You know it’ll save you oodles of time and/or get you more leads and sales, but you think to yourself, ‘It’s okay. I’ll buy it later.’

But what happens the next time you check it out? Yup, the price has gone up.

So, to avoid that happening to you, consider this your pre-warning!

On Friday, 27 Jan 2023, we’re increasing the price of our 1-2-1 SEO and blog management service.

So what’s going on, Jammy? How much are you increasing the price by?

Currently, we have 3 packages, aptly named our Bronze, Gold & Platinum packages.

Each package comes with

• Extensive keyword research
• Your own content strategy based on your goals and the keyword research
• Done for you blog posts (the number changes depending on which package you choose)
• Uploading your content to your CMS
• Image design, such as your blog post featured image and your call-to-action image (if you’re wondering what a call-to-action image is, see just below 😉)
• Optimisation of your content
• A repurposing plan for your content – so you know exactly how to maximise this content

The Silver package currently costs £1297+VAT per month (includes 2 blog posts at approx. 1500 words)
The Gold package currently costs £1797+VAT per month (includes 3 blog posts at approx. 1500 words)
The Platinum package currently costs £2297+VAT per month (includes 4 blog posts at approx. 1500 words)

And no, there is no ‘bronze package’ or ‘copper package’, unfortunately. 😂

From Friday 27 January, the price will increase for each package:

Making the Silver package – £1497+VAT
Gold package – £1997+VAT
Platinum package – £2497+VAT

But why are you increasing your prices Jammy?

We’re not increasing our prices because we feel like it. Because it’s the start of the year, and that’s just the ‘done thing’.

We’re increasing our prices for a few specific reasons, and we want to share these reasons with you.

Ultimately, we’re big believers in ‘charging what you’re worth’ but NOT raising your prices ‘just because’.

When we work on projects, we measure everything—the time we put into each project, the outside learning we do to make projects even more successful, the tools we buy, etc.

We LOVE to give our clients everything that will make them successful. But with that, we have to evaluate our service and whether we need to increase the price to reflect everything we do.

So, with that in mind, here’s why we’re increasing our prices…

1. The content strategy and keyword research are worth thousands on their own

When we initially launched this service, we knew we would include content strategy and keyword research.

After all, there’s no point in publishing content if it doesn’t help you achieve your goals, right? So we need to make sure we have the right content plan in place before we even think about writing.

But what we couldn’t predict was how intensive this could be (which is why we charge £2000+VAT for our content strategy & SEO audit service separately!)

What does our content strategy include?

• A content strategy call with you

This is where we figure out your goals, what your typical year looks like, what problems you’re facing right now, who your audience is, how you’re positioned etc.

This helps us formulate a plan and understand what content we can create that will help you reach your goals.

• In-depth keyword research & competitor analysis

Once we’ve had our call together, we’ll do the nitty-gritty technical research to find out exactly what you’re audience is searching for on Google.

This is a time-consuming process that’s part art, part science. But we can find a little goldmine of content ideas that can rank on search engines this way!

We also take a look at your competitors and what content they’re producing that is performing well. And also where there are gaps that you could fill!

• Creation of your content strategy

Finally, after all that research, we put together a content strategy based on the initial call and our keyword research.

This will include the findings from our keyword research and three-six months of content ideas. We’ll give you the titles for these content ideas and a brief overview of them.

Because of all this intense work, it makes sense to increase our prices so we can continue to deliver content strategies that deliver results.

2. We’re spotting (and often fixing) technical issues

You may not know this about us, but we’re website designers (have been for over a decade). So we often spot technical issues with your website that need to be fixed. These issues are sometimes things that could prevent or limit your rankings and impact user experience.

This includes things like:

• Pages/posts missing important metadata
• Google analytics set up
• Website indexing issues
• Page speed issues
• Broken links

3. We act as advisors for your whole business

We aim to help you get more organic traffic and sales, but we don’t just focus on content writing.

We’ve supported our clients with their wider marketing activities, looking at how these can boost results for SEO and get sales (without any extra work from them!)

This includes things like:

• How to get the right backlinks when appearing as a podcast guest
• How to build backlinks through PR
• How to repurpose your content to LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook
• How to promote your content to your email list
• What lead magnet you should use, and how to create it (we’ve also created lead magnets for our clients too)

And that’s why we’re increasing our prices! So what’s next for you?

When you put it down like that, it’s easy to see why we’re raising our prices by 10% (and this is why we recommend everyone create a piece of content like this when they’re raising their prices!)

Remember, you have until Friday, 27 January, to grab your spot on our SEO and content management service before the doors close and the price goes up!

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Why Are We Raising Our Prices For Our SEO and Content Management Service? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

We like to do research, and this research can be a little messy.

The time between researching a product or service and buying said product or service could take a few minutes or years!

That’s because we all go to the Internet with different intent. We might be looking for information, wanting clarification, or we may be ready to buy something. 

So if you want to get in front of your potential customers, you need to make sure you create different content that answers the different types of search queries your potential customer will type into Google.

AND you need to optimise that content, ensuring you maximise your chances of ranking.

But how the heck do you do all of that?

Let’s break it down and simplify it all before this whole idea makes you break out in hives. 

(Honestly, this isn’t as scary as it sounds!)

First things first, what is a search query?

A search query is simply the words or phrases you put into Google to find something you’re looking for.

When you’re trying to figure out where you’ve seen that actor before on TV, what do you do? You Google it! That’s a search query.

All you need to know is there are three different types of search queries, and your customers will use these to find you and potentially buy from you.

Don’t believe us? According to a study, 81% of people research online before buying.

We all do it. We can’t even buy a toaster without a bit of research!

So yes, you will need to create content if you want to get in front of people researching. Because if you don’t, your competition will!

What are the 3 types of search queries?

When you search for anything on Google, it normally falls into three categories:

• Informational.
• Transactional.
• Navigational.

Different search queries lead to different results, i.e. different types of content.

So let’s look at each type individually and understand why you should produce (and optimise) content that falls under each category to help more of your prospective clients find you and to make more sales.

1. Informational queries and the content you can create

What is an informational query?

An Informational query is what it says on the tin. It’s the kind of stuff people look for when they need information on how to do something or find out what something is.

For example, you might type into Google: “How to make pumpkin pie”, “How to fix a broken zipper“, or “What does stoozing mean?“

How can you create content for informational queries?

A lot of this is by answering ‘how’ or ‘what’ based questions; you can easily use this in your business too.

To get in front of our audience who are using informational queries, we use content like:

• How to use humour in your marketing so people fall in love with your business (+11 prompts to help you!)
• What is an SEO content writing service? And how does it all work?
• Or How to Make Content Part of Your Sales Process (so you get more sales, faster!)

Why is informational content good for you?

The benefit of publishing content for informational search queries on your website is that it helps you attract website traffic and rankings.

What does this mean?

When prospective customers are looking for “How to” content, they can find your informational content.

Many of us use informational search queries. So if you can help your audience by answering their questions about the information they’re looking for, you could rank in search engines and get those people on your email list. Or even buy!

Of course, it takes time and effort to get website traffic and rankings from content that answers informational search queries. You need to think about keyword research, content writing and optimising the content, etc., but you get the gist. And if you need help with that, our SEO checklist for blog posts should help!

All sounds perfect so far, right?

But let’s play devil’s advocate.

Are there any drawbacks to publishing informational content?

We 100% recommend that you publish content that answers informational search queries (we certainly do!), but if you only focus on this type of content, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Because while you’re attracting lots of people (yay!) they might not be looking to buy from you (oh dear!)

Remember that at this stage, people are looking for information. They want to find out how to get something done. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re considering buying anything at this particular moment.

The idea is to get a lot of traffic using that content, and SOME of that traffic will eventually buy. But most won’t.

The good news is that you can (and should) publish other types of content, too – types of content that get people to buy…

2. Commerical/Transactional queries and the content you can create 

What is a commercial/transactional query?

A commercial/transactional query is what someone types into Google when they know what they want to buy, but they don’t know what company or person they want to buy it from.

Commerical/transactional queries are specifically about products/services/companies. For example, let’s say you’re looking for project management software. You can imagine typing into Google, ‘monday.com reviews‘. Or even ‘monday.com discount code‘. These queries show buying intent.

Commercial/transactional content is what pops up when someone is searching for your products or services specifically.

How can you create content for commercial/transactional queries?

If you look on our website, you’ll find blog posts like:

• 11 Reasons our SEO content writing service is not right for you
• Why is our SEO content writing & blog management service so expensive?
• Or What’s Our Black Friday Offer 2022 All About Then? 

We have many more examples as we create A TON of transactional content.

And as you probably know, if you’ve come across our content before, we are big fans of the teachings from They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. The key here is to focus on what your ideal customers ask you (face-to-face during meetings or sales calls, over the phone, or by email) and take the time to answer those questions in detail through your content.

Ideas for transactional/commercial content YOU can create

If you think you have nothing to write transactional content about, think again because the minute you start looking at your customers’ questions, the idea floodgates will open. But if you’re sitting there scratching your head and wondering how this might work in your world, here are some more examples.

• Content that answers cost-related questions. For example, “How much does a Dyson cost?”
• Case studies and success stories from previous clients.
• “The best” type of content. Examples of this could be “The best website builders for beginners” or “Manchester’s best co-working and freelancing spots.”
• Myth-busing content, that tells people (nicely!) what they get wrong about your products or services 
• Jargon-busting content, like “What depreciation means to you and how our accountants can help.”
• Original research you made in a specific area of your industry.
• Or objection-led content. This is content that you create specifically in answer to the objections (explicit or implicit) you hear from your customers repeatedly. Things like, “I don’t have time to…” or “This won’t work for me because…”, or “I can’t afford this right now because…” This is where you tip the argument and explain why these objections aren’t valid. Acknowledge that you see and understand your prospective clients’ worries, but take the time to break them down and show them how they will get results from working with you.

Why is transactional/commercial content good for you?

You’ll want to publish transactional content on your website because it helps you attract more of your ideal customers and convert leads into sales.

Because ultimately, you want to sell, right?

The people who are likely to come across this type of content are already thinking about buying your products or services. 

They might not have decided to buy from you just yet, but this type of content is designed to sway them in the right direction! 

Why?

First of all, you’d be surprised, but many business owners don’t create transactional content (all the more reasons why you shouldn’t stop at informational content!) So this makes you stand out from your competitors.

But also, transactional content helps you showcase your services and explain how you work and what you offer. By creating content of this type, you’re pre-empting many of the questions, objections, worries, and doubts your prospective clients have around making that final decision to buy (or buy from you).

Think about producing transactional content as providing a service – helping prospective customers make a more informed decision. You’re making it easier for them to buy. And as a consumer, yourself, don’t you just love it when that happens?

Are there any drawbacks to publishing transactional content?

There aren’t that many drawbacks to publishing transactional content. The only thing that slightly plays against it is the fact that it’s sometimes not the best type of traffic-generating content.

This means it won’t necessarily attract tons of traffic to your website from search engines (it depends on what type of content you create). But the traffic it does attract is more primed to buy. 

3. Navigational content

And finally, navigational content is the type of content people land on when they’re looking to find a specific website or page. So when someone is typing in the name of your company or brand into a search engine, they’re performing a navigational search.

Of course, this means they already know you. They know your brand name and the products or services you sell, they’re probably interested in buying, and they want to find the correct website or physical location (like a specific product or service page) to get what they’re after.

Like transactional content, navigational content comes in handy when people are already in your world – they know your brand or business name. But it’s still important to optimise the correct pages on your website to ensure your customers find what they’re looking for.

For example, on our website, you’ll find the page Blog Writing & SEO for time-poor businesses, and that’s optimised for “content writing packages” “SEO content writer” or ‘SEO content writing”. So if someone were to type that in, they’d be directed to this page and find all the information they need.

We also link back to our service pages from other pages on our website or from our blog posts (just like we did above), and that helps our prospective customers find what they’re after.

Why is navigational content good for you?

In a nutshell, it helps you sell!

Take our service page for Blog Writing & SEO as an example again. It has all the information that someone needs to make a decision:

• We open with a short video where you can see us (and see we are real people in the flesh and not robots!) and where we introduce the service.
• It talks about the problems that our ideal customers are experiencing and want to solve.
• It shows them what life could be like – what they would get if they invested in our service.
• Then it explains the service – step by step.
• It spells out how much time (and therefore money) our clients could save with our help.
• And finally, it outlines the simple steps someone needs to take to get the ball rolling with us.

It breaks it all down for our ideal clients, so the only thing left to do for them is get in touch with us! That’s how brilliantly navigational content can work for you.

Are there any drawbacks to publishing navigational content?

Navigational content is an essential component of your website. Just like you need a Home page, you need product or service pages. Otherwise, how will your prospective customers know what they can buy from you and how?

But navigational content alone isn’t enough.

Plus, it tends to be static, meaning that (unless your services change every other month) this type of content isn’t likely to change very often. And if you don’t publish anything new regularly, Google and the other search engines can’t see that you have anything relevant or useful to share and are less likely to rank you high in the search results.

