Everywhere you turn these days on and off the internet, you and your business are told “set up a blog.”  Many business owners jump in and start writing away.  However, the important question to ask is whether your blog gives your business an economical search engine optimization solution.

Blogging is a time-consuming activity, or if outsourced, somewhat expensive.  If your blog isn’t generating a return on your investment, then it’s not an economical search engine optimization activity for your business.

That said, a blog isn’t solely about improving SEO.  Many businesses write a blog to bolster credibility.  A well-written blog that offers information about particular services or products can increase sales.

However, in our view, any blog that isn’t search engine optimized is missing out on a massive opportunity.  Every blog post should be optimized to pull in more traffic.

How to economically search engine optimize your blog

It doesn’t matter whether your blog is part of your website or a stand-alone blog  — in our view, it should be optimized.

The first step is using carefully selected keywords in every post.  We don’t mean the same keywords in each post; rather each post should use its own keywords.

For example, if you run a Volvo repair shop in a Canadian town, and you use the keyword “service mechanic”, it seems on the surface to be a good keyword.   However, keyword research reveals that  “service mechanic” is not searched in Canada, yet it’s in over 1 million websites.

Take “Volvo maintenance”, for example.  “Volvo maintenance” is a keyword found on only 32,000 websites, yet is searched 24 times per day.  That is a decent keyword to use because:

1. people search it,
2. it’s relevant to Volvo mechanic shops, and
3. the competition is relatively weak – i.e. there aren’t too many other websites with that keyword.

Every blog post (that’s a single post, not the entire blog) that uses a well-searched, low competition keyword will provide economical search engine optimization. because it will attract traffic resulting in sales.  The fact is more traffic = more sales (unless your website is offensive terribly unappealing).

A blog can be both informative and offer economical search engine optimization

You don’t have to compromise the message or content of a blog post in order to search engine optimize it.  This means you can write a highly informative blog that bolsters your credibility by informing your customers AND get more traffic.

Okay, we’ll hammer the point home again with another example because so many businesses fail to fully appreciate the importance of keywords.

Many websites optimize keywords for the home page only.  Even then they use the most widely searched and most competitive keywords.  The problem is all other pages on the website and blog posts don’t take advantage of the keyword opportunity.

If you optimize two keyword phrases for your home page only, you will only get traffic (assuming you rank well for those keywords) for two keyword phrases.  The fact is, in every type of business, there are dozens, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of keywords used by the market.

What you need to do is isolate the good keywords, and there are usually at least 40 to 200 excellent keywords to use for any type of business.  If there are only 60 keywords, for example, and you use 2 keywords on each web page, that means you should set up 30 web pages.  Ideally you’ll set up 60 web pages and use the same keywords on two web pages for a double listing.

Now you can see why a blog is so useful – a blog is a very convenient way to add web pages for a business.  If you have 100 great keywords, start writing posts for those keywords.

If you set up your blog the way set out above, and you do some great off-site SEO, your blog and website will be an economical search engine optimization solution.

Proper meta placement is critical for on-site SEO

As an aside, setting out your chosen keywords as meta keywords is a waste of time.  Your keywords must be used in your meta titles, heading tags, and throughout your content.  Don’t just add your keywords to your meta keywords and be done with it: that will do nothing for your site and is far from being an economical search engine optimization solution.

One of the most effective off-page SEO activities is writing articles and publishing.  However, don’t ruin a great opportunity by writing and publishing garbage articles.

So, what’s the benefit of writing a quality article?

As you may know, article writing and publishing results in a link or two to a website.  Consequently, many articles are written strictly for the link and not for the quality.

In our view this is a major mistake and a nearsighted approach to off-page SEO.

Article writing should be approached as if the article is representing your website or blog.  Why?  Well, simply because it does represent your website or blog.

A published article is not only pre-selling you, your business, and your site, but it represents you, your business and your site.  Don’t alienate visitors and prospective customers with poorly written articles.

How do you write an article that matters?

