7 Ways an SEO Optimized Blog Can Skyrocket Your Business

According to imForza, about 93% of online experiences start with a search engine. 

With that in mind, it’s no wonder that the SEO industry is one of the fastest-growing ones in terms of revenue and that almost every marketer is trying to employ different SEO techniques to increase the visibility of their brand.

Having an SEO-optimized blog ensures that your business is attracting the right audience and that the value you’re offering is relevant to your audience’s needs.

So, where do you begin when creating an SEO-optimized blog?

Here are our top 7 tips that you can implement into your SEO strategy to skyrocket your business:

1. Develop an SEO-friendly website

Your business’s website is the first thing your target audience comes in touch with when searching for specific products or services. 

If you want to stand out from your direct competition and generate more traffic, you’ll need to develop and optimize a website so that it’s search engine friendly.

Making an SEO-friendly website should be a part of your SEO strategy. Some of your main objectives should be:

By employing some of these tips, your business may experience an array of benefits. For one, an SEO-friendly website might increase your organic traffic.

Although organic traffic doesn’t yield fast results, it’s cost-effective, and users who are visiting your website from the organic search engine results are more likely to convert to sales.

Apart from that, a search engine-friendly website is trusted more and generally tends to provide a smoother user experience.

The reason for that is because incorporating SEO strategies in website design leads to a faster loading, easier to navigate and easier-to-read website.

2. Conduct keyword research and incorporate keywords into your content

Keyword research is an essential step in conducting search engine optimization. To attract your target audience and generate leads, you first have to understand the terms your ideal customers are entering into search engines and their intent.

To conduct successful keyword research, you should first make a list of topics that are included on your website/blog the most or topics that your customers are most interested in. 

You might already have this kind of information at your disposal, which is great! If not, you may have to envision the buyer persona of your ideal customers to figure it out, or you could use some of the available keyword research tools online to help you out. 

Either way, once you figure those out, you should check out the monthly search volume of the keywords related to those topics and figure out what your audience really wants to see. Then, you need to include these keywords in your blog posts. 

Wondering if there’s something you should look for when choosing your keywords and how to incorporate them? We’re happy to provide some guidance:

3. Make your website more accessible by creating a sitemap

A sitemap is a graphic representation of the way your website is structured. Essentially, it’s a list of all of your site’s pages and the content included on them.

There are two major benefits to having a sitemap. One is user-related and the other is important for search engines.

For users, having a sitemap makes your website easier to use and more accessible. In other words, it’s a sort of blueprint where everything is compiled at once place, which makes navigation across your website more user-friendly.

As for the search engines, sitemaps make understanding your website structure easier for them. Having one will increase the visibility of your websites on search engines and shorten the time the search engine crawlers take to figure out which pages to prioritize.

So, how does an ideal sitemap look? Generally, you should aim to keep the navigation to any page of your website down to just three clicks. This means that you’ll have to create a page hierarchy and index first.

As sitemaps are written in XML, having experience with HTML coding is something you could benefit from. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, you can always use one of the free sitemap building tools available online or have someone else create it for you.

4. Create a content marketing strategy

If you want to improve your conversions, you need to find a way to connect with your target audience and build a trusting relationship with them. 

The best way to do so? Content marketing.

Statistics show that around 72% have noticed an increase in engagement after employing certain content marketing strategies. In other words, content is essential in influencing your customers to take action on your webpage.

However, not just any content will do the trick. You have to create high-quality content. Content that focuses on the specific pains and gains of your target customer and provides them with a unique value, all while highlighting your brand’s unique value.

This means that your content should inform your audiences of the best ways to solve their issues and satisfy their needs. 

Understanding what problems your users are trying to fix is just one step toward successful content marketing. You also need to make your content easy to skim through, enjoyable and engaging.

You can achieve that by:

• Writing articles and blog posts
• Creating How-to guides and action plans
• Keeping your content properly formatted and organized by keywords
• Using graphics and lists
• Incorporating high-value backlinks
• Citing trusted sources
• Posting consistently
• Keeping your content up to date
• Including Product pages and videos showcasing your unique offers
• Incorporating calls-to-action 

Make SEO a part of your content marketing strategy, and you’ll likely see a huge payoff.

5. Use internal and external links

External links are links to your web pages posted on other highly authoritative and reputable websites. They’re a great way to attract free traffic to your website and provide users with a way to connect with your products or services.

You should ensure that these links lead to high quality and relevant content on your website. Otherwise, they may be recognized as spam and hurt your search engine ranking. The same logic applies to using too many external links.

So, the general gist of external links is: If a user sees a link to your website on another site that is credible, they will be more inclined to consider your website as credible and your content as valuable too.

Internal links, on the other hand, are the links you include in your content on your website to redirect the readers to other pages on your site. 

These links can help your users discover other pages on your site, preferably those which have lower traffic. If you can get your user to open multiple internal links, they’ll be more likely to spend extra time on your website and turn into customers.

Try including descriptive anchor text in your internal links. This way, you’ll help search engines identify certain important pages, which will help rank them higher on search result pages.

Finally, remove the broken links from your website. These are the links leading to 404 error or similar pages.

Broken links diminish customer experience and make it harder for search engines to discover the content on your website. If you have too many of them, search engines may label your content as low quality and you don’t want that to happen.

If you’re unsure about how to approach link building, don’t have the budget to pay for external links, or you’re simply uncomfortable with the idea of emailing websites to include links to your website, you can always outsource one of the popular SEO agencies to do it for you.

6. Make your content mobile-friendly

You’ve probably heard this a dozen times, but having a mobile-friendly website is essential in increasing your traffic. 

In fact, around 61% of customers using phones to conduct product/service searches are more likely to contact a business if they have a website optimized for mobile phones.

This means that you need to adapt your website design for a smaller screen, conduct a voice search optimization for your content and improve your website loading speed.

A mobile-friendly webpage keeps your users longer on your site and decreases your bounce rates. This is because mobile navigation is generally cleaner and easier to figure out and no pop-ups affect the functionality of your website.

Mobile-friendly websites also make CTAs easier to spot, which can improve your conversion rate.

Don’t forget that search engines are all about providing a satisfactory customer experience, and creating a mobile-friendly SEO strategy is a great step towards having them rank your website higher.

7. Use social media to boost your content

In the same way you’d use external links on other authoritative websites, you can use social media to boost your content.

If you want to reach a massive audience and attract new leads, make sure to post your articles and blog posts on social media. Include captivating descriptions that appeal to your audience and encourage them to take action.

You could also include references to your socials on your website so that your customers can connect with you across multiple digital channels.

While social media does not factor into Google ranking, if you get people talking about your brand on these platforms, Google might recognize your content as relevant and rank it higher. This could lead to an increase in your brand visibility, recognition and reputation.