If you only have navigational content on your website with no other content whatsoever, it will be really hard for new prospects (i.e. people who don’t already know you and your business) to find you.

So if you want new customers to find you and your fantastic business, you need to publish fresh and helpful content (both informational and transactional).

Would you like our SEO blog agency to help you?

Your website needs a clean structure with the right type of content (i.e. an active blog with useful, in-depth, optimised articles) and optimised pages for your products and services so that more of your ideal customers can find you via the search engine results and buy from you. That means you need to plan for different types of content, set time aside for keyword research, and then create all that content.

And yes, we know this takes time! That’s exactly why we can create that content for you so you don’t need to worry about a thing.

We create:

• Content that helps you rank on Google and delivers you traffic.
• High-ranking content that helps your potential customers.
• Content that pre-qualifies your customers and helps you attract those who are right for you.
• And content that helps you make more sales.

And, of course, we do all the keyword research for you. Want to find out more? Get in touch and let’s have a chat!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post What are the three different types of search query? And what content can you create for each type? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Is this what you should focus on in your business right now?

Will it actually work?

Should you redesign your website first? 

Should you have brand guidelines? 

Should you wait until you’ve introduced another product or service you’re planning on introducing?

It’s all a bit confusing right? Well in this article, we’re going to tell you exactly what you do and don’t need in place before you invest in an SEO content writer. 

What is an SEO Content Writer anyway?

First thing first, what even is one of those, right?

An SEO content writer is someone who produces compelling content in your tone of voice and style that is so engaging that it gets your readers to take action.

That’s the ‘Content Writer’ bit of the title.

So what’s the ‘SEO’ bit all about, then?

The ‘SEO’ bit means that a content writer typically has a deep understanding of SEO. They won’t just write any old content, but they’ll also optimise it for the keywords you want to rank for. And they’ll do it in a way that sounds natural and not robotic – a way your readers will love. 

Makes sense?

This last bit is important. Because if you’re thinking about this service right now, it’s because you want your content to attract more traffic to your website and perform better in the search engine rankings.

But your readers still need to be at the heart of it all. And if you end up with blog posts that read like they’ve been written by a robot, you need to fire that SEO Content Writer – pronto! But a good one will make sure all your content is informative, engaging, and useful to your audience.

Related content: What is an SEO content writing service? And how does it all work?

So now that we got that out of the way, why are we writing a whole article about what you need to have in place before you can hire your very own SEO Content Writer? After all, we offer an SEO content writing service, don’t we just want to work with anyone and everyone?

Short answer, no. 

Long answer! We want to make sure we offer the right service for your needs right now so you can make a decent ROI out of hiring us. Otherwise, you’d be unhappy and feel like you’re wasting your precious time and hard-earned money. And that would make us sad too. Which is not a good outcome for anyone, right?

So let’s look at what you don’t need first.

A quick overview of what you do and don’t need before you hire an SEO Content Writer 

Things you DON’T need before you hire an SEO Content Writer

1. A fancy-pants, expensive website

You might think it’s a bit odd that expert web designers are sitting here (with a straight face) telling you that you don’t need a fancy-pants website to make your content work.

But it’s true.

This might sound like news to you, but websites are never forever. As your business evolves – and your products and services change with it – your website needs to change too. That means that during the lifespan of your business, you may go through a lot of different websites or re-designs. Does that mean that you can’t have any content on your website right now because you might be changing your services one or two years down the line?

Absolutely not!

If you have content on your website and decide to update it or start again with a different one, you can always transfer any blog posts you’ve already published onto your new site.

So let’s not use the fact that your business (and website) is still evolving as an excuse not to create any content. You’d be missing out on business and leaving A LOT of money on the table.

Related content: Why You Shouldn’t Redesign Your Website (And When You Should).

A caveat: what if you have an old-fashioned website (that looks BAD)

So you don’t need a fancy-pants website, but once you decide to invest in epic content for your website (i.e. the type of content we write for you), your content will start to bring more traffic to your website (yay!) and also increase your rankings in the search engines (get in!). 

So surely, when your prospective leads and customers land on your website, you want them to see something that looks good, right? But more on that in a minute…

What you definitely DON’T want is something that looks like it was designed 30 years ago when people still used MS-DOS and computer listing paper (if that’s before your time, look it up – it’ll be a laugh).

Now, that kind of outdated stuff would put your readers right off. They’d be clicking the back button faster than you can say “Hey!” and never actually get to consume the amazing content you’ve paid us to create for you.

We don’t want that either.

2. Brand guidelines

We hear this a lot from prospective clients: “We don’t have brand guidelines, so we can’t work with you yet.”

Technically, that’s not true. You definitely CAN work with us. Sure, brand guidelines are nice for you (and for us) to have. It means you’ve already done the groundwork to figure out how you can use imagery, text, and design elements together to represent your unique brand and show up consistently on different platforms and mediums. 

It also means you’ll have done the work on your ‘tone of voice’ and how you want to ‘sound’ to your customers. And yes, having that understanding would help us create content that fits with the rest of your brand.

But it’s not essential.

Why?

Because we can figure all that out together. During our kick-off call, we can tease out your tone of voice and fine-tune it as we go. You’ll give us feedback, we’ll take it onboard, and ensure that any content we write for you sounds exactly like you would.

It’s not Black Magic, promise. It’s what we do, and it’s based on cooperation and collaboration with you.

Related content: How to Nail Your Brand Tone of Voice for Your Business [With Examples].

3. Everything to ‘be perfect’ 

We see this all the time. And it makes us oh-so-sad.

A lot of website owners put off content creation (sometimes even indefinitely!) because they want everything to ‘be perfect’.

So they wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

But the right time never comes because, as we pointed out earlier, your business is always evolving and changing. So things are never going to ‘be perfect’. There’s no such thing. Sure, they might be perfect for RIGHT NOW. But 12-18 months down the line, they might not.

So don’t wait.

Because you’ll forever want to make changes and tweaks – to your business, your products and services, your packages, your website, and even your content. And that’s fine.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t capitalise on what you have right now. So create content around your existing products and services (the ones that your prospective customers can buy today), and you’ll attract more traffic to your website, show up higher in the search engine rankings, and get more leads and sales in your business. And that’s more dinero in your bank account, thank you very much.

Right. So that was all the stuff you DON’T need. But what is it that you DO need if you’re getting ready to hire an SEO Content Writer to write for you?

Things you need before you hire an SEO Content Writer 

1. A professional-looking website

It may sound like we’re contradicting ourselves here.

But we’re not.

We told you that you don’t need to spend thousands on a professionally-designed website or hire a super fancy web agency to create your business website. And it’s true. But you do need a professional-looking website.

Note: That does NOT mean expensive!

This may sound a bit vague and subjective, but you’ll know what the opposite of that is – boring, dull, full of stock photos of people in suits and offices, and something that looks like it was designed in the wrong decade.

You don’t want that.

You want something fresh with colours, fonts, and photographs that reflect you, your business, and your personality. Your copy has to explain exactly what it is you do, it has to be easy for your user to find where they need to go, and your images should be good quality. 

Nope, it does not need to be a 50K website designed by some high-end agency, but equally, it shouldn’t have had its last redesign in 2007! There’s a fine balance between the two, but we find the majority of people who get in touch do hit the mark with their websites.

2. A website that ‘technically’ works well

You don’t want any major technical issues with your website, as this can hinder your search engine rankings and annoy your website visitor.

Before we start working with you, we run an audit to check that your website is in good condition for Google. If it isn’t, don’t worry, we can work with you to fix it!

Some things to make sure you tick off are:

• Your website is mobile-friendly

You know how it works – most people check websites on the move on their smartphones, so you need a website that looks good on mobile as well as on desktop.

• Your website loads relatively fast

Again, you know that Internet users have little time and patience. We want things, and we want them now. If a website takes ages to load, we probably think it’s spam, or that it’s down, and it’s just not worth our time. So we’ll move on to the next thing and forget about going back again. That’s a lost lead or customer. And you definitely don’t want that.

• Your website is user-friendly

Our websites are about our businesses, yes, but they need to work for our audience as much as they do for us as business owners. Is the information easy to find? Is your website easy to navigate? Or are people getting lost? Are their burning questions being answered? Are your blog posts designed and structured in a way that makes it easy for your readers to skim-read them and get the information they want as quickly as possible?

This is what it means to have a professional-looking website. But it doesn’t mean you have to hire an agency to create it for you.

Related content: The Ultimate Guide to the Perfect Website and How much does it cost to build your WordPress website?

3. Knowing exactly what you’re selling and to who 

Your content should always point to what you’re selling, so we need you to be crystal clear about the products and services you offer and how you package them.

Do you offer monthly packages? Recurring fees? Do you sell a bespoke service, or is it a one-size-fits-all offering? Do you sell different packages at a range of prices? Who’s your ideal customer? Do you have a niche?

We create content with the aim of getting you more leads and sales, so it’s important we know what you want us to promote and talk about because, obviously, depending on what you offer, the content will vary.

Also, depending on who you’re talking to, the way we approach your blog posts and the language and tone we use will be different. Do you know what problems your customers are experiencing? Do you know how to talk about those problems and how your products or services are the perfect solutions for those struggles?

If you’re not yet super clear on this then you’re not ready to invest in content. But don’t worry, this is usually something you can work through quickly!

Related content: 11 Reasons our SEO content writing service is not right for you.

4. A lead magnet

And finally, this isn’t a must, but having a lead magnet is definitely helpful if you want to increase your audience. A lead magnet is usually something you give away for free in exchange for your web visitors’ email addresses.

A lot of lead magnets are handy ‘How to’ guides that help your audience solve a particular problem you’re an expert in. But they don’t have to be. You could also use content upgrades (these tend to be pieces of additional content that people can sign up for from within a blog post) or even a quiz. We have one, and it’s called The SEO Quiz.

There are several types of lead magnets you can offer on your website. But if you don’t have one just yet, don’t worry! We can definitely help you create something amazing that works for you and your business.

Related content: The Ultimate Guide to Generating More Leads From Your Website.

So this is it. That’s exactly what you need to have (or not have) in place if you’re thinking of hiring us as your SEO Content Writers.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post What you do (and don’t) need to have in place before you hire an SEO Content Writer appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

But did you know that you can become a thought leader yourself?

You can then integrate this into your content strategy, to help attract customers and grow your business.

In this blog, we’re looking at the difference between SEO content and thought-leadership content to help you decide which is best for your business.

What is SEO content?

At Jammy Digital, we spent years designing functional and beautiful websites. And everyone always thinks that’s enough for the business to come flooding in.

But the truth is, it’s difficult for your website to rank without a stream of in-depth, informative, and educational content. Google isn’t too bothered about how ‘pretty’ your website is (just that it works!)

It’s estimated that the number one listing on Google accounts for 27.6% of all click-throughs. And only 0.63% of all Google searchers continue through to the second page of results.

So it’s not only crucial that you create content, but that you create content that ranks on search engines. Otherwise, your potential customers will struggle to find you online.

SEO content is well-written, engaging, and informative content, with a primary focus on getting your website to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s all about creating content your customers are searching for, so you show up higher in rankings.

SEO content harnesses the knowledge of SEO and keywords, optimising content for search engines, so the right people find it.

Related content: SEO content writer vs SEO agency: which one is best for your business?

What is thought leadership content?

First things first, let’s define thought leadership by itself, before going onto the content.

Thought leadership is the delivery of content that uses expertise, insight, and experience to help you become the go-to source of information in your industry.

Thought leadership isn’t so much a type of content, but rather an approach to content creation, created by tapping into the expertise, insight, and experience within your business and the wider community.

People often think that thought leadership content has to include controversial or outspoken opinions, and it can, but it doesn’t have to.

What it does need to be is authentically and recognisably you, with a strong brand voice. No sitting on the sidelines; it’s about letting people know what you think.

Thought leader content can include:

• Stong and/or controversial opinions
• Expertise
• Experience
• Authenticity
• A desire to share their knowledge

This type of content helps businesses and individuals build credibility and be seen as an expert.

The different types of thought-leadership content marketing

I like to split thought-leadership content into different categories including:

• Original research content…
• Business decisions content…
• Expert interview content…
• Customer client stories content…

Examples of thought-leadership content

1. Original research content

This could be via surveys or analysis, for example, reviewing websites and reporting your findings.

If you do this right, you can become the ‘original source’ for a particular topic, meaning lots of others will link back to your article, which can skyrocket your rankings.

An example is from Backlinko, which analysed 3.6 billion pieces of content to better understand evergreen content.

2. Business decisions & strategies content

Want to stand out as an expert?

Give a little insight into your business and the decisions and strategies that you have implemented.

You can detail why you made those decisions and whether or not they worked. If not, you can let people know what went wrong – and what you learned from it.

In this example, Orbit Media shares its 15-year-old content strategy, detailing what worked and what didn’t. It’s a great way to showcase their expertise in SEO and content strategy – the service that they offer.

3. Expert interview content

As much as you would like to be, you probably aren’t an expert in everything.

