You’ve probably read plenty of posts about why your firm should have a blog. But sometimes just having a blog isn’t enough. Making sure your firm’s blog is optimized will increase your presence on Google and help potential clients find you. Not sure how to optimize your blog? Here are some quick tips:

Choose a Great Title

You want your title to attract and hook readers, but you’ll still want to keep the title short and simple. Having a long title may keep the entire text from appearing on search results.

It’s recommended that your title is between 40-69 characters. There are free tools, such as LetterCount.com, you can use to figure out how long your blog’s title is.

A title like “Qualifying for Disability Benefits with Cancer” is more optimal than “How You Can Qualify for Social Security Disability Benefits After Being Diagnosed With Cancer.” Both demonstrate what the blog will be about, but the first is concise. The full title will easily appear on search results without being cut off.

Cater Your Blog to the Right Keywords

Identify which keywords you want to target with your blog post and make sure they are included in the content and the title. Just don’t overdue it! Back in 2011, Google’s Panda Update began penalizing black-hat tactics like keyword stuffing. Having your keywords appear in 1-2% of your blog should do the trick! Three hundred-word blog? Have your keywords appear 3-6 times!

If you’re writing about how to file for workers’ compensation for a herniated disc, you’ll want to include keywords like “herniated disc workers’ compensation,” “workers comp for herniated disc,” “herniated disc at work,” etc. Including all of these in your introduction paragraph and repetitively throughout your may trigger negative impacts by Google (cue Panda), but having one or two of these keywords appear a couple times throughout your blog can help increase your chances of ranking for specific searches.

Include Valuable Links

Before you publish, you’ll need to link to similar pages within your firm’s site. By linking to other relevant content on your site, you can help a viewer stay more engaged on the site and help increase the chances of converting a visitor to a lead. Internal linking will also help increase the authority of your pages and site overall—when Google sees one popular page linking to a moderately new page, it’ll assume your new page is high quality just like the first one. Links also make it easier for Google to crawl your site. This gives Google a better understanding of your firm’s site structure as well as increase your firm’s site visibility on search engines.

Be sure to make sure your links work! An error or broken link will do more harm than good.

Updating Regularly

Actively posting on your blog will help Google crawl your site more frequently. Lack of regular posts can make your site seem inactive and Google will crawl it less, which can negatively impact your rankings and make it harder for users to find new pages of content after they’re published. Plus, all your hard work optimizing your blog will not go to waste! Create a schedule for your blog, such as posting a new blog every Wednesday or have each person at your firm right one blog a month. Having a deadline will force you to keep up with the blog as well as keep fresh, relevant content posted.

Consider these tips while writing your blogs and your page should see positive results. An optimized blog can mean higher search result rankings and more visibility for potential new clients to find you!

Source: www.yoast.com/seo-friendly-blog-post