Your website’s blog is one of the most important items on your website. Unlike the rest of your site that probably stays static, your blog is dynamic and always tells a story. It provides your visitors – and search engines – with fresh, original content that can get you found on the extremely busy web.
But there’s more to a blog than writing some copy and hitting Publish. You need to put a little more “muscle” into it. In other words, you need to optimize it.
Here are some things you should include in your post before putting it out there:
Links to Inner Pages
Referencing other content within your blog helps give new life to older content. When referring to a subject you spoke about in the past, it’s always great to link back to that story. This way, a visitor can get more info on a point you touched upon (and stay on your website longer).
SEO Information
For many of us, it’s easy to write a blog. You create a title and start typing in the Body section. Pay attention to the other sections in your content management system, though. They are there for a reason and shouldn’t be overlooked. This “metadata” is very helpful in getting your post found and indexed by the search engines. Each CMS provides SEO options, so make sure to use them.
Concise Titles
While there are no restrictions on how short or long an actual blog post should be, you will want the above metadata to be limited. This is so your titles and descriptions don’t get cut off when Google presents them in search results. Title tags shouldn’t be longer than 60 characters, while meta descriptions should be limited to 156 characters or fewer.
Image Tags
Every blog post should include an image. That’s a given. You need to take it one step further, though. Before you upload your photo, give it a title and description.
Why is this so critical? Well, Google and other search engines allow users to do searches not just based on text but also images and videos. If your photo still has a Shutterstock1234567 filename, Google won’t know what it means; the photo won’t get indexed properly. As a result, you could lose out on potential traffic.
Call to Actions
You may have the best content in the world, but if a person can’t contact you to get more information, it’s all for naught. Be sure to provide readers with a way to contact you for more information. This could be an email, phone number or even a Twitter handle.
No matter what, every company should have a blog. It’s essentially a great (and free) way to get traffic back to your website. For additional tips on how to make your blog great, contact Wax Custom Communications at 305-350-5700 or visit waxcom.com.