So, why not capitalise on the expertise of others and bring that knowledge to your audience?

This can be done via guest blogs, but a great medium for this type of content is podcasts.

A great example is Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO podcast – where Steven interviews different leaders and CEO, bringing you their top tips, learnings, and insights from their careers.

4. Client stories content

You can tell your potential clients how great you are, but it’s much more believable if it comes from someone else.

So, why not let your clients do the talking?

This blog from Buffer puts one of their clients at the forefront and lets her write her own case study on how she used the scheduling tool.

It’s common for people to write blogs on product and service features, but this type of blog talks about them in a way that actually teaches potential clients something. It’s a powerful way to show the impact that your product or service could have on a business.

SEO content vs Thought leadership content: what results do they get your business?

Results! Let’s face it, most of us aren’t creating content (thought-leadership, SEO, or otherwise) just for fun. As exciting as creating content can be, I’d personally rather be eating chips on the beach or reading a good book (or both).

Content is all part of a wider marketing effort to increase traffic, leads, and ultimately sales. If your content is not getting you results, then it’s a waste of time and energy – two things you don’t have to spare running a business.

So, in order to compare the two, we need to understand the results that you can get from each.

What does SEO content help you achieve?

When creating SEO content, it’s all about getting your website to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). The goal is to discover exactly what your potential customers are searching for and create content to answer those questions.

As the stats show, if you don’t rank your website within the first couple of search results, then it’s unlikely people will click on your website.

So, great SEO content should help you to:

• Increase your search engine rankings for a variety of keywords
• Increase your website traffic
• Increase your backlinks from high-authority websites

Plus, there are the intangible benefits of SEO content, that enable you to attract the right customers and have better quality conversations.

But ultimately, the primary goal of SEO content is creating content that helps you rank highly and get found online.

Related content: How to 10x your website traffic

The results of thought leadership content

Unlike SEO content, thought-leadership content is not about what people search for. It’s about building authority and positioning yourself as a subject matter expert.

However, while the content is not focussed on ranking, it does still have some pretty incredible results when it comes to traffic and conversions. According to SEM rush, 81.4% of thought leadership content results in organic traffic. And if that’s not enough, 47.6% generates the all-important leads and sales.

Why?

It’s partly down to the fact that by the very nature of thought-leadership content. It’s WAY more likely to get you backlinks from other content creators.

For example, let’s relook at “original research” content – one of the types of thought-leadership content previously mentioned. This is a style of content that Brian Dean at Backlino has absolutely nailed. He carries out in-depth research on relevant topics and creates content with details and specificity that no one else has covered.

Thought leadership is not necessarily an SEO strategy. However, it increases the likelihood of backlinks (we’ve even used some in this article), establishes expertise, and optimises the website for rankings. Therefore it does benefit SEO, although it’s not targeting that.

The mechanisms that enable thought-leadership content to drive your business include

• Brand credibility and authority
• Generates backlinks, shares, and mentions
• Attract potential customers

SEO content vs thought-leadership content: when should you use it?

Content is sold as the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to growing your business. But the truth is, there is no one size fits all, and not everyone will need to implement the same content strategy.

But which one is right for you?

When should you use SEO content?

Relying on referrals to grow your business?

Struggling to bring in leads?

SEO content is all about utilisng and capturing the existing search traffic within your market in order to drive revenue and grow your business. And it’s extremely valuable at helping you rank and convert when correctly implemented.

This is why we recommend that all businesses implement an SEO content strategy, assuming you have the following in place:

1️⃣ An up-to-date website (that wasn’t designed in the 90s)

2️⃣ A website that’s easy-peasy to navigate (no use getting loads of traffic to your website if all those people end up getting lost and then leaving.)

3️⃣ Decent and clear website copy

4️⃣ Products or services that sell right now (great content will not make up for a bad product/service)

5️⃣ Access to your actual website and blog (ie. your web design company isn’t holding it hostage)

Assuming you have these things, you can get started on creating a successful SEO content strategy that helps you will all the benefits we’ve already discussed. Start by thinking about what your potential customers are searching for and create content around that (or hire us to do it for you).

Related content: Why referrals are bad for business (and what to do instead)

When should you use thought leadership content?

As we now know, the point of thought-leadership content is not to rank, but to influence and gain authority.

The challenge is, that without an existing audience it’s hard to gain traction with thought-leadership content.

This is why thought-leadership can be seen as a more advanced form of content, that builds upon an existing content base. Think of SEO content as your BA honors, and the thought-leadership as your Master’s course. You need the foundations of the SEO content and the audience that comes along with it in order to really make an impact with thought-leadership content.

There are also undoubtedly industries that lend themselves to thought-leadership content more easily (such as business and marketing), as there is no one right way to do things. Although this creates huge potential in more traditional industries, as no one else is creating this type of content.

So, if you are already creating content, and driving organic traffic via search, then I’d recommend starting on a thought-leadership content plant too.

Thought leadership content vs SEO content: can you outsource it?

As a business owner, you wear a hundred different hats every day, and content is just one more thing to think about.

But can you successfully outsource content that sounds authentically you?

Or, is it something that you have to keep in-house?

Can you outsource SEO content?

A good SEO content marketing strategy requires a near constant supply of high-quality, search-engine optimised content – and that takes time to create ⏰.

In fact, we estimate that it takes around 10-16 hours in total per blog to create high-quality content, which includes:

6-8 hours: to write, edit & proofread your content
3-4 hours: of content design & formatting
1-2 hours: optimising each of your blog posts

Yes, you can pump content out at a much faster rate, but if you want to create in-depth and engaging content that ranks, then you’ll need to spend a little longer on it. This is why a large part of the reason why over half of businesses outsource their content marketing.

In addition, most owners know their business inside out, but that doesn’t mean they can write about it in a way that’s going to rank. SEO content writers are experts in writing engaging content that speaks to potential customers AND the Google algorithm.

While some argue that you can’t outsource SEO content writing, we definitely think that you can.

In fact, not only do we believe that you CAN, we think that it’s a positive step for your business. That’s why we’ve built our SEO & blog management service around outsourcing your content.

Yes, the content still needs to be informed by a subject matter expert in your business, but partnering with a talented SEO writer to outsource content can be a brilliant business decision.

Outsourcing to SEO content writers helps fill a skills gap in your team while saving you time and making you money.

Related content: Why is our SEO and blog management service so expensive?

Can you outsource thought leadership content?

You might think that thought-leadership content is harder to outsource. After all, it’s so dependent on your voice and expertise that surely it’s impossible to replicate via an outsourced writer.

And we agree, it is harder…but not impossible.

In fact, you might be surprised to find out that 48.7% of businesses outsource thought-leadership content.

However, it’s not something that an ad-hoc freelance writer will be able to achieve.

To successfully outsource thought-leadership content, you will need to develop an ongoing relationship with a writer or content marketing agency. But once you have a writer that you trust and that understands you, it’s possible to create high-performing thought-leadership content.

Again, it’s important to work with an experienced writer or agency that is able to translate your expert knowledge into influential content. But assuming you have a way to communicate that knowledge, there is no reason that you cannot successfully outsource thought-leadership content.

This is part of the reason that we don’t offer ad-hoc writing but, instead, a full SEO and blog management service. It allows us to form a relationship with our clients, understand their business, and convert their expertise into clear, informative thought-leadership content.

Can you have thought leadership content that also ranks?

Ranking on search engines is not the primary aim when it comes to thought leadership content, but it’s certainly not impossible.

As mentioned previously, the nature of thought-leadership content means that you are more likely to get backlinks from other relevant content creators. These backlinks are essentially votes from other websites, alerting Google to the fact that you have created helpful and relevant content.

The latest update from Google “the helpful content update” is an effort to ensure that searchers are seeing more “original, helpful content, written by people for people”.

So, while ranking is not the priority for thought-leadership content, it’s certainly possible. Originality leads to backlinks, which in turn build domain authority and ultimately boost SEO.

Plus, it’s certainly still possible to ensure that any content created is optimised for search engines (whether it’s the main aim or not) to make sure it’s positively viewed via algorithms.

Are there agencies that do both SEO and thought-leadership content?

While SEO content and thought leadership are separate, they are not two entirely distinct strategies. And while the results and means differ slightly, ultimately, both are aiming to increase revenue.

In our opinion, thought leadership content should be a part of a wider content strategy. You can’t become a thought leader without creating consistent content, it does not exist in isolation. However, it’s a brilliant way to set yourself apart from the increasingly noisy marketplace – and all the millions of blogs being published daily.

SEO content serves customers who are currently searching for what you offer and driving consistent organic traffic, while thought leadership content allows you to position yourself as an industry expert.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post SEO Content vs Thought Leadership Content: which should you create for your business? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

If you want your business blog posts to rank on search engines, deliver website traffic, WOW your readers (and I mean really wow them) and deliver leads and sales, you’re going to have to approach blogging a bit differently.

Because there are actually six elements that make a successful business blog.

SIX!

I know, I know. It sounds like a lot and you’re probably thinking, ‘I don’t have time for this, Lyndsay.’

But here’s the thing:

• Most businesses don’t do all six things (or are even aware of them) so if you do, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition
• I’m going to break down all six things below, so you know exactly what to do in each of these areas. Which makes everything much simpler for you.

Ready to learn the 6 key steps to a successful blog?

Let’s get stuck in…

1. Conduct keyword research for your business blog post

Hold your horses! Before you get to the writing, you’re going to need to do a sprinkling of keyword research first.

Why?

Because surely one of the reasons you’re publishing blog content on your website in the first place is because you want to be found on Google.

You want your blog to consistently send you website traffic, rank well in the search engines, and generate more leads and sales for your business.

It’s no surprise that bloggers who do keyword research before writing content see much stronger results.

And if you want that to happen, you need to be strategic about it. That means you need to do your research in advance to make sure you’re writing content about topics that your ideal customers and clients are searching for.

So far so good?

Great.

So how do you know what your customers and clients are searching for?

Customer’s questions give you an idea of what people are searching for

Well, first thing first, you ask them. And before you say you don’t have the chance to do that, we know for a fact that you do.

Every email conversation, every discovery call, or sales call you have with a prospective client is an opportunity to find out what problems they have and what they want to know.

They will ask you questions (lots of them!) and your job is to write them down and save them so you can create amazing blog content about those topics.

But if you want further ideas or find out exactly what search terms people are using when looking for information about your industry, niche, or business, then there are tools you can use to do your keyword research.

Some of our favourite keyword research tools for business blogging

When searching for keywords online, you’re aiming for phrases that are both competitive and profitable.

What does that mean?

In a nutshell, you want keywords that lots of people search for but that aren’t too competitive. So make sure you spend some time doing keyword research for every blog post you write and try to pick keywords that aren’t overused.

Some of the tools we recommend are:

Answer the Public. An amazing free tool (with the option to upgrade to the paid-for version) that helps you visualise real questions that your potential customers have asked via visual and intuitive search clouds.

Quora. This website is free to use and is completely user-generated. This means users ask the questions and others will reply to them.

Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome extension. Once installed it will pop up on the side whenever you do a search. It’s free to use but a paid-for version is also available.

KW Finder. This is a paid-for tool that allows you to find the best longtail keywords to include in your content. It offers affordable plans depending on the number of keyword searches per month you need and also has a FREE 10-day trial.

Semrush. This is another paid-for, full-service research tool and allows you to figure out what people are searching for in relation to a specific keyword using their content marketing topic research.

You can find more information about each of these tools (including some cool screenshots that show you what they look like) in our blog post 23 of the Best Business Blogging Tools that Increase Traffic and Conversions.

Or, you can read a bit more about SEO and keyword research in our super comprehensive blog post SEO for Beginners.

Check competing blog posts for your keyword/phrase

Don’t forget this final important step: check your competition.

Don’t rely too heavily on your SEO tool to tell you how competitive a keyword or phrase is, instead Google the keyword or phrase and see for yourself.

These are some indicators you’re targeting an ultra-competitive keyword.

Go to Google (in incognito window) and type in your target keyword or phrase. If there is…

• A lot of ads
• Some well-known trusted companies writing about the topic
• Lengthy blog posts and guides dedicated to the topic

This could be a sign it’s super competitive. It may be worth digging a little deeper around that keyword. Is there a longer keyword or phrase you can use? Something more niche? But still with good search volume?

2. Plan your business blogging strategy

Different types of content will help you achieve different goals with different types of people who consume content on your website.

Most people think of content, especially business blog content, as something that will generate website traffic and rankings. That’s true. But actually, content can also sell too.

To do this, you must create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey…

Blog content at the awareness stage

People in the awareness stage of their buyer’s journey might not know about you yet. Actually, they probably don’t even know they need you just yet!

Let’s bring this to life with an example. Let’s say you’re a career coach who specialises in corporate, leadership roles. Some people might land on your website because they’re looking for a career coach that meets those criteria. And those people are further down the buyer’s journey already – they know they want a career coach.

But people who are still in the awareness stage might be looking for information such as “How to be a more assertive manager” or “How to become a better leader”. They don’t know about you or your services, so your job is to create content that answers those questions. And through that, they’ll want to find out more about you. Clever, right?

