Often people approach me wanting to redesign their website to begin attracting viewers to their blog or website — well it doesn’t exactly work like that.
Search Engine optimization campaigns aren’t the flick of a switch. A good SEO campaign should span no shorter than 6 months, and honestly, preferably a year. It involves a boatload of keyword research, finding out what people are searching and who is or isn’t competing with those terms. It involves link-building, which is actively tweeting and commenting on other blogs, linking to relevance on your blog, and staying communicative and connected to your community. It involves managing keywords in your pages and blog posts while ensuring fluid readability for your users (after all, your content must interest your viewers — without their interest no SEO campaign in the World’s going to help you.)
With that said there are some barebones basic, cardinal, essential habits that all successful blogs have and would be in your best interest to honour them wherever possible. I’m not going to bore you with a large list of them, I’m not even giving you three. I am providing you with two. Two that you can change today. Right now, even.
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First — You must have recent, updated, relevant content. This is easier to accomplish with most blogging software allowing you to Schedule your tweets/blog posts: use that functionality.
Don’t post now, think about when your users will have a spare moment and schedule it to publish then, or twenty minutes before then. Now aim for your next blog post to be a week from then. Finished early? Schedule it and start working on the following weeks post. Giving yourself a buffer of a few days/week ensures that content continues to flow constantly to your viewers. This is crucial to keep them and search engines coming back. They will be expecting new content, therefore have a reason to show back up.
- Second — Follow a target. Don’t tweet about the Subway diet one day, then computer programming the next. Personal life issues in one post and cooking a succulent Turkey dinner the next. If you stick to an industry (I hate the word niche, but specialize in something) you will attract others looking for information in that industry. It’s not that hard, just figure out where you enjoy writing the most and make 2 or 3 out of 5 posts on that topic. Naturally do as I say, not as I do applies to this approach.
Change you blog a little at a time. Don’t try to become a pro blogger in a day. It doesn’t and can’t work like that. You need the content to back yourself up as a World class blogger so focus on changing something small now and in two weeks change something else. There’s no easy way through the blogging World, rely on persistence and planning.
Blog about cohesive topics and schedule them to publish at incremental dates in the future and you’re way ahead of the game. I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s had taken this advice and seen a change in their traffic… What do you think about my two suggestions, feel free to comment below!
Happy blogging!
