All Entries Tagged With: "blog content"

Keyword Management: How Should A Blog Be Written?

I manage a handful of bloggers and have managed more than 100 blogs in the last couple of years. I also read a great deal about blogging and copywriting from other bloggers in the industry. I’ve noticed that there are two general views regarding how to write a blog. Those views can be summarized below:

• Valuable Content View – This is the view that your content should be written with your readers in mind, not the search engines. The idea is that keywords are necessary, but not so important that you forget about the needs of your readers. You aren’t writing keyword fluff. You’re writing content that will be deemed valuable by human readers and not just words on a page driven by keyword usage
• Keyword-Rich View – The keyword-rich view is just the opposite. This view presupposes that SEO is everything. Without the right mix of keywords and the correct density patterns and so on you might as well not even blog. If you don’t optimize every single blog post to the utmost then you aren’t really blogging, according to this view. The weakness of this view is that optimization may get you good rankings, though often you can end up hurting yourself by over optimizing, it won’t endure you to your readers and what good is a blog if it has no readers?

Here at Blog Content Provider, we believe in SEO content. We are an SEO company. But we also believe in reaching readers at a gut level. That’s why I like to stress valuable content first and SEO as an additional benefit. Because if you do it right, your blog will attract readers and when it does it will increase in SEO power by sheer authoritativeness.

How Do You Make Boring Blog Content Exciting?

Nothing is boring. Eveything is boring. Depending on who you ask, _______________ is boring. So how do you get some excitement into that blank you just filled in?

Well, there are no right or wrong answers when it come to creativity, and writing interesting blog content is a form of creativity. Understandably, some content is inherently more exciting than others. But everyone has a different excitometer. One person may thing scantily clad bathing beauties is exciting. Someone else may think computer hardware is exciting (though I can’t imagine who). But what matters the most is how you write, not what you write.

Even pin up girls can be boring if you don’t write well (unless all you have are photos). Computer hardware can bore even the greatest enthusiast if the writing doesn’t capture them head on. So what do you do?

I think the key to writing interestingly about content that can ordinarily be boring boils down to two things:

• Personality and writing style
• Relevance

I can’t help you writing style. That’s yours. You either develop it or your don’t. But you have to put your personality into it. Many an average writer has increased her readership just by doing that alone.

Relevance. That’s a different story. I can help you there.

The key to making your blog content relevant is to picture the one person your blog post applies to most sitting on the sofa, or the train, curled up with his laptop and reading what you are writing right now. How would you talk to that person? If you were sitting across the table from him telling him what you are about to tell him through your blog post, how would you do it? What phrases would you use? What anecdotes or supporting stories would you use?

There is no substitute for relevant context. Make your reader understand why what you are writing is so important, and do it with your own personal style.

Why You Want Your Categories To Be Keyword Driven

You know you should have categories in your blog’s sidebar. But did you know those categories should be a list of your important keywords? There are multiple reasons why, but the long and the short of it is that they help you optimize your blog. Every instance of keyword usage on your blog is one step closer to high rankings. Plus, those category names are not just keywords, they are also links, which makes them even more valuable.

Here’s a case study of how a category name can assist you with search engine benefits. Type “blog content ghostwriting” into Google’s search box (without the quotation marks). Now click on the link at the top of the page, just above the search results, that says “Show options”. Select Recent Results and sort by date. Now scroll down to position No. 8 in the results. Here’s what you should see.

At the time of my writing this blog post, this post on quality content was in the position No. 8 position 58 minutes after posting.

Examining the contents of that blog post, there is nothing in that post that discusses blogging or ghostwriting. Those words are not even mentioned in the post anywhere. So how did the post rank on Page 1 of the SERPs for the parameters we gave it? By the blog’s categories.

Take a look at those categories and you’ll see that there is one called “Blog Marketing”, another one called “Content/Website Development” and one titled “Copywriting & Ghostwriting”. All three of the search phrases used are category names on this blog, giving the latest blog post – serendepitously all about content – an added boost.

This is just one example out of millions. Keyword-focused categories are an optimization essential and can often help individual blog posts rank for key terms they might not otherwise rank for.

Does Your Blog Have A Natural Language Flow?

Blog writing isn’t hard. Too many bloggers try to make it difficult. You don’t have to spend hours upon hours searching for the right keyword for every blog post. Do most of your keyword research right up front. If you know what your niche topic is and the most important 15-20 keywords for that topic with 100 or so related keywords (yes, keep a spreadsheet unless you have a photographic memory) then you have enough information for a year’s worth of blog posts.

You don’t have to go down the list of keywords making sure that each blog post is stuffed with X number of a specific keyword in order to be optimized. The best optimization is simply natural language writing that incorporates a good mix of the right keywords over time. I’ve proven this over and over again on countless blogs of my own and client blogs. Keyword optimization for blogs is about two things: Single post high octane content and blog brandable content that moves beyond a single post. Do the first one right and after a year of posting the second one should fall into place. Natural language writing is the key.