Posting good blog should come natural to any business owner or website manager. This is because you are writing about the products and services that you offer, so nobody is better qualified to talk about the subject matter.

Writing a blog does post shouldn’t necessarily entertain the visitor to the page, but be a good blend of information, news, ideas and facts.

Frequency of blogging- there is no rule book, but the size of the post will determine whether you can blog every day or just once a week for example.

Step by step blog tutorial:

Set up Google Alerts

This will email through any news or blog that Google finds, and helps keep you in the know about your chosen keywords. Start here. Once the Alert is activated, you will receive daily or weekly updates from other blogs and news channels that contain the phrase you have entered.

This not only helps you see industry news to discuss, but helps keep you up to date with the activity of your competition.

To set-up a Google alert you will first need a Google account to login to. You can stop or change the alerts at any time, and add as many as you want. Another good option is that you can select either news, blog, or both news and blog to come through. This means you can decide to see more credible sources of information with the news section alone.

Decide on your categories

Your blog should be divided into different topics or sections. For example we have blog, news, Google related, jobs etc.

Having seperate categories helps browsers find relevant information and improves their experience. For SEO it helps seperate the clusters of information you want the search engines to find. We choose one keyphrase and then blog on every variation of the keyphrase within that category, and then replicate the process.

Set a frequency in your mind and stick to it

It’s too easy to get going then forget it for a month or two. Your competitors won’t forget and they’ll win the better rankings as a result. We strongly recommend a daily post, even if it’s only 150 words. It takes just 10-20 minutes per day and will last forever.

When you create the Google alerts you can set the email to a daily frequency, and that can be your reminder. Alternatively, set a weekly email alert and then add a daily reminder via Outlook, this reminds you to check the email content and create a post on a daily basis.

Check a blog from your industry and you will see that others are doing this, and the best blogs have daily posts. It helps the search engines have a reason to come back and cache your website every day. It also helps you to become an authority on your subject matter over time, which gives the blog improved credibility.

Choose titles that entice people

Try to use main keyphrases that browsers will recognise. The post title will usually be the page title too, so this will help the SEO structure of the post. Don’t use too many words either, catchy is best. As long as the visitor knows what they are getting, there will be a good chance they will find the content useful.

Pictures help draw traffic

Many places where blogs are found are directories or the Google Blog results, and having a small image with your blog will sometimes get shown. This helps attract the click more than blog with text alone.

The image should have an ‘alt tag’ if possible for SEO purposes, and should be in a format that isn’t too large. Avoid bitmap images and go for jpegs, gifs and png’s.

A bright and colourful picture can help discribe the post as well as a title does. Make sure it’s relevant to the content, make sure you own or have access rights to the image first though.

Short paragraphs keep your audience entertained

You may have noticed that blogs seem to have shorter paragraphs than say a book would. That’s because monitors are difficult to stare at in one place for any length of time.

Having shorter sections of text highlighting one particular topic, view point, statement, idea etc will give the visitor a snippet of info at a time, and gives them chance to blink between paragraphs.

It’s is also fact that shorter paragraphs make for easier scanning of pages for information- something you need to give the visitor the opportunity to do.

Have a good structure to the content

Just like you were taught at school when writing a story, have an introduction, a middle and an end. The first paragraph can describe what the post is about. The second, or middle section, should be the bulk of the info and be considered the meaty content.

At the end of the post either summarise your point or add an angle from your companies perspective. If the post talks about an issue or problem with a product for example, try to offer a solution to this that your business can provide. Reading it back to yourself will help.

Finish with an opportunity

When you have completed the days blogging, don’t let the hard earned traffic have the chance to leave the website. Offer a link to another section, or if it’s a commercial blog, post the telephone number or email address offering a chance to immediately contact you.

There is normally a reason for blogging, and generating sales leads is the main reason. Although blogging is a big help with SEO, the ultimate aim is to generate traffic from the search engines. Remember this at all times and try to build a webbsite blog that will convert, by giving every chance for the visitor to contact you.

How to make the most of blogging for SEO - Friday 10th September 2010