1.  Simple test for determining whether an article is good enough for publishing

Ask yourself: Would I put this article on my website?  If not, then why would you publish it elsewhere?

2. An article must have a central point

The most important component to writing an article that matters is having a central point.  If you have 2 to 3 points to make that is good as well.  More than that, write another article.

A central point is something in the article that resonates with the reader.  It:

• informs,
• entertains,
• opines,
• provokes thought,
• sets out examples, and/or
• educates.

I call this the meat and potatoes of an article.

It’s good to start with an introduction, but many articles that are poorly written then continue with fluff and may throw out some random or vague point, but fail to cement that point with supporting information, opinions, or facts.  The vague point reads as an after thought.  Then the article carries on with fluff in order to fill out 300 words that qualify it for publishing with an article directory.

Writing an article that matters requires thinking.  Thinking about the central point, and then thinking about the supporting elements of the central point.

3.  Example of bad article writing

Intro: … blah, blah, blah.

Body: SEO is great for a business website.  Every business website should be optimized for traffic.  More traffic equals more customers which is good for business.  If you don’t do SEO as a business owner you are missing out on a great opportunity.

Conclusion: … blah, blah, blah.

The problem with this is the same obvious point is made over and over again.  Everyone knows SEO is beneficial.  There’s no central point such as how to get SEO, or examples of how SEO increases the number of visitors, etc.

4.  Example of good article writing

Intro: … blah, blah, blah.

Body: SEO is something every business website must have in order for the website to be effective.  The trouble is many business owners don’t know how to do SEO effectively.  Great website SEO requires both on-site (aka on-page SEO) and off-site (aka off-page) efforts.  Let me explain the difference of on-site and off-site SEO.

On-page SEO is … The primary on-page SEO activities for business websites are …

Off-page SEO is … The primary off-page SEO activities for business websites are …

Conclusion: … blah, blah, blah

A good article would then fill in that information.  As you can see the reader of the good article example would learn the difference between on-page and off-page SEO.

5.  Obvious elements of good article writing

I’m not going to expand on the following, because they’re obvious (and because I’ve already made my central point for this article); yet the following are always good reminders:

• Spell check;
• Short paragraphs;
• Consistency – if writing in the first person, stay in the first person, etc.
• Use bullet points and/or numbered paragraphs.
• Use a large enough font.
• Write gripping headlines (books have been written on this topic alone.  The trouble is writing gripping titles, but including important keywords).
• Use plenty of headings (this is good for SEO as well.  Notice I have 9 headings alone in this relatively short article).
• Edit at least once (this is my biggest weakness, but it’s important).  Sometimes I walk away from an article and then edit it for a fresher perspective.
• Outlining isn’t necessary unless it’s a long article or article series.  Sometimes I outline, other times I just start writing and let the format and structure develop.

My secondary point in this article about writing articles is …

if you outsource your article writing, you get what you pay for.  I’ve paid $10 and I’ve paid $100.  The $100 articles are far superior; the $10 articles are just a mishmash of sentences that say the same thing over and over.

That said I write most of my own articles, but sometimes do pay for editing.  Another set of eyes is always good for an article.  If you aren’t good at writing or don’t like it, pay the extra amount for quality articles.

Take away point about article writing and publishing

When you publish an article on an article directory or elsewhere, ask whether you would want that article in your website.  If not, then don’t publish it elsewhere.

If you don’t think people read your articles?  Guess again.  Publish an article on EzineArticles and check out the numbers.  The first article I published on EzineArticles I couldn’t believe the number of views.  Because it was a quality article, I also received plenty of click-throughs into my site.

At the end of the day you are better off to write and publish 5 quality articles than 10 lousy articles.  You may not get as many links to your site publishing fewer articles, but the readers of the quality articles will far more likely click into your site.

Those click-throughs into your site are valuable because they already trust you a little bit; your article pre-sold them.  That’s the best traffic to your site you can expect.

Swordfish SEO offers quality content writing services.  In fact our focus in our SEO services is off-site SEO through quality article writing and publishing.