The Importance of Blogs

Many business owners have heard about blogs – but they often don’t know that blog articles are the foundation for your Social Media and search engine optimization strategy. Once you find time to write a masterpiece, the last and very important step is to optimize that blog post to increase the likelihood it will get the attention it deserves on the search engines, and the people that you want to connect with.

Blog Optimization

1. Categories – On the right side of your screen, there will be a “Categories” tab. Categories mainly serve to help organize your content. You should keep these categories very broad. Keep the more specific topics of your blogs as tags and subcategories. You can list any post under multiple categories, but really, they should be broad enough that you only list them under one. It’s all about keeping things organized and clear for readers as they maneuver through your posts.
2. Post Image/Video – If you don’t have a video that complements the blog post, don’t worry. If you do, we advise embedding a YouTube link of the video. Uploading videos directly to your WordPress site can make those web pages with video take longer to load. If you don’t have a video, you should definitely at least have one image for each post. An aesthetically pleasing image can entice readers to start that first sentence. Contextually, if the image fits better in the middle or end of the post, go for that. But, if you find that it can fit just about anywhere, put it at the top. That image can do a lot more to pull people in at the beginning than text can.
3. Read More Tag – You can insert a “Read More” tag at any particular spot within your post. The tag simply cuts down your post so the entire article doesn’t appear on your blog homepage. This is nice for users when they’re scrolling through your various blogs. This way, they can get a good idea of what each blog is about, without having to deal with scrolling through every inch of each individual blog post. We advise inserting the tag after the first paragraph or two of each post. If your image or video is at the top of your article, try to include that in the snippet.
4. Links – We’d say shoot for a tentative goal of three links. One link should go to a services or contact page of your website that’s related to the content of the blog article. Remember, never use the entire URL in your post. Instead, insert the link, turning your text into a hyperlink. Another link should go to another related blog post on your website. You can implement it in a variety of ways. We usually just have a “Related Topics” section at the bottom of each article. Lastly, an external link to another website is great. If you have statistics or specific facts taken from other sources, linking to those web pages is not only a great way to cite your source, but it helps add a bit more credibility to your information.
5. Headings – Finally, make sure to keep your headings consistent across your blogs. Use the “Heading 2” for all subheadings within your post. The reason being, Google’s bots will be crawling your blog posts, indexing them. These subheadings will help those bots to better understand the highlights and main topics of your posts. And one more note, be specific with the subheadings, and use your keywords in them when appropriate. Generic subheadings like “Introduction” and “Conclusion” won’t be of much help to any bots trying to collect information on your post.

Content is Key

Remember, optimizing your blogs is all about increasing the chance that users will begin reading what you’ve written. In order to keep them reading, you have to make sure your content is relevant, interesting, and informative. Still, we wouldn’t be posting about blog optimization if we weren’t confident that you are or will be writing incredible blog posts for your audiences on social media and everywhere else online.

If your business needs help with creating content for social media or any other platforms, we’re here to help. Contact Brew City Marketing today.

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