Start a Business Blog: Step 3 – Write Content Google Will Like

You've decided to start a blog for your business. You know what content marketing can do for your company, and you want to write content that connects with people and brings in new customers to your website. A blog is a great way to do that! 

The most important thing for small businesses running a blog is to produce quality content that provides value for the customer and expresses something authentic about your brand identity. However, that's not always enough.

The quality of your blog post won't make a difference if no one reads it or gives it a chance. An overwhelming amount of content exists on the internet. You have to put in a lot of effort to get it in front of your audience. One of the best ways to do that is through search engine optimization, or SEO. 

What Is SEO Content Writing?

Search engines like Google sort through enormous numbers of websites full of content. They use particular algorithms to help them sort content to provide users with the most useful and appropriate search results possible.

SEO content writing is about working with that algorithm to make your content easier to find. Understanding the basics of SEO writing is easy. You need easy-tor-ready content with a relevant title so Google can figure out what your writing is about and who it would benefit.     

Why Use SEO to Create Content?

Small business owners want their online content to show up early and often in search results. The more relevant Google thinks a piece of content is, the higher up in search results it goes, and the more likely it is that a potential client will end up seeing it. 

In the new media landscape, SEO is essential for small business marketing and website design. Using SEO to guide your content creation and design makes it much more likely for your content to find an audience. 

How to Write SEO Content

Having an SEO strategy is crucially important for your business, so how does one go about getting started? How do you start improving your website's ranking on Google and other search engines? 

There's a lot that goes into SEO content, as your place in search results depends on a lot of different things. The ranking factors that affect how you show up include everything about your website. 

Google evaluates your website for its purpose, the amount of information offered, how long it's been there, who created the website, how users interact with the content, and how reliable the information is. SEO writing involves working on all of these factors.  

Focus on Helpful Content

You want your content to be meaningful on its own, not just an advertisement for your goods and services. Your search engine ranking will be better if your content offers a better user experience. 

That means users enjoy reading your content or get useful information from it. That's why you should focus on writing things that are helpful for people. 

Use Keyword Phrases

For effective SEO, you need to consider what keywords people use when searching online. The goal is to target keywords in each piece of content to make the blog post more likely to show up in those targeted search results. 

Using particular keyword phrases in headings and throughout your content is a great way to link your article with a target keyword likely to be used in searches. There are many ways to do this effectively, but it can also go wrong. 

The goal is to use keyword phrases naturally in ways that helpfully mark your content clearly for the search engine. Using too many keywords and phrases just for the sake of SEO is called keyword stuffing. This sacrifices the quality of the content and can reduce your search ranking.   

Write More In-Depth Content

You've got to do a lot to set yourself apart online. One way to do that is to go into detail. Use your expertise and explore topics carefully and thoroughly. Short and shallow articles will not get as high rankings as more informative ones. 

Length and detail are two ways that Google evaluates content for the critical ranking factors of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. 

However, your goal isn't just to prove to Google that you know what you're talking about but also to give customers something truly valuable and worth their time. 

Use Links and Sources

Another way you establish your content and website's credibility is through the links and sources you include in your content. Your content should be well-researched with links to other credible sources. 

Links to and from your site to other high-quality content is vital for your ranking as well. Link-building is the process of establishing those networks of links that show your site's credibility. 

Make It Local 

As a small business, a lot of your customer base is likely to be local. You need to be sure to include that in your SEO. Using local SEO that situates your business in your geographic area makes it much more likely to show up to residents in that area. 

Consider ways you can optimize your content for local searches residents might make for nearby services online. You could even collaborate with another local business to create more links. It's a good idea to list your phone number on your website, as long as you keep it updated and don't list irrelevant numbers to link more phone numbers.  

Pick a Strong Headline

You want your writing to be engaging and readable. You should use headings on your site to delineate the content and guide the reader through the text. A customer should be able to skim through the post using headlines to find the relevant content. 

An excellent way to organize your content for a quality user experience would be to use questions as your headings. The questions should be ones that readers might have, so they can use your headings to track down the answer they need quickly. Anything that improves the quality of your content or the readers' ease of access is helpful for your blog. 

Don't Forget to Promote 

Once you finalize your SEO strategy on your blog and website, it's time to move on to marketing. You don't have to sit back and wait for people to start finding your content on Google. Building up an audience through other means will naturally improve your search results ranking. 

Email your content out to customers and subscribers you already have, and post your blogs on social media to try to create a conversation. Work on your outreach with other websites and publications and give other sites a reason to link back to your page. It's all part of the process!

Search engine optimization can seem confusing or unintuitive, but it doesn't have to be. It's about making the best content you can and then making sure people can find it. With luck, you'll be seeing more traffic in no time, and then it'll be up to you to turn that traffic into that many loyal customers. 

Once you have your content built up, you're ready to publish! Learn more about how to create a website and how to drive sales for your business.