Enhance your Search Rankings through Blogging
One of the great challenges that all writers and authors face is getting noticed. The barriers to entry in terms of publishing a book are lower than ever. Anyone can publish directly to Amazon, for example, and that’s overall a good thing. It does, however, saturate the market with books that are all vying for your attention. It increases the number of published authors, too. This means that individuals hoping to get noticed have greater challenges when it comes to people finding and seeing their work.
For this reason, search engines are vital. Without search engines, you and I could not find anything on the Internet. I still remember when I first heard of Google. “I like Google for searching the Web,” a friend told me, “because the page is so simple that it loads quickly.” (Little did we know, all those years ago, that Google and its “simple, fast-to-load page” would one day be one of the most powerful tech giants in history.)
Regardless of your thoughts on specific search engines, though, you probably have at least the vague idea that search engine rankings are important. Now, search engine optimization is the sort of thing that can take up entire books. It’s a topic large enough and complicated enough that we can only really brush up against it here. There are, however, some things you need to keep in mind. The punch line to all these things is that blogging will help people to find you.
“The first thing you learn when you’re blogging is that people are one click away from leaving you. So you’ve got to get to the point, you can’t waste people’s time, you’ve got to give them some value for their limited attention span.” – Alex Tabarrok
Search engine optimization used to have right and wrong answers. These days, with the algorithms constantly changing, you can’t count on the old optimization tricks working to get a blog or website to rank higher in search results. The good news is, you don’t need to worry about that. There are a few basic concepts that will serve you well no matter where you ranked before. There’s no point in trying to hit a moving target that is just going to change again once you think you have it figured out. Instead, adhere to three basic guidelines.
First, use key words in your blog titles. Always think in terms of what people might be searching for. For example, you don’t name a website, “Deb’s Writing Emporium” when what Deb offers is writing assistance with college papers. Name the site, instead, Deb’s Writing Help, or even, “Writing Help from Deb,” and maybe even “Find Somebody to Write My Paper.”
By the same token, don’t give your blogs cryptic titles. Make them straightforward and use the terms people would search for. For example, “Improve Your Search Rankings through Blogging” is something someone might search for if they were interested in this topic.
Always name your blog posts with plausible search strings. Don’t try to be clever or hide them. Your prose will speak for itself; that’s where you get clever. Make your blogs easy for the search engines to fine and for interested people to find topics they’re looking for.
Second, maintain a consistent blog schedule and blog length. Gone are the days of content farms full of lengthy articles that were barely English, but which contained a keyword density that drove search engines there. The search engines have stopped responding to these tactics. They do, however, still rank consistent publication of content (and not just a few words, but a substantial amount of content) when considering where search returns should be rated.
This means, for you, that you want to maintain both a consistent schedule and a consistent length. This way, the search engines see that you’re not only contributing regularly to your blog, but there’s something of substance there to see. This is one of the biggest reasons that people add blogs to their websites.
Finally, make sure your blog is publicly available and searchable. This may sound like a “gimme,” but you would be surprised how many people still treat blogs like secret diaries. They are posting their thoughts publicly, but they don’t want anyone to actually FIND those thoughts. This is silly. Your blog is not a diary and you shouldn’t be treating it as such.
Instead, treat your blog like the public document that it is. Use it to drive traffic to topics your readers will find interesting. Make it easy for them to find these things. Stay consistent and make sure your thoughts are substantial. Your search engine results will improve organically as a result.