As I’ve mentioned in some of my other posts, keeping your website fresh is one of the most important things you can do for SEO. Search engines LOVE new content, and one of the best ways you can get that content is to have a blog on your website. A blog provides an easy way to create fresh content while still keeping it on topic. If you are looking to start a blog to help you with SEO for your website, here’s a few tips to help you out:

KEYWORDS!

Always keep your blog post on topic, and sprinkle a few of your keywords in the post for good measure. Don’t overstuff them, or drop them into random places with no context – that can actually hurt your ranking! A keyword or key phrase in the blog title works well, too.

BE SELF-HOSTED

When a blog is hosted off your website on places like Blogger and Tumblr, it isn’t truly connected. You can link back and forth all you want, but search engines will index them as two separate locations. This won’t help your main website’s SEO ranking! Move that blog on your website and watch your SEO move up!

CREATE QUALITY CONTENT

One of the biggest recommendations I can make is to write good quality and readable content. Keyword overstuffing, as I mentioned above, makes your text completely unreadable to your customers, and no one wants to read that. Make sure your post stays on your topic, too!

Try to write an article with a minimum of 300 words. A good rule of thumb is to put your keywords in about 1 to 2 percent of your text. With an article of 300 words, you should have your key terms and phrases in there about 3 to 6 times.

Linking back to pages on your website, as well as previous posts on the same subject, is always a great idea. It shows that you have some authority on the subject. Two to three links per article is a good rule of thumb, and try to have a link in the top quarter of the post.

LOVE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES!

If you have Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media pages set up for your website, don’t forget to post your blog to them! Your blog and website can become more popular as your posts get spread around social media. Not only will you be getting new visitors from everywhere else you post, but your SEO results will also begin to improve as search engines notice that others are sharing your content. Don’t just share it once, too – give it a couple of weeks and re-share so new people will see it!

As you can see, blogging and SEO go hand-in-hand! I hope these tips give you some great ideas to get started. If you have questions, or would love to have 5 Stones Media help you with your website’s SEO, contact us today!