Competition for visibility on the search engines is fierce, particularly as knowledge of the purchase power of content such as blogs grows widespread. To set this in some context, blogs were found to be the third-most influential digital resource (31%) when making overall purchases, coming second only to retail sites (56%) and brand’s own sites (34%). In fact, according to Technorati’s Digital Influence Report 2013, blogs are the fifth-most trustworthy source for online information.
Naturally, as brands wise up to the compelling power of blogging, more and more are rushing to host their own blogs. Many of these are not credible sources of information- and the sheer quantity of companies resorting to keyword stuffing and other ‘black hat’ SEO tactics makes drowning in a sea of poor-quality, yet super-SEO posts a very real risk.
There is no point in crafting sublime copy if nobody is going to find it. At BlogStar, we are strong believers that the quality of your business blogs and other web content does not need to be compromised for the search engines.
In the contest for eyeballs, we can draw on several core principles to ensure that content is seen for all the right reasons:
1. Use real time data to stay ahead of the curve
Look both on your website (for example, traffic coming from a specific keyword search) and elsewhere (Twitter’s trending topics are ideal) to maximise the web’s role as barometer for news and happenings as they unfold.
2. Optimise your content for social as well as search
Your business blog and other web content has to be incredibly easy to share. Use the most popular social sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or YouTube if you’re using video content.
3. Use multimedia content
Following on from tip 2, remember that Yahoo, Google and Bing all show multi-format results on their first search engine results page (SERP). Think beyond text content and you’ll improve the chances of that content being found and shared.
4. Optimise your titles to drive shares
Your blog titles will be the first thing users see on social networks and search engines. Ensure that they are keyword-optimised, snappy and make use of sound bites to encourage comments and sharing.
5. Target the right search personas
Join the marketers who now create search personas to gain a deeper understanding of how their ideal online customers search online. Once you have built a clear and accurate search persona, tailor your content and style to match their needs and interests.
Bearing these SEO tips in mind, always remember to offer your audience that bit extra to gain a competitive edge. This might be in the form of rich expertise, valuable how-to videos, informative white papers or so on. It’s one thing to attract people to your content using clever search strategy, it’s quite another to entice them to become a loyal reader, and yet another leap to convert them into a valued customer. Ultimately, when it comes to content nothing tops relevance and quality.
Photo: Ryan Hyde