Examples of awareness stage blog content

So make sure you create blog content that tells people who you are, what you do, how you do it, and why they need to work with you.

This is educational and informative content that targets your customers’ pain points.

For example, a popular piece of awareness content we’ve published on our website is Why Am I Not Ranking in Google, and How to Fix It and How to Make Your Blog Posts Look Good.

These two blog posts came directly from questions we had from our customers. The keywords actually didn’t show up on keyword research tools! But we were confident people were searching for this. A few months later, these were ranking for lots of juicy search terms. Years later, they still are!

Blog content at the consideration stage

Consideration-type content is what helps your customers see that your business is a valid and viable option for them.

They’re certainly ‘shopping around’ and looking to solve a specific problem, so they’re checking what’s out there.

At this stage, they aren’t sure what solution to find for their problem, so they are looking for help. For example, someone who wants more leads and sales could invest inbound marketing (like blogging and SEO) or outbound marketing (like Facebook ads). They haven’t decided yet, so your job is to help them make that decision.

Essentially, your job here is to help people find the right solution for them. This does not mean pushing your solution as the only viable option! In fact, you may recommend a different solution to what you offer in some cases.

For example, if someone wanted to get 100 leads in less than 24 hours, we’d recommend ads over blogging – even though we sell a blog management service!

Be honest in this content and speak to your audience as if they are a friend. Discuss the different options available to them without bias and explain who is the right fit for each solution.

Examples of consideration stage blog content

If you want to check out a few examples of this, we’ve created consideration content like, ‘What is an SEO Content Writer?’ and ‘SEO Content Writer vs SEO Agency, which one should you choose?’ You can see how both these articles would introduce this service as a potential solution to a problem.

Content at the purchase stage

Things are getting serious now. These are people who have decided to buy. They just need to be sure they’re making the best possible decision when going ahead and buying from you.

This is the point where you need to reassure them you’re the right and best option for them. It’s the last checkpoint before they press the BUY button, so you want to give them the last bits of information to help them take the plunge and buy from you.

They may be looking at your competitors too, trying to understand the differences between you and them.

This is where ‘sales content’ can come in helpful. This is content that talks directly about your products or service, not just your industry.

You can learn all about it and get some amazing sales content ideas here.

Examples of purchase stage content

Here are a couple of examples of purchase content we created on our website: Why You Shouldn’t Join Our 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge or Everything You Need to Know About our Content Fortress Course.

You’ll notice that these talk only about our products and services!

3. Create compelling business blog posts

The next thing you want to check to make sure your business blog is as successful as it can be is your copy. It needs to be engaging and compelling. And when we say that, we don’t mean you need to sound like Shakespeare.

Quite the opposite, in fact!

Your copy should sound like you. When your prospective customers read your content, they’re forming an opinion on who you are, the types of things you say, and how you work.

You want to make sure that the way you sound in your blog content is similar to how you sound when you talk to your customers face-to-face.

Make sure your tone of voice and your personality come across – don’t be boring and hold yourself back too much. But also, don’t try to be someone you’re not.

Your copy also needs to be direct, clear, and jargon-free. In your blog post, tell the reader exactly what the piece of content is going to be about and then deliver on your promise. This needs to start from the headline, so make sure you pick a great title for your blog posts. And if you want more information on how to do this, head over to 7 Ways To Write An Irresistible Blog Post Headline.

And all the way through you need to make sure your blog is well structured and makes keeps people engaged. You can read all about this in our article, how to write a blog post – which covers everything from start to finish!

Break the text down

To make your blog posts user-friendly, make sure you include plenty of sub-headings and paragraphs to structure your information so it’s easy to read and digest. As much as we all like to think that people who consume our content will read it all (word by word) that’s really not the case.

We know it.

And you know it.

And according to Nielson Norman Group, website users read on average 20% of the text on the page.

People who consume content online want to be able to get to the information they need as quickly as possible, so make your text ‘scannable’ by adding sub-sections (all with their own sub-headings) and bulleted lists that help you guide the readers’ eyes to the key bits of information.

Make sure you also include lots of white space and images (more on that in a minute) to let the page ‘breathe’ and ensure you break up the text. No one wants to read a big wall of text, do they? That’s the opposite of compelling!

Website design actually has a huge impact on your content, so make sure you do all of the things above. That way you maximise your chances of blogging success!

4. Include standout imagery in your blog posts

Photos and images are essential for your blog. In fact, articles with images get 94% more views than articles that don’t.

An eye-catching featured image (which is the first thing people see when they land on your blog) can help them decide whether to click on the link and read through or not.

This means more people clicking through your content rather than hitting the back button and heading off to another website! So make sure your featured images are striking, on-brand, and clearly include the title of your blog post.

The rest of the images you sprinkle throughout your article should also play a huge role in how successful your content is going to be.

Much like white space, paragraphs, and sub-headings, images help you break up the text and encourage your readers to stay on the page. When you choose the right images, they immediately elevate the quality of your content. Especially if you create bespoke imagery in your branding (i.e. your colours, graphics, fonts, etc.)

The right images help you stand out

We’re not trying to brag here, but people often tell us that the featured images on our blog posts are so unique that when we share them on social media, they’ll immediately recognise the post as being one of ours.

That shows that using the right type of imagery can make you stand out. People know it’s you before they’ve even clicked on the content and read a single word you wrote. And that’s a great place to be!

Plus, there are other benefits to using great images in your blog posts. Pictures can make you more visible and relatable. Rather than sharing generic stock images from the Internet, we always recommend you use pictures of yourself and your team. That helps you build trust and rapport with your readers.

And you’ve all heard the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s true. Choose your images wisely, and they’ll enhance your content.

You can optimise your images

There’s also a slightly more technical reason why it’s important to have images – you can optimise them! That’s right – it’s not just text that you can optimise for search. So if you’re trying to be found for a particular keyword, you can include that keyword in the title and description of any images you use in your blog post and increase your chances of ranking for that keyword.

5. Optimise each blog post for your keywords

Another important factor to help you decide whether you’re doing a great job with your business blog is optimisation. We know this is something a lot of people don’t even want to hear about, but it really doesn’t need to be complicated!

Optimisation is actually really simple when you know the key steps you need to take. All you need to do is to allocate 15-20 minutes at the end of writing a blog post to make sure you’ve included your keywords in a few strategic places.

How to optimise your blog posts

Remember that keyword research process we talked about at the beginning? Let’s say you went for the keyword “piano teacher in Liverpool”. You’ll want to mention that exact combination of words in the text of your blog post.

On top of that, you’ll also want to include it in:

• Your URL. That’s the web address for your blog post.
• The title tags. The headline and some of the sub-headings, if possible.
• The meta description. That’s the short description that appears on Google under the title of the blogpost that tells people what the content is all about. It’s what helps them decide whether they want to go ahead and read or not.
• Your images. If you’ve included any images in your blog post (and we really recommend you do), you should add your selected keyword in the Alt Description.
• Throughout your article. Include it naturally within your blog post. And if you can, within the first paragraph of your entire article too.

And finally, remember to add links to relevant and related content. These should be both internal links (i.e. links to other pages or blog posts on your own website) and external links (i.e. links to resources from reputable websites that aren’t your competitors).

And that’s all you need to do to make sure your blog posts are optimised! When you break it down, it’s still not the most exciting of tasks (yes, we can see that). But it’s easy enough to do, and it’ll definitely give a huge boost to your business blogging efforts.

You can learn everything you need to know about optimising your blog posts in this handy guide: The Ultimate Guide to Optimising Your Blog Posts.

6. Lead Generation

Last but not least, a successful blog post will help you generate leads. In other words, you want your business blog to attract your dream customers.

Driving traffic to your website is great. You definitely want more people to find you through search engines and consume your content.

But what you want even more is for people to give you their email addresses, sign up for a free trial, or hit that buy now button.

Tips to improve your blog lead generation

Here are a few things we recommend you do to encourage people to give you their email addresses…

Mention your products and services. Don’t be shy!

This is your business blog after all. It’s published on your business website! And while you can absolutely help people with the content you share, you can help them even more through your products and services. That’s why they’re here – looking for help. So let them know how you can serve them. (For example, did you know we offer an SEO Content Writing and Blog Management service? 😉)

Include a lead magnet on your blog posts

In this blog post, you may have noticed a Business Blogging Quiz. We include this in our blog posts about blogging (shocker!)

We also have an SEO quiz, and we mainly include this in blog posts about SEO. Either way, we are able to capture email addresses via our blog.

Use imagery throughout your blog post to promote your lead magnet

Rather than just signposting people to your lead magnets through a link (which isn’t all that visible) we recommend you use branded images with big and bright call-to-action buttons.

Images are more eye-catching and encourage the reader to spend more time on the page. Plus, these images will have a big button that people can press if they want to download your lead magnet. And give you their email address. Win-win, right

Make your lead magnet irresistible

So lead magnets are often a bit…meh. They are often a checklist or an email series, and that’s fine but it’s not exactly compelling. That’s why our quiz seems to work so well. It’s interactive, and fun and you also get a personalised report too. So that appeals to people. Try to think about how you can make your own irresistible lead magnet too!

And finally, the free blog post template!

Below, we’ve included a free blog post template you can refer to, to help you improve your blog posts! And if you want something more substantial, you can check out our blog post template pack which includes 12 fill-in-the-blank blog post templates.

What area of your business blog should you focus on first?

So there you have it. The 6 key steps you need to take to create epic, lead-generating business blog content. As a reminder, these are:

1. Keyword research
2. Blogging strategy
3. Compelling copy
4. Standout imagery
5. Optimisation
6. Lead generation

To know which area you should focus on first, take our blogging quiz which will score you in each individual category and tell you EXACTLY how to improve.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post 6 Simple Steps that Make a Successful Business Blog [+ Free Blog Post Template] appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

We know better than most just how time-intensive writing consistent and high-quality business blogs can be. We’ve been doing it pretty much every week (or more) since 2017. 

Back when we kicked off our blog we were primarily web design and SEO specialists. And we’ll admit there were times when blog production dropped to the bottom of our to-do list due to lack of time. ⏰

But, we also know just how crucial a strong content strategy is for growing your business.

So over the years we’ve tried and tested a bunch of business blogging tools to help with SEO, improve the quality of writing and shave some precious hours off the process. 

In this blog, we’ll share our best blogging tools to help you create blogs faster than ever before. 

IMPORTANT! There are zero affiliate links in this blog post. We don’t earn any money out of recommending these companies, we’re here to just give you the best tools for your business.

And don’t worry, these tools aren’t going to set you back hundreds or thousands of pounds. They are all either completely FREE to use or pretty cheap – so they won’t break the bank.💰

There are some key areas that these blogging tools can help in, so we’ve split the blog post into these sections:

Table of Contents

Evaluating Where You Are Right Now

First thing’s first, you’ll want to evaluate where you are now with your blog and how you can improve. That way, you’ll know exactly what you need to focus on moving forward (and what blogging tools you can use to help you do that).

Luckily, we created just the tool for you…

1. Business Blogging Quiz (FREE)

If you have ever wondered how “Good” your blog is, then check out the Business Blogging Quiz. We created this FREE tool that will automatically assess how well your blog is performing.

It will also tell you exactly how to improve your business blog so you can increase your website traffic, rankings and sales.

Click the link below and get your Business Blogging Score instantly.

The Best Blogging Tools for Generating Blog Post Ideas…

“I’ll run out of things to write about.” 

Have you ever found yourself saying this? ⬆️

We know that coming up with amazing, traffic-generating ideas is one of the biggest barriers to getting started on your blogging journey. 

But if you’re tearing your hair out trying to come up with blog ideas then stop. 🛑

We’ve been consistently blogging since 2017, and trust us when we say we’ve still got loads more to write about. 

That’s because we employ a few different blogging tools that help us generate ideas. They hack into what our potential customers are actually searching for online. 

Not only do these tools help create blog ideas, but they will allow you to see what terms and phrases people search for on Google. These are known as longtail keywords. 

For example, if you bake cupcakes, it’s unlikely that people are just typing “cupcakes” into Google. They are probably searching for things like:

• Where to buy cupcakes in Blackpool?

• How much do cupcakes cost?

• How to make my own cupcakes?

This is a crucial step for SEO, as you can sprinkle these phrases into your content. And this will allow you to be found by search engines.

Using these tools allows you to integrate topics your potential customers are actually searching for rather than guessing. So when they type their query into Google guess who’s blog will pop up first – that’s right, yours. 

• Related content: 5 FREE ways to check keyword rankings in Google

2. Answer The Public (Free)

Answer the Public is an amazing tool that helps you clearly visualise real questions that your potential customers have asked via an image known as a “search cloud”. 

Simply enter your topic into the search bar, and Answer the Public will produce a “mind-map” of questions that have been searched for.

Remember people ask Google questions they would never ask someone else (or you). So it’s a great way to gain insight into the inner workings of potential customers’ minds. 

It’s a useful tool to come up with blog titles, but also individual sub-headings and sub-sections. 

