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A small blogging roadmap to improve SEO

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Blogging roadmap to improve your SEO

Blogging roadmap to improve your SEO.

Planning to improve your search engine rankings with a blogging campaign?

Although the primary purpose of publishing a blog is to inform and educate your visitors so that they can make better purchase decisions, a good side effect of persistent blogging is an improvement in your search engine rankings, better SEO.

Nevertheless, most of the businesses want to start a blog to improve SEO. This is a reality, and I’m not going to be judgmental.

Since SEO is a serious business, you need to have a roadmap to publish an effective blog that helps you improve your search engine rankings. Here are a few steps you can follow:

Prepare an SEO checklist

What is on SEO checklist? It is a list of a few blog writing and blog publishing attributes you must adhere to when researching, writing and publishing your blog posts. Your SEO checklist may include

  • Preparing a list of primary and secondary keywords that you are going to cover in the current blog post.
  • A blog post title with your main keyword or key phrase.
  • The main headline with your main keyword or key phrase.
  • Headings and subheadings having various combinations of your keyword (also include LSI keywords).
  • Making your blog posts easily scannable using headings, subheadings and bulleted lists.
  • Using images every 200-300 words and including alt attribute for better accessibility.
  • Including hyperlinks to existing blog posts and web pages.
  • Using your keyword within the first 100 words.

Research and compile your keyword list

Before you begin your blogging campaign to improve your SEO, you need to research your keyword list. These are the keywords around which you are going to write and publish multiple blog posts.

No matter what tool you use to research your target keywords, keep a dedicated place to compile your keyword list, like a spreadsheet. In the first column you can store all the primary keywords. In the second column you can store related or synonymous keywords. In the third column you can store the larger phrases to make the keywords less competitive.

Prepare your blog publishing calendar

Recall that in the above point, in the third column I suggested you store larger phrases. This is the column that will help you define the various topics you want to publish for your blog.

Enter these topics in your publishing calendar.

A publishing calendar helps you stay on course. You will also know which topics you have covered and which you still need to cover. This way, you will avoid duplicate publishing.

Blog publishing calendar also helps to prioritize. Which blog posts do you want to publish first? Start with less competitive keywords because this will help you improve your search engine rankings faster.

Always begin with an outline

Actually, there is no hard-and-fast rule about how to write efficiently, but writing an outline first always helps. This way, you cannot miss out on the main points. These headlines can be then turned into headings and subheadings.

You can use the following elements to create an outline:

  • Headings and subheadings.
  • Bulleted points.
  • Random sentences arranged in a logical manner.

Fill the text under the outlines

Start feeling the test under the headings and subheadings. Expand upon them. For example, if you look at the above subheading – always begin with an outline – you can see that after the subheading, I have explained in a small detail what needs to be done.

Thoroughly proofread

Make sure there are no silly spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. Turn longer sentences into shorter sentences. Make sure you are not unnecessarily using adjectives.

To speed up the process you can use the inbuilt editor that comes with most word processors these days.

Make sure your blog post complies with your SEO checklist

This is the last glance that you throw at your blog post that you have written. To make sure that this blog post is going to improve your search engine rankings, run it through the SEO checklist that you have prepared.

This blogging roadmap will not only keep you on the right course, it will also help you achieve your search engine optimization goals faster.

How to write a quick, in-depth blog post even when you don’t have time

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Writing a blog post when in a rush

If you are publishing a business blog one of the greatest hurdles you’re going to come across is publishing blog posts regularly, on an ongoing basis. Otherwise your blog, no matter how well-written, well-maintained it is, is going to lose steam. People will lose interest. Since they will not be aware of your publishing schedule their visits to your blog will be erratic at the best. In order to draw people on a regular basis, you need to publish blog posts regularly and there needs to be a set pattern. But as a busy entrepreneur how do you manage that?

Of course, being a professional content writer my advice would be to hire yourself someone like yours truly, but if you don’t want to do that and you would rather write on your own, here is how you can manage to produce in-depth blog posts on a regular basis even if you are running short of time.

  • Maintain an ideas file: If you know what you want to write, you can write it quickly. A big problem is when you have time, you don’t know what to write. This problem can be solved if you have an ideas file or a section where you can store your ideas. I use Evernote for that. Whenever I get a new idea that will require lots of research, I create a new note and then as I come across various bits of information while surfing the net, I keep copy/pasting that information in that particular note so that by the time I get down to actually writing the blog post, I have everything ready.
  • Create an outline: You don’t necessarily have to complete a blog post in one go. Remember your purpose is not to complete and somehow publish the blog post in a couple of hours, your purpose is writing and publishing quality content on your business blog. Don’t compromise on that, so don’t be in a hurry. Even if you have time to jot down just a single line, do that and then stop worrying about the blog post. You may initially feel that you aren’t doing much, but when you are maintaining multiple blogging ideas you will very soon come across a situation when you have lots of material at hand on an ongoing basis.
  • Use a mind mapping tool:
    These days I find myself using Free Mind quite often. It is a Java-based mind mapping tool. Mind mapping tools are a great way to organise complex ideas. If you’re not used to the interface you may find it off-putting initially but once you get used to it, it will be an invaluable productivity tool in your kitty.
  • Install a blogging app on your mobile phone:
    You may get an idea while travelling and unless you have some system to quickly store it, it may be lost for ever. I have the WordPress app installed on my mobile phone and whenever I need to collect my thoughts on a blog I create the entry and save it as a draft. Then, as and when I come across ideas and information, I just use my phone to update the draft. Finally, when I sit in front of my computer I give the finishing touches to the draft and then publish the blog post.
  • Don’t get bogged down by the size of the blog post: Although here I’m talking about writing in-depth blog posts you don’t need to begin every blog post with the same purpose. Just focus on the single sentence and you will be amazed how the floodgates to new ideas are suddenly opened. Even if that doesn’t happen, there is no problem with posting just a single paragraph if you think you are running behind your blogging schedule. Later on you can always update a blog post that you have already published – there is no rule against that.
  • Crowd source your content:
    You can create a simple blog post and then ask your visitors to drop in ideas in the comments section on how a particular blog post can be improved. You can also seek opinion on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.