Blogging can a powerful SEO tool for your website. It is an easy way to add new interesting content. It will allow you to create a rapport with your customers which means that they should be more willing to do business with you. Yet, you still need to make sure that your blog is search engine optimised so that it is working for you.

So how can you make sure your blog is search engine friendly? An SEO Blog works on two levels. On-page you need to consider the content, your keywords , headings and so on. Off-page you need to create inbound links to your website. Together both of these elements of SEO should help to improve your page ranking and get your blog noticed.

Content considerations

The starting point for you blog should be quality content which the reader will find interesting. That said, you should also use your content to optimise your site. Here are some points to consider when writing your blog.

* Generally it is best to keep it simple and to write on just one topic at a time. These can then be added together to create themes on particular topics. Search engines seem to rank sites with lots of content well so aim to create a substantial amount of content. You can also interlink between relevant posts which will help search engines find their way around your site.
* The optimum length for a blog has been a contentious issue. However, experts tend to agree that they should be a minimum of 250 words, but certainly no more than 1,000. In other words, big enough that search engines can find it, but not so long that its puts readers off. The average blog reader stays at a post for just a minutes and a half – keep your posts short enough for it to be read quickly.
* Write your blog with SEO in mind, making sure it has good keyword rich content. Choose a few words and phrases that you think would be typed into a search engines which would lead to your blog. Use these as basis for your blogs. Include them in heading and early on in paragraphs, as well as in out bound links and the URL. For more tips on selecting keywords click here [link with Effective Keyword Search]. You may find it easier to write your blog first and then to go back and tweak it to include your keywords.
* Be sure to update your blog regularly, as the search engines will notice the new content and index the changes.
Off-page considerations
* As well as optimising your content there are a few steps you can take to improve your ranking off-page – the main one being inbound links. Although you do not want to manipulate inbound links obviously there are ways to generate links naturally, such as listing your blog on a directory. Interesting content should naturally develop links with others – it won’t happen over night but you’ll get there in the end.

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