The free version gives you up to three searches per day, which will be enough for most small businesses. But if you think you’ll be running multiple searches a day, then you can upgrade to the PRO version. Below, we’ve shown an example of when we put in the phrase, ‘book editor’. 

3. Quora (Free) 

People ask a lot of random questions on the internet…

How long would it take me to walk to the moon?

Which country in the world has the strangest shape?

If you’ve ever searched for something online then you’ve probably come across Quora. 

It’s a free-to-use, search and answer website, that is completely user-generated. This means users generate the questions asked and the answers given.

It’s a really great insight into what people are searching for, and what the common answers (or potential misconceptions) around your industry are. All really juicy information when you are trying to come up with blog ideas. 

Plus, you can follow specific topics and keep tabs on any new questions that are popping up. Below, I typed in the phrase ‘book editor’ and look at all the juicy questions that could easily make great content!

4. Keywords Everywhere (Free and Paid Version) 

Keywords Everywhere is a free Chrome extension that helps you with keyword research, and SEO. 

It allows you to do keyword research on the go, as you type queries into Google. Once installed it will pop up on the side whenever you do a search and will give you access to:

• Trend data and search volumes for that keyword
• Related keywords to the search term you selected
• ‘People also search for’ suggestions.

It’s free to use but a paid-for version is also available if you want more information on monthly searches and competitor analysis. However, most people will find the free version more than adequate for their needs. 

Below, we’ve shown you an example of how this works by searching for the keyphrase ‘business book editor’. We do pay for this tool, but it’s incredibly cheap at just $10 for 100,000 credits (which is a lot!)

5. Semrush (Paid) 

Semrush is the creme de la creme of keyword research tools, but with a price tag to match. 

It’s is a full-service research tool and allows you to figure out what people are searching for in relation to a specific keyword using their content marketing topic research. 

It is a paid tool with prices starting at around $119/month, however, you can sign up for a free trial to see if it would be worth it. This tool is something that we use to get really deep insights into keyword research, rankings, backlink data and more. Below is a screenshot of SEMRush, with us searching for the keyword ‘book editor’ – and this is just surface level stuff (yes, we do geek out over this!) 

The Best Blogging Tools for Planning Blog Posts…

“Aghhh, I’ll just wing it, and see what happens.”

Does this sound like you?

We can almost guarantee that this is the easiest way to fall off the content bandwagon. We’ve seen it time and time again in the 90-day content challenge we run within our membership.

The people that fail to plan are always the ones that struggle to complete the challenge. Every👏 Single👏 Time👏.

Putting a little time aside upfront to plan out your content, and organise it into a schedule will give you a fighting chance. 

Not only will you not have to worry about what you are writing about every week (especially if you use the brainstorming blogging tools above). But it will also help you plan and prioritise blogging as a task on your to-do list. If it’s written down in black and white it’s not as easy to push it to the bottom of the list.

Everyone plans in a different way, so we’ve got a couple of different blogging tools that will suit depending on your brain works. 

• Related content: How to plan 50 pieces of content in 30 minutes

6. Trello (Free and Paid Version) 

Trello is an amazing visual planning tool if you have a logical and linear brain. It is a very simple visual planner that allows you to layout all your blog posts via boards and cards. 

The cards allow you to add more detail in an unstructured way. This makes it easier to create content plans than something like Google Sheets/Spreadsheets. 

You can create columns for each of your products and services so that you can manage what blogs are coming up, and what ones have been done. 

Trello is a free tool, however, if you need more than ten boards or want a calendar view then you can upgrade to a paid plan (starting from $5/person/month). But we’ve found that for most small businesses, the free tool is more than powerful enough. 

7. MindMeister (Free and Paid Version) 

Did you know that mind maps are 30% more effective than linear documents when it comes to generating ideas? 

MindMeister is a mind-mapping tool, and it’s a brilliant way to plan out content for people who love to inject some creativity into their planning process. 

The free plan allows you to create up to three mind-maps, which should be enough for most businesses. However, if you have a team, or if you really want to get into creating mind maps, then you can upgrade to a paid plan. Below is an example of how we use MindMeister.

The Best Blogging Tools for Creating Blog Post Images…

Have you ever seen a blog post image and immediately known who wrote the blog at a glance?

This is definitely something we’ve managed to achieve throughout pop-art blog images (or so we’ve been told). And while we create a new blog post image for every single blog, there is a definite and distinct theme running through them all. 

With over 4 million blogs published every day, and shared all over social media, you need a way to stand out from the crowd. 

Creating an eye-catching image for every blog post is a great way to do this and to convey your unique brand personality in the process. 

This might seem like a daunting process if you aren’t a graphic designer, but we use one great tool that is simple and effective. 

8. Canva (Free and Paid Version)

You’ve probably heard of Canva, it’s got a bit of a love-hate relationship, especially among the graphic design community. We are definitely on the LOVE side for Canva, and it’s a tool we happily recommend to all our clients and MYMO members. 

It’s much easier to use (and cheaper) than Photoshop. And it’s brilliant for creating consistent and beautiful images for your blog post. 

The free version has tonnes of functionality and allows you to overlay text onto existing photos, or add graphics to your website. 

There is also a paid-for version that offers a little more functionality and access to more images and graphics. 

The Best Blogging Tools for Editing Your Blog Posts…

Ever hit publish and then realised there is a glaringly obvious, totally embarrassing error?

Oh no, you’ll never be able to show your face in public again😳

Not really, we’ve all been there. But it is a good idea to eliminate as many errors from your blogs as possible. 

And we know the fear of errors is one thing that can hold people back from writing and publishing blog content -especially if they aren’t confident writers.

There are a couple of blogging tools that will help you write like you’ve got a team of editors and proofreaders on your team (well almost, they aren’t quite as good as trained humans).

9. Grammarly (Free and Paid Version)

Grammarly is an AI-powered tool that helps you write mistake-free content across loads of apps including Google Docs, Gmail, Facebook and Twiter. 

Contrary to what the name would have you believe it’s about more than just grammar (although it certainly does help with that). It will also check spelling and punctuation, as well as ensure the content is clear and easy to read. 

Basically, it’s an absolute life-saver if you are writing lots of content. It’s one of our favourite blogging tools!

And the best part is that it’s free, although you can upgrade to a premium version. 

Yes, you‘ll still need to read over your work, as some slip-ups will bypass the super-smart AI. But it’s a quick and effective way to check your work for mistakes and make your writing better in seconds. Below, we’ve shown you an example of how it works using this blog post!

10. Power Thesaurus (Free) 

If you’ve ever seen Friends then you might remember when Baby Kangaroo (a.k.a Joey) turned to a thesaurus to help him sound smarter. 

And while running every single word through a thesaurus is not a good idea – it can certainly help. 

Power Thesaurus is a free, community drive app that allows you to find synonyms or antonyms for over 80 million English language words. 

Perfect for when your brain stops working after lunch and you just can’t think of a smart-sounding way to say nice.

Ps. amiable, charming and good-natured could all work. 

The Best Blogging Tools for Optimising Your Blog Posts…

Despite what the latest marketing doomsday opinion piece will have you believe, Google is very much alive. 

And paying homage to the Google Gods can really make or break the success of your blog.

You could craft the most informative, beautifully written blog post, and still have it flop if you don’t adhere to some of Google’s rules.

The algorithm is ever-changing, so appeasing the search engines is an ever-evolving task. We call this optimising content, and we’re taking what we’ve created and tweaked it to give it a better chance of being found online. 

However, there are some blogging tools that remove the guesswork and help us adhere to the rules. 

• Related content: WordPress SEO For Blogging – How to Optimise Your WordPress Blog Posts

11. Yoast (Free and Paid Version – WordPress Blogging Tool Only)

Once you’ve written your blog it’s time to get it uploaded and hit publish. 

Well, yes but there are some steps to take before hitting publish to make sure that everything SEO related is in ship-shape for Google (and other search engines).

Yoast is a WordPress specific plug-in that double-checks the soundness of your blog content, and give you practical suggestions for improvement, including:

• Readability improvement (ie. sentences are too long)
• Keyword distribution and density
• Text length
• As well as loads of other features…

It’s one of our favourite blogging tools. It’s great for issuing practical prompts and presenting them in a traffic light system. Perfect if you’re like us and like competing against the machines. 

Ps. don’t worry if you can’t get all greens. It’s not always possible but it’s a good goal to have. 

The basic version of Yoast is free, but you can also upgrade which gives you access to even more SEO based tools to improve your writing. It is a tool that every self-respecting blog writer should include in their repertoire. We’ve included an example below of how Yoast looks evaluating this blog post for the keyword ‘blogging tools’. 

12. Tiny PNG (Free and Paid Version)

Have you ever tried to get on a website or a blog and it just takes forever to load?

Not only is it super frustrating (who has time to wait for a page to load). 

But if people get tired of waiting and bounce off the page then this can negatively affect your Google stats. Which can cause them to rank you lower than they would if your website was super speedy. 

One of the ways that you can stop this from happening is by compressing your images so that they take less time to load. You can use a free web-based app called Tiny PNG helps to compress the image size. 

It’s a really simple thing that you can do to help improve your site speed and overall Google ranking. 

This is us, showing you Tiny PNG by compressing this image of Tiny PNG (how meta!)

13. Pic Resize (Free) 

Got the ideal image but it’s HUGE, or needing to be cropped down?

Having images that look good, and are appropriately sized for your blog is essential in making it look good. 

And luckily Pic Resize helps you with just that. Allowing you to resize image dimensions, and crop out sections that are necessary quickly and easily.

Once you’ve done this you should still pop it through TinyPNG to compress the image size and make sure it loads.

The Best Blogging Tools to Make Your Blog Look Good…

While we’ve all been led to believe that looks don’t matter, that just isn’t the case for your blog posts (or websites in general).

Have you ever been on a website and left straight away because it’s a wall of text?

Of course, the content and what you are saying really matters, and there is no point in creating a beautiful blog with no substance. 

However, creating a visually appealing blog post is arguably just as important as writing amazing content. And the last thing you want is for people to not read your super amazing blog because it doesn’t look good. 

Getting people to click on your post and stay there requires a balance of content, SEO and visuals. 

Especially when there are some really simple solutions…

15. Depositphotos (Paid) 

We always recommend that you have professional images that you dot around your website and blog posts. This helps add personality and ensures people know what the person behind the site looks like. 

However, we know that sometimes stock images are needed, and when that is the case we recommend Depositphotos. It’s a bank of royalty-free images, videos, vectors, illustrations, and music, that you can use on your website. 

It is a paid tool (either on-demand or subscription-based), but we find that it’s much better quality than many of the free tools out there. And you can be confident that they are licensed to use for business. 

Just be careful of those super cheesy stock photos. You know the ones, where everyone has a psychotic smile and are way too happy!

16. Death to Stock Photo (Paid) 

Sick of cheesy stock images? Enter Death to Stock Photo. The clue is in the name really but this website provides the most amazing images that look, well, non-stock-photo-like!

There are no cheesy smiles or fake-happy looking people. Here’s an example of one of the images that came up when we typed in ‘office’.

17. Pixabay (Free)

If you’re on a budget, using a free stock image website like Pixabay can come to your rescue! They have literally millions of stock images you can choose from. And the best thing is, they are free. Although, it’s nice to ‘tip’ a cup of coffee sometimes to the photographers!

If you want to do even more than just create images, check out this blog post on how to make your blogs look good.

The Best Blogging Tools for Collecting Leads on Blog Posts…

Ultimately the aim of creating a blog post is to make sales. However, while we’d love for someone to pop on a blog page and buy straight away it’s not always realistic. 

People need to come into contact with various touchpoints before they buy from you. And that’s why it’s important to drive people towards an email list so that you can stay in contact with them and nurture them towards the eventual sale. 

We’ve recently launched our new SEO and blog management service, and this prompted us to look into who bought from us on launch, and whether they were already on our email list.

And guess what…they all were. 

In fact, we found that:

• they were on our email list for at least 12 months before investing in our 1-2-1 services
• they are engaged, email subscribers (ie. they open, click or reply to emails)

So aiming to get people off your blog posts and onto an email list is a good one to have. 

But how exactly do you do this? Well below is a good example using one of the tools we recommend. 😉

18. ScoreApp (Paid, with Free Trial)

One of the BEST ways of gaining leads from your blog post is by creating a quiz. Quizzes are fun, interactive and offer a ton of value. And our favourite quiz software has to be ScoreApp.

ScoreApp allows you to create beautiful quizzes easily. It’s so easy to create your quiz, and it comes with:

• Beautiful landing page designs
• Results page designs
• Personalised feedback depending on the results your audience gets
• Category scoring – so you can give people a score for different categories

19. OptinMonster (Paid)

OptinMonster is a very powerful, and intuitive lead generation tool that allows you to create beautiful and eye-catching opt-ins, pop-ups. Their ultimate goal is to help turn blog visitors into email subscribers. 

Ideal!

You can integrate these into your blogs, and on other pages on your website to drive people towards your email list. 

