smart enough to give you all the psychological and sub-conscious reasons why. Just trust me. If you’re looking to craft some link-bait and get people sharing your blog posts, you can’t go wrong with “4 Reasons You Should…” or “Top 9 Tips for Improving Your…” Another tip, don’t use the number 10 for your list. It’s gives potential readers the idea that you may have just filled the last few spots with junk to fill out the 10-item list. Odd numbers provide reassurance that the article will only contain genuine content.
5. Original content
Don’t steal, copy or slightly re-write content you’ve found somewhere else. This is bad for two reasons – Google will likely recognise this and may potentially penalise your rankings, but more importantly, you’ll never establish yourself as an expert in your industry reciting somebody elses ideas.
6. Write short
Don’t use more words than you need to.
7. Write for the people
This is the rule most oft neglected, but arguably most important. While you’re writing, try to keep in mind that the goal is for people to enjoy your content. Enjoy it so much that they feel compelled to tell all their friends.
Remember that the over-repeated phrase “content is king” shouldn’t be misconstrued to refer to quantity – it’s all about quality. Google is smart enough these days to tell the different between keyword-dense throwaway copy and genuine content. If you regularly publish original, interesting content on your blog, your readers will do the SEO part for you.
You’ll notice that while this article is about SEO, I haven’t talked about keyword density, H1 tags, post URLs, or any other technical aspects. As the ranking algorithms of Google and other search engines improve, our ability to influence their results through cheap tricks is disappearing. I’m not saying that these elements aren’t important, but focusing on firstly providing a great user experience is sure to provide stronger long term search engine rankings.