OptinMonster is a paid tool, however, the entry-level package is very affordable, and has all the essentials for building a lead generation campaign from your blogs. 

20. Thrive Leads (Paid) 

Another one that we love is Thrive Leads which focuses on driving uses from your blog onto your email list. 

It allows you to create visually stunning opt-ins in the form of pop-ups, widgets, in-line forms, screen locks as well as others. 

Thrive Leads is also a paid plugin, that you buy as a yearly subscription, however, it’s well worth it for those serious about making their blogs work for them. 

The Best Blogging Tools for Measuring the Success of Blog Posts…

Before you kick things off with your blogging you need to know your starting point. 

What pages or blog posts are the most read on your website?

Where do your visitors spend most of their time when on your website?

Knowing this is invaluable because it allows you to understand what is working, and more importantly what isn’t. From this, you can tweak and optimise your content to do more of what works. And if you’re struggling to see rankings, check out this blog post on why you’re not ranking in Google (and how to fix it). 

So how do you measure your website traffic?

21. Google Analytics (Free)

Google Analytics is a brilliant free web analytics tool that helps you analyse your website traffic in pretty minute detail. 

While the background workings are pretty technical (involving code, and tracking links), Google Analytics allows you to access easy-to-read reports that will give you insight into who has visited your website, how they found you, what content they consume and how they behave on your site. 

If this sounds a little scary, then don’t worry Google has a free course to help you get started with Google Analytics. Below is a screenshot of our daily users from Google analytics. It’s good to know!

22. The Hoth Rank Checker (Free)

The Hoth Rank Checker is a free tool powered by Semrush that helps you identify your website’s top traffic driving keywords. Simply put, what are people typing into Google that is leading them to your website. 

It’s a great way to figure out what is already working, and how to utilise these current top-performing keywords to boost you to page one. 

Think of Hoth Rank Checker as a soft “quick-wins” identifier. It will still require some work to boost these rankings, but it’s a good place to start.

It’s completely free, and the same website can also give you access to other tools such as backlink checkers, and keywords planners – but the rank checker is our favourite.  

23. Fat Rank Chrome Extension (Free) 

Fat Rank Chrome Extension is as it sounds another Chrome extension tool to help with on-the-go keyword ranking research. 

After installing the extension, simply visit a website and click the Fat Rank icon to find out where that website currently ranks in Google, and which page URLs are ranking. 

Again it’s a great, free, way to figure out what pages and keywords your website is already ranking for and might help with some potential quick wins or areas to focus on. 

Below is a screenshot of us using Fat Rank to determine where we’re ranking for the keyword ‘write blog post headline’. This shows us we’re number 12, so with some more tweaks to that blog post, we should be able to get to page one! Handy to know, right?

Does this sound like a little too much work?

Phew! That’s quite a lot of work and quite a lot of blogging tools to get your blogs in tip-top performing shape. 

Loads of people think blogging is just banging out some words, uploading it to your website and hoping for the best. 

But the reality is that in order to produce successful blogs, that actually drive traffic (and sales) there is a little more to it than that. 

And while these blogging tools will help you shave hours off your blog writing sessions, they will still involve some time on your part. 

If this all sounds like a little too much work then you might want to consider our SEO content writing and blog management service. It’s a full blog writing and SEO service, that could shave 10 hours off your to-do list every week. 

Just think about what you could be doing with that time?

We take care of:

• Generating search-drive blog ideas
• Writing the blog content
• Keyword research
• Planning the content
• Creating blog images
• Edit the blog (using a professional proofreader)
• Optimising the blog
• Ensuring you can collect leads
• Measuring the success
• Uploading it to your website

Basically, everything that we’ve covered above is included in our SEO and blog management package. 

Not sure if this service is right for you?

Don’t forget our free blogging tool! 

Take our Blogging Superstar Quiz – a quiz that tests how well you’re doing in the 6 key areas that make a successful blog post to see if you’re all sorted or need some help.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post 23 of the Best Business Blogging Tools that Increase Traffic and Conversions appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

• Best salesperson, bringing leads and sales to your business 24/7
• Trusted customer service advisor, informing and building trust and loyalty with your customers
• Knight-in-shining-armour, defending you against those crappy clients or customers who absorb all your time and cause you stress
• Personal ‘Town-Crier’, someone who will pull in the crowd and get traffic to your business

Publishing content consistently could help you rank higher in the search engine results and drive more traffic to your website. More traffic from the right kind of people means more leads and, ultimately, more sales. Ka-ching!

But getting results from your business blog takes time, and you have to be doing ‘all the right things’. This is why we put together this guide for you – covering everything you need to know about running a successful business blog.

Ready to grab a brew, sit comfortably, and get stuck in?

How to create a successful business blog

The first thing you need to decide (before you even get started) is what you want to achieve with your blog. Maintaining a business blog requires time, focus, and consistency, so you don’t want to do it just for the sake of it, right? Like with anything you do in life and in business, you need to have a specific goal in mind. Otherwise, how do you know if it’s working or not?

For your blog to be successful, you need a goal for it first.

So what do we mean by goals? What can a business blog actually help you achieve?

Here are some examples…

1. Drive more traffic to your website using your blog

Publishing regular content on your business blog can help you drive more traffic to your website. How? Well, how many times in a day do you search for something on Google? Loads, right? Every time we need information, we head over to Google. And your ideal customers are exactly the same.

So if you publish content on your business blog that answers their questions, bingo! You immediately increase the chances of your website popping up in the search engine results (ideally super close to the top), which in turn means that more people might click on the link, go visit your website, and read your articles.

Want some tips on creating content that gets found on Google? Check out our SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

2. Attract more qualified customers with your business blog

Once you get people on your website, your amazing content is your chance to show them who you are, what you have to offer, and how you work. And your web pages (like your Homepage, your About page, your sales pages, etc.) can do that to an extent. But with the articles on your business, you can showcase who you are, what you stand for, and what you know in a lot more depth.

So what happens when people land on your website and find all your valuable content? They either feel they can relate to that (and find it interesting and relevant), or they don’t. And if they don’t, they’ll hit the back button, go back to Google, and move on to the next piece of content.

Now, that might seem like bad news for you. But it’s not, really. Because if someone can’t relate to you your content, they’re not the right people for you! You don’t want to work with them as much as they don’t want to work with you!

We’ve written loads about this, so if you want to find out more, check out How and Why You Should Create ‘Wrong-Fit’ Content, or How to Stop Customer Issues Before They Happen (Using Content Marketing).

What you really want is for the people who are the right fit for you and your business to stay on your website and engage with your content. Because these are the people you ultimately want to work with – the people who will buy from you and who will prove to be great clients. These are much better-qualified prospects. And you can attract them (like moths to a flame) simply by sharing awesome content on your business blog.

3. Increase your sales by blogging

Did you know your website can sell for you? That’s right. A lot of people treat their websites as fancy online marketing material. But if you play your cards right, your website can actually make sales for you.

How? Because people don’t care what you say – they care what you publish. And the content you share on your business blog can help your ideal customers get to know, like, and trust you. When you answer all their questions, reassure them you’re the right choice for them and the person who can solve their problem, the next logical step is for them to press the buy button and work with you.

And wouldn’t it be nice if instead of spending hours on a sales call with a prospective client, that call only lasted 15-30 minutes? If you publish enough of what we call decision-based content on your website, people will start to self-qualify, meaning that they’ll only go ahead and get in touch if they’re truly interested in working with you. So by the time they jump on that sales call with you, it’s only to finalise the details, sign on the dotted line, and ask when they can get started!

If you want to find more about that, here’s a handy blog post we wrote: How to Make Content Part of Your Sales Process (so you get more sales, faster!)

4. Grow your email list through your blog

Another goal you can achieve through your business blog is to grow your email list. When you give people something of value through a lead magnet (this could be a pdf guide, a quiz, an eBook, etc.) you can ask people to give you their email address in return. And with that, you get the privilege of landing straight into their inbox as often as you like.

Sure, you can advertise your lead magnet on your Homepage, but how well do people know you by then?

Probably not much.

But when they consume content on your business blog and learn about your views about a certain topic, it’s a lot easier for you to include what we refer to as content upgrades that people can download for free by entering their email address. Once they’re engaged with your content, your readers are more likely to want to grab the freebie you’re offering and land on your email list as a result.

So now that you know what you’re trying to achieve with your business blog, let’s try and work out how often you’ll need to share content.

Important! What to do if you have multiple goals...

You’ll probably have multiple goals for your blog.

In fact, our blog helps us achieve all the points above. We use it to get traffic, increase sales, deliver excellent customer service and to make sure we attract the right people to our business.

We know At some points in the year, we focus on sales – creating sales content for specific products or services we want to promote at that moment. 

During non-sales-focused periods, we focus on creating content that will drive traffic to our website and grow our email list (this blog post is an example of that – notice it’s published in December, a particularly quiet month for us). 

And then there’s the content we create that helps deliver excellent customer service and helps us attract only the right customers – this generally will come from the questions that people ask us. 

How often will you blog for your business?

If you’ve decided to start a business blog, the worst thing you can do is to publish one blog post and then disappear from the face of the earth for months on end. (Seriously, don’t do that).

Unfortunately, as much as we all wish blogging was like waving a magic wand, it’s not. It’s a game won with showing up regularly and consistently. So if you’re going to start, make a solid commitment and stick to it!

Yes, we know it’s hard. And that’s why we run our 90-day Content Marketing Challenge a few times a year to help you produce consistently good content that gets ranked on search engines. We also help you get faster and more efficient at content creation and, ultimately, get more leads and sales from your website. The cherry on top? We give you accountability and feedback and break down all the technical stuff that’s holding you back so it becomes super easy and actionable.

You can find out more and join the next 90-day content marketing challenge here.

Decide on your blogging frequency

So, now you’ve made the decision you’re going to blog, you need to work out how often you’ll publish new content. We find that consistency is key, so whatever you go for, make sure you stick to the deadlines you’ve given yourself.

Ideally, if you could blog weekly, that would be amazing, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have a library of content yet. Nothing stops you from blogging more though – you could publish content 2-3 times per week or even daily if you wanted.

Blogging frequently tells Google and the other search engines that your website is updated regularly, which must mean you have great content to share. So by publishing more content you’re not only giving yourself more chances of being found for more search terms that are relevant to your business, but you’re also telling Google that your website is the place to be to find new and relevant information.

Having said that, you need to strike a good balance between quality and quantity.

Publishing a piece a day of only 300-500 words might not give you as much as going really in-depth into a topic and writing a good 1,500-2,000+ word article. So if that means blogging every fortnight or every month, then that’s a great start. But be consistent. Because your audience will expect to see new content from you on a regular basis, and delivering on your promise helps you build trust with your readers.

Decide on your platform – where should you put your business blog?

We’ve seen some companies use various platforms for their business blog, including…

1. A separate website for their blog
2. A website they don’t own like Medium
3. Using LinkedIn articles to replace their blog
4. Housing their blog on their own website

We recommend you house your blog on your own website. That way your articles will rank and get found by people searching on Google. And then easily be able to find out about your products or services or sign up to your email list.

You can always repurpose your blog posts for Medium or LinkedIn articles, but it’s wise to publish on the platform you own first!

What will you share on your business blog? 

I know what you’re thinking now. “This is all well and good, but I don’t know what to write about!”

Well, we know that getting started with something new is always tricky. But once you get going, you’ll have so many ideas you’ll never run out again. Promise!

So let’s look at some content inspiration for you.

“How to” content

This is the most popular form of content you’ll find on the internet and business blogs in general. There’s a reason for it – it’s great for website traffic. Because when you don’t know how to do something, you head over to Google to find the answer, right? So your “How to” articles provide your audience with the know-how they’re looking for.

Although this blog post you’re reading doesn’t have “How to” in the title, it’s a “How to” piece of content. It tells you everything you need to know about the topic of starting and running your own successful business blog.

So think about the kind of things you’re an expert in. What do you teach in your business? What do you find yourself explaining to your customers or clients over and over? Sit down with a cuppa and make a list of topics – you’ll end up with an awesome starting list of potential articles for your business blog.

Here are a couple of examples from our own business blog:

• How to Write Website Copy for SEO.
• How to Create a 90 Day Content Strategy.

“They Ask, You Answer” content

In a nutshell, this is about answering the questions that your existing customers or prospective clients ask you all the time. The term comes from the book They Ask You Answer, by Marcus Sheridan. You may have heard us talk about this book before (we love it!), and that’s because its teachings have literally transformed our business and the way we use content marketing to generate leads and sales.

If you want to find out more about the exact topics that Marcus Sheridan recommends you create content about and want more inspiration, head over to the blog post, How to Plan 50 Pieces of Content in 30 Minutes.

“Content Fortress” Content

If you’ve come across any of our content at all, you’ll probably be familiar with the phrase “Content Fortress”, which is the title of our book and online course.

So what does this phrase mean? Imagine your business is the ‘castle’ you’re trying to protect. To keep it safe, you might want to build a wall or some sort of structure around it. And for us, the way to build this ‘fortress’ is to create content. That’s it. Creating a content fortress means protecting yourself (as the most important asset in your business) with content.

With us so far?

“But protect yourself from what, exactly?”, you might ask.

Glad you asked.

From bad clients, for example. From people who aren’t right for you and your business – people who come with the wrong expectations or assumptions. Or people who might be after a product or service you don’t even offer!

See, the thing is – when you create the right type of content around your business (and publish it on your business blog), you start to attract more people who are right for you and repel those who would you might say yes to despite your gut telling you not to, and they turn out to be people who aren’t a great fit for you (or you for them).

Like we said earlier, repelling clients might sound like a bad thing, but it’s really not! Especially if it protects your mental health and ensures your business occupies a positive place in your life.

If you want to find out more about all this, head over to the blog post, What is a content fortress?

“Pillar” content

Pillar content is long-form content that goes really in-depth into a topic. We’re talking 2,500-4,000+ words here. Yes, it’s epic! But that’s what’s so good about it. It’s comprehensive, it goes into detail, it answers loads of questions that your ideal customers might have, and it’s great for SEO. It’s your typical “Everything you need to know about X” content.

Here’s an example we have on our website, SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

When you write this type of content you’re not just providing a great customer experience for your users, but you’re also increasing your chances of being found on Google. Why? Because when you write long-form content you’re probably going to use lots and lots of handy phrases that people might search for (a.k.a. keywords) and also link to other pieces of content you’ve created. And these are the kinds of things that the SEO gods absolutely love!

Plus, with articles of this length, you’re also telling the search engines that their users are more likely to find what they’re looking for in your piece, rather than in your competitors’, who may have written a short 500-word article on the same topic. So you’re winning all round!

News-related content

There’s a lot you can do here. You could share newsjacking content, which is all about creating a piece showcasing your thoughts and opinions based on trending news topics or breaking news stories. This could be anything you have an opinion on, but we’re talking about your business blog here, so ideally, stick to topics that relate to your industry, niche, or business.

For example, are there any changes coming up to rules and regulations that affect your industry? Could your readers benefit from you breaking down key information and explaining how the changes impact them? Say you’re an accountant. I’m sure you have loads of clients who could do with an easy explanation of what Making Tax Digital is all about and how it impacts them, right? (No, seriously, are you that accountant? Help!)

And finally, when it comes to news-related content, it could be something about your own company. Although, we always say to try and limit this because as much as this is your website and your business blog, the harsh truth is that your prospective customers don’t care about you – they care about how you can help them.

So whenever you’re sharing news about yourself and your business, make sure they’re relevant to your audience. An example of this may be talking about ‘your why’ (i.e. why you started your company and do what you do).

But how do you write one of these blog posts?

Once you know your topic, then you actually have to write them damn thing. And even if you’re a seasoned blogger, there’s always so much room for improvement. We know, we learn something new on every post we create.

You’ll want to make sure you hit the key points that make a great blog post. Including…

1. A killer headline that attracts attention (and helps you rank)
2. An opening paragraph that grips the reader and gets them to read on
3. A structure that is easy-to-understand and follow
4. A conclusion that gets your reader to take action

We’ve actually created an in-depth blog post on how to write a blog post.

What will your blogging schedule look like?

Okay, so now that you know what you’re going to blog about, it’s time to look at how you’re going to do it. How will you distribute content across your business blog?

You have a few options here:

• You could mix and match your topics, choosing from the different types of content we shared in this blog post. This gives your audience a good variety of topics and ensures you’re not only just creating the same kind of article week on week. This is exactly wa
• Goal-focused approach. If you have a particular goal you’re trying to achieve (for example, increasing your website traffic), you could decide to create a lot of ‘How to’ or Pillar content to attract more visitors to your website from the search engines. Or, if you’re trying to rank for a particular keyword, you might decide to create a series of articles on that topic for a month or two or until you’ve said everything you wanted to say about that topic.
• Campaign-driven approach. This is about choosing the one thing you want to sell and going to town with creating content around it. If you want to read more about this approach, head over to our piece, How to create a 90-day content strategy.
• Awareness days content. You could also decide to create content around specific awareness days, such as Mental Health Week, Dry January, or whatever you choose. Again, you want this content to ideally be relevant to your industry and your business, as this gives you a chance to let your readers see what your take is on a particular issue and add value to them. 

How will you optimise your blog posts?

So you now know how often you’re going to blog, what you’re going to blog about, and how you’ll distribute your content creation. What’s next?

You’ll notice we talk a lot about SEO and the fact that having a business blog where you publish regular and valuable content will help you be found on Google.

But the thing is – it doesn’t just happen by magic. There are things you need to do before, during, and after writing your blog posts to make sure they are picked up successfully by the search engines. This is called optimisation, and even if you don’t know the first thing about it, you don’t need to be a techie or hire an expensive SEO agency to be able to do it.

You can learn everything you need to know about optimising your blog posts in this handy guide, WordPress SEO For Blogging – How to Optimise Your WordPress Blog Posts.

And once you’ve done that, simply set aside an additional 20-30 minutes to optimise each of your blog posts, and you’ll be good to go!

How will you drive traffic to your business blog?

Now that you have the most amazing business blog, the last thing you need to do is to start driving traffic to it. You’ve got this incredible content you’ve spent all this time and effort creating, so of course, you now want to make sure people find it, right?

Definitely (and pleeeease) don’t fall at this last hurdle! We see so many business owners do this, but your job when it comes to business blogging doesn’t stop when you hit the publish button. You need to get eyeballs on your content. Because that’s the first step to generate leads and sales from it.

So what are some of the things you can do to promote your blog posts?

1. Repurpose your content

Optimisation is of course the first big step in making sure you’re ticking all the right boxes so that Google and the other search engines pick up your content. But you can’t just leave it at that. So the next thing you can do is to repurpose your blog posts into other pieces of content to get them in front of more people.

So, for example, you could repurpose your blog posts into:

• LinkedIn articles.
• Guest posts on more influential websites with a broader reach than yours.
• YouTube videos.
• A series of slides, a talk, or a presentation.

To get more ideas and information about what repurposing is (and find out how to do it), head over to the article, How to Repurpose a Blog Post (and Save Yourself So Much Time!)

2. Share on social media

Sharing your content on social media also gives you a chance to reach more people. However…

How many times have you seen a post from someone on your social media feed saying,

“Hey, here’s my latest blog post! Go and read it! Here’s the link.”

Do you honestly stop scrolling and go and read it? We’re willing to bet that most of the time you don’t. (Unless the title or the title image happens to jump at you as the thing you’ve been wanting to look into for a while).

So instead of just broadcasting and letting your social media audience know you’ve published something new, try repurposing that content (see above). You can do that by pulling out some of the key points you covered in your blog post and inviting people in that way. You’re more likely to grab their attention and have them click on your link to head to your website and read.

3. Share with your email list

If you have an email list (and if you don’t, why not?), it’s another great chance to let more people know about the new content you’ve published on your website. A brand new blog post gives you a nice excuse to email your list, but (again) don’t just drop the link and run. Make sure your email shares something of value that links nicely to your latest blog post. And then you can drop the link.

And if you’re looking for tips on how to grow your email list, head over to the article, The Ultimate Guide to Generating More Leads From Your Website.

4. Paid advertising

Another way to drive traffic to your website is through paid advertising. You could run paid ads via different social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) While this isn’t free (the clue being in the name), when done right, paid advertising gives you the chance to get in front of new audiences, especially if you don’t already have a large following on your social media channels.

You see, social media platforms hold lots of information about their users that you could never dream of getting direct access to – things like where people live, how old they are, what interests they have, etc. So by using social media advertising, you’re in a much better position to utilise that data and get your content in front of more of your ideal customers and clients.

How to generate leads and sales from your blog

So now that you’ve driven traffic to your website, what’s next? Well, the last thing you want is for people to just come and have a quick read and then click the back button and never come back. When that happens, you have no real visibility of who’s been on your website, which means you can’t interact with them and steer that relationship in any way.

Instead, you want to generate leads – i.e. capture your visitors’ details. You want people to give you their email address in exchange for some sort of freebie or giveaway. It could be someone booking a call with you or filling in your contact form.

As we explained earlier when talking about using your business blog to grow your email list, you can do this by offering:

• A freebie or lead magnet. This is something you offer on your website to all your visitors.
• Content upgrades. This could be, for example, a free checklist or PDF that expands on the content you covered in a specific blog post.
• A paid product. Similar to a content upgrade, this product fits in with the content of your blog post, but instead of being something your audience can download for free in exchange for their email address, it’s a paid-for product.

You can learn more about how generate leads through your blog and website in general in our blog post, how to create a lead generating website.

Want to Cut Your Blogging Time in Half?

So there you have it. Everything you need to know about business blogging! As you can see, there’s A LOT that goes into blogging and creating a blog post can take a lot of time. This is why we’ve created our Blog Post Template pack. It includes 10+ fill-in-the-blanks blog post templates that will save you so much time and increase your traffic and rankings!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post The Ultimate Business Blogging Guide appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Do you blog?

If you’ve answered yes to both you’re in the right place. Because you’re probably wondering how on earth you can SEO your WordPress blog posts so you get higher search engine rankings. 

We won’t lie to you, SEO is not a sexy topic to talk about. A lot of people zone out as soon as we mention those three letters – They try and hide it, but we can see it in their eyes! 

That’s why we put together this handy guide to help you optimise your WordPress blog posts.

Don’t worry.

It doesn’t need to be technical.

It doesn’t need to be complicated.

And there’s a plugin (or two) for that.

Ready to get into it?

Firstly, why use WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular site builder and content management system out there. We love it because it’s completely customisable and super easy to use.

You don’t even need any knowledge of code or programming language at all because yes, it’s that easy to use! And when you come across something you can’t do, you have loads of people (other website owners or experts) and reputable forums you can go to for help. And even better, if there’s something you’re struggling with, there’s probably a trialled and tested plugin that will do the job for you.

But there are also some slightly more technical reasons why WordPress is always a great choice if you want your website to be found on Google. For example, WordPress offers a clean URL structure that allows you to create unique web addresses for each page. And it’s not built with lots of unnecessary code, which means it’s fairly lightweight and quicker than other platforms. And the search engines love that!

Ultimately, you can easily use SEO on your WordPress blog posts – even if you’re a beginner at SEO. 

We have a whole long list of reasons why we love and always recommend WordPress. You can read them all in the blog post Why Do We ONLY Use WordPress To Build Your Website?

Different WordPress plugins you can use to optimise your content

One of the big reasons why we recommend WordPress to all our clients and members is that it gives you access to easy-to-install plugins that allow you to optimise your content easily. And here are some of our favourites:

• Yoast SEO plugin. One of the most popular SEO plugins out there, it has a great free version, you can use it on multiple websites, and it comes with an extensive number of features to help you make your website more search-engine friendly.
• SEOPress also has a free version and is another strong contender when it comes to WordPress plugins for SEO. It includes most of the key SEO tools you’re likely to need and it works fast.
• Another WordPress SEO plugin worth checking out is All in One SEO (AIOSEO). 

But how exactly can these plugins help you optimise your WordPress blog posts?

How to SEO your WordPress blog posts – longtail keywords

When it comes to search engine optimising your WordPress blog posts, there are a few things we recommend you do to the text (or the content) of your article. But first thing first, you need to decide on the longtail keyword (or phrase) you want your content to be found for.

So, for example, if you’ve written a fantastic piece on how to grow your Personal Training business, you might want to optimise it for the longtail keyword “promote fitness business”. That means you’re going to include that phrase in various key, strategic places inside your blog post in order to give yourself the best chances of ranking high in the search results when someone goes looking for that phrase.

So let’s have a look at where you need to include the focus keyphrase you’ve picked. We’ll look at the following places…

1. Adding your keyword to your main heading or title
2. Using your keyphrase naturally in your subheadings
3. Adding your keywords naturally through your main body text
4. Using your keywords with your blog post images
5. Optimising your internal links
6. Using outbound links in your article

Let’s get started! 

1. Adding your keyword to your main heading or title

The very first place to add your keyword to (in our example, “promote fitness business”) is your blog post title. This is right at the top of your screen when you write your blog post. 

So using the same example as above, your blog post title might be something like:

• “10 Easy Steps to Promote your Fitness Business”.
• Or “How to Promote your Fitness Business in 2022”.
• Or even “The Best Marketing Strategies to Promote your Fitness Business”

How to assign a blog post title in WordPress

When you first create a post, simply type in your title, and WordPress will automatically assign it a Heading 1 tag (or Title Tag). That’s the only Heading 1 you’re going to use throughout your blog post.

Google will understand that this is a ‘H1 tag’, and the words you use in within this summarise exactly what your article is about. It’s hugely important for SEO, so try to make your title clear (and of course, include your keyword!) 

Top tip! The sooner your keyword phrase appears in the title, the better for SEO purposes.

2. Using your keyphrase naturally in your subheadings

Your subheadings are the Heading 2s, Heading 3s, Heading 4s etc. that you include in the body of your blog post to give it a nice structure and to make it easier for your readers to read through your content.

To SEO your WordPress blog posts for search, include the keyword phrase in some of your subheadings – not all of them, mind. You don’t want to sound too repetitive and robotic. It needs to sound natural and read well. If it doesn’t fit in the context of that section of the text, don’t try and force it.

How to assign a subheading in WordPress

As you can see below, we’ve added a H2 tag to the example blog post. To do this in WordPress all you need to do is simply highlight the text you want as your subheading, and change the text from pargraph to Heading 2, 3 or 4 etc. You can see where we’ve done this in the red circle.

Make sure your subheadings make sense. Your heading 3 should come under your heading 2 etc. Don’t mix them randomly! Google (and your end-user) read these to understand what’s most important on the page. It’s good for SEO and user-experience if you keep them logical and consistent. 

Top tip! Don’t worry about using variations of your keyword such as ‘promoting your fitness business’ or ‘promote your fitness and lifestyle business’ – Google is smart and will understands ‘user-intent’ i.e. the goal of the searcher (even if they use slightly different wording).

3. Adding your keywords naturally through your main body text

You’ll also want to include your focus keyword in the main text of your blog post and not just once. In fact, the longer the piece of content, the more time it’s recommended you use your focus keyword. Aim for 2 or 3 times at least, but if you’re writing a longer piece, your SEO plugins might suggest you sprinkle your keyword around the main body of the blog post a few more times.

When doing this though, always make sure the keyword phrase fits in the text naturally and organically. Don’t try to shoehorn it afterwards and out of context because your readers will be able to see through that. And they’ll quickly get fed up with reading and hit the back button. And that’s definitely not good for you or your SEO efforts!

How to add your keyword or phrase through your main body copy in WordPress

This part is simple. All your need to do is write as normal and include your keywords/phrases. There’s an example below highlighted in red (just please don’t highlight all your keywords and phrases 😂). 

Top tip! In all honesty, we don’t focus overally on keywords within our main copy. Yes, we may mention them. But it’s important you write for your users first. Write naturally, use personality. Don’t worry too much about keywords otherwise you’ll sound like a robot!

4. Using your keywords with your blog post images

No one wants to read a blog post that looks like a wall of text without breaks or images, do they? That’s not very easy on the eyes, so always make sure you include some relevant images with your blog posts.

The thing is though, Google and the other search engines cannot ‘see’ images as you and I do. To them, an image is a collection of pixels. It’s just a bunch of data. So in order to tell Google what your image is all about, include your focus keyword in two key places:

1. The name of the file. Wherever you can, just rename the file and make sure you include your focus keyword in there.
2. The Alt Description. This is a bit of text that you can populate when you edit the image. The Alt Description is normally used to describe to Google (in words) what the image is all about, and it’s the perfect place for you to add your focus keyword.

How to add an Alt Description in WordPress

Firstly, you’ll need to add your image. To do this, go to ‘insert’ at the top of your page. 

Then go down to ‘add media’ and upload your file (the tab on the left). 

Once you’ve done this on the right hand side you will see a section where you can add your ALT text. 

Top tip! There’s no need to add the phrase ‘image of’ or ‘picture of’ when adding your ALT text, just go straight into it. 

5. Optimising your internal links

Another important factor for SEO on your WordPress blog is including internal links in your content. These are contextual links to your own website – the same website where you’re publishing the blog post you’re writing. The reason why they’re important for SEO is that they tell Google how various pieces of your own content are related to each other.

It’s a bit like giving Google the ‘map’ for your website. Internal links tell the search engine that piece A is linked to piece B, piece B is linked to piece C, etc. Plus, they help your readers delve deeper into your content and get to know you and your work better. When you think about it, adding internal links is a great piece of customer service.

Don’t add these in at random though! Make sure you include internal links wherever they’re relevant. For example, if you briefly mention a topic that you’ve covered in more detail in another piece, add the link to that piece of content. You don’t have to have loads – 2-5 is plenty!

How to add an Internal Links in WordPress

All you need to do is highlight your text and click on the ‘insert link button’ (picture below) to link internally.  

Top tip! Don’t link the words ‘click here’ actually link your keyword or phrase instead, as then Google will understand more about the article you are linking too. 

6. Using outbound links in your article 

For similar reasons, outbound links are also important. These tell the search engines that your piece of content doesn’t just exist in isolation. So always try to add relevant outbound links to authoritative websites. This could be the BBC, national newspapers and other news outlets, or authority websites in your niche or industry.

You can actually see how ‘authoritive’ a website is by checking a website’s domain authority. This is where you can see how trustworthy a website is. Sidenote, do you see what we did there with linking out? 😉

Again, remember to only include links that are relevant and organic – you want to add value to your readers and give more authority to your content.

Top tip! This is a controversial one but for outbound links, we set them to open up in a new tab. This is because we still want people to remain on our website and not visit BBC then get distracted by something else – forgetting to come back to us! This is just for outbound links we do this. 

How to add an External Links in WordPress

You follow the exact same process as above (for internal links). However, you may want to set your link to open in a new tab. To do this, simply click on the gear icon when you’ve inserted your link. And then select ‘open in new tab’. 

How to use the Yoast SEO plugin to optimise your WordPress blog posts

So now you’ve sprinkled your keyword of choice in all the right places and done all the right things to give you brownie points with Google, you’ll want to use the additional features in your SEO plugin of choice and populate a few more entries. And here we’re going to give you an example of how to use the Yoast SEO plugin.

The Yoast plugin allows you to use search engine optimise your blog posts easily. There’s a free version too, so it’s well worth installing!

When you install and activate Yoast SEO on your WordPress website, if you scroll down to the end of your blog posts, you’ll see two separate tabs – one called ‘SEO’ and one called ‘Readability’. When you click on the ‘SEO’ tab, this shows you a few fields:

1. Focus keyphrase
2. SEO title
3. Slug
4. Meta Description.

So let’s get through each one in a bit more detail.

1. Focus keyphrase

This is easy. Remember when you decided on the phrase you wanted to optimise your blog post for before you even started writing it? We used the example “promote fitness business” earlier, so in this case, that’s what we’d type into the ‘Focus keyphrase’ field.

This won’t impact your rankings in any way, but it does tell Yoast what you would like to rank for. The plugin will scan your post (or page) for this keyword/phrase and tell you how well you’ve optimised your page for it. 

How to insert your focus keyphrase into Yoast

Just scroll to the bottom of your blog post to find your Yoast information. You’ll see the words, ‘Focus Keyphrase’, just go ahead and add your keyphrase into that section. Easy-peasy! 

Top tip – don’t worry about including words like “a”, “the”, “your” in the keyphrase. People don’t always type that kind of stuff when doing searches, so you don’t need to include it.

2. SEO title

Also known as the ‘Title Tag’, this is the title of your blog post that Google and the search engines will display when people run a search. If you look just above the ‘SEO title’ entry under the Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll see a section called ‘Google Preview’, which shows you (in blue) what your title looks like. In order to optimise your blog post, you want to make sure you include your longtail keyword in there.

If you don’t do this manually, WordPress will automatically take the title of your blog post and add this here, but you may find this is too long. It may also add other unnecessary details like your website name, which is fine if you have room but best to leave out if you don’t!

How to write your Title Tag using Yoast

Under the ‘SEO title’ section, you may need to delete anything prepopulated here (depending on how it looks under the ‘Google preview’ section). Once you’ve done that you can type in a more appropriate title that contains your keyword/phrase. 

Top tip – the earlier your focus keyword appears in the title, the better!

3. Meta Description

This is the bit in the search results that appears underneath the blog post title (the one in blue). This short bit of text gives the readers a little preview of what the content is all about.

When an exact match of your search term appears in the Meta Description, it’s highlighted in bold. This tells a user that your content is relevant to their search, so always make sure you populate the ‘Meta Description’ entry in the Yoast SEO plugin and stick to the length recommended by the plugin. You’ll see the traffic light go red if you’re over the maximum character length.

How to write your Meta Description using Yoast

Just head to the ‘meta description’ section and add an enticing description of your blog post that encourages people to click. Use the green and red marker to make sure you don’t go over your word count (where Google will cut off your words!)

Top tip – the meta description doesn’t impact the SEO for your WordPress blog post, however, it does encourage people to click on your website once you appear in search results. So make sure it’s enticing!

4. Slug

Also known as the ‘URL permalink, this is the unique web address allocated to your piece of content. Say you went for the blog title “How to Promote your Fitness Business”, your URL might look something like this:

www.yourwebsitname.com/promote-fitness-business

As you can see, there’s no need to use the full title there. In fact, the shorter your URL, the better! What matters for optimisation purposes is that your focus keyword is in there.

How to create your URL using Yoast

Head over to the section that says ‘slug’ and add your slug here, using hyphens to separate each word. You don’t need to add the www.yourwebsitname.com/, just everything that comes after that. 

Top tip – Keep your URL slug short (2-3 words if you can) and remove all unneccary words like ‘the’ ‘and’ or ‘of’.

The SEO Analysis for Your WordPress Blog Post

Once you’ve written and optimised your blog post and added your focus keyword in all the relevant places, you can check the section called ‘SEO Analysis’ under your Yoast SEO plugin. Hopefully, the traffic light against it will be green, which means you’re good to go. If it’s amber or red, you can use the drop-down arrow on the right-hand side, and the plugin will tell you what you need to fix.

It could be that you haven’t added or optimised any images, or that you haven’t included any inbound or outbound links. Or even that you’ve used the keyword phrase but just not enough times. But if you follow the instructions in this blog post, you’ll know exactly what to do to remedy any of these points.

And if you want more cool tips on SEO, head over to the blog post, SEO For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide.

Having said all that… Please know that the traffic light system isn’t the end all be all of SEO! Because obsessing over the traffic light system is something we see people do all the time, and it’s a waste of your time.

Further Elements that Impact Your SEO for Your WordPress Blog

Although not WordPress specific, here are a few further elements that can impact your SEO results…

1. Wordcount

Word count (i.e. the length of your blog post) is also a big factor for SEO. Why? Because the type of content that’s published on the internet has changed over the years. Gone are the days when a short piece of 500 words would have ranked at the top of the search results. And that’s because people publish much longer content, which is why we always recommend you choose a specific topic and then go really in-depth when writing about it.

Ideally, you’re looking at creating blog posts over 1,000 words. But don’t be afraid to hit the 1,500-2,000 word mark (or even longer!) This will really help when it comes to your SEO for your WordPress Blog. Some of our top ranking articles are 2000+ words in length, and more importantly, they actually convert!

2. Include a Call to Action (CTA)

A Call to Action (or CTA) is your way of telling your readers what you want them to do once they’ve read your blog post. Do you want them to go read another piece of content? Check out your course or membership? Or maybe download your lead magnet and sign up to your email list?

Ideally, with your CTA you want to keep your audience on your website because this improves your bounce rate. Simply put, you want to stop your readers from hitting the back button and going back to Google to check out another piece of content. The longer they spend on your page, blog post, or website, the more Google takes this as a signal that your content is relevant, interesting, and trustworthy. And that means in the future when it comes to similar searches, they’ll rank your content higher than someone else’s who has a higher bounce rate than yours.

For example, here’s our call-to-action you’ve probably seen throughout our blog post – look at us getting it in here again 😉

3. Related content

And finally, you can add a section at the end of your blog post with ‘Related Content’. If it’s content you’ve published, this gives you the opportunity to add more internal links to your piece, which is great for SEO.

But you could also link to videos on your YouTube channel, for example. Or even better, embed those videos inside your blog posts. This increases the time that your audience spends on the page, which, again, tells Google that your content is relevant, interesting, and trustworthy.

Common Mistakes with your WordPress SEO for Blog Posts

Please please please don’t spend way too long trying to keep the Yoast SEO traffic light system happy. The plugin is there to help you and remind you of the things you could improve when it comes to SEO. But if you follow the tips in this blog post and have them at the back of your mind while you’re structuring and writing your blog post, optimising it shouldn’t take you more than 20-30 minutes.

And on that note, here are a couple of other SEO for your WordPress Blog mistakes that are worth calling out.

• Spending too long on keyword research. This doesn’t have to be complicated! Use handy tools like KWFinder, Answer the public, or Keywords Everywhere to help you.
• Focusing on search rather than users. We mentioned this quite a few times throughout this blog post, but this is important. You don’t want to stick words in for the sake of it because your readers will see through it and will disengage from your content and, as a result, from you as a brand. So always make sure your keywords are included organically and naturally in the text – they need to sound like they belong there. And if you’ve chosen your keyword and your topic right, they will! 

If you want to find out more about all this, head over to our blog post, The Biggest SEO Mistakes You’re Making (And What to Do Instead).

Ready to take your SEO to the Next Level? 

The benefits of good SEO are clear – it helps you get more leads and sales organically, without having to spend so much time on social media or fork out a load of money for ads. 

But often, business owners find SEO a bit too complicated, which is why we’ve created our SEO Starter Pack. This pack is aimed at complete beginners and will teach you exactly how to optimise your website for better search engine rankings. 

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

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