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SEO For Blogs – Strike The Right Balance

One of the primary reasons we’re seeing an uptrend in business blogs is the promise of generating more traffic. If attracting more traffic from the search engines is a top priority for you, just how important is SEO for blogs?

Even though blogging software such as WordPress helps you produce pretty good SEO friendly content without necessarily focusing on every SEO detail, the fact remains that search engines reward the essential SEO fundamentals, both on-page and off-page optimization.

Balance is key

The important rule of thumb here is balance. At the extremes, too little or no focus on SEO for your blog will put you at a disadvantage to your competition when it comes to attracting traffic.  And an overdone and obsessive preoccupation with SEO will produce an unnatural and stilted blog, designed to attract the search engines but unreadable and undesirable to your human visitors.

The same SEO rules apply to blogs as for any website.  We have to optimize for search engines, and at the same time, insure that we’re providing interesting, natural and readable content that appeals to our human audience.  SEO for blogs is all about striking a good balance somewhere in the middle.

One of the compelling aspects that make blogs so appealing for millions of people is the personal and informal style.  Speaking in a conversational tone doesn’t necessarily lend itself to covering the important SEO aspects.  When you’re writing in a conversation manner, and the words are flowing (yeah, we all wish the words would flow more often), adjusting the content for keyword placement and optimization can interfere with the natural prose.

This balance between SEO friendly blog content and a natural conversational writing style that reaches your audience is part of the art of writing for the web.

Establish good SEO habits

With a little practice, much of the SEO for blogs that you need to pay attention to will come naturally as you write.  Follow these basic on-page SEO pointers consistently, and you’ll strike a good balance between SEO driven content and natural, conversational writing.

• Always focus each and every post that you write around a single, primary keyword phrase. This is a discipline and a habit you want to establish.
• The keyword phrases that you want to target come from your market and keyword research (you do your keyword research, right?)
• Tight focus around a primary keyword phrase does not have to be a constraint by any means.  In fact, this is a good practice to keep your writing on topic, which is usually a better read for your audience.
• Include your keyword phrase in your post title.
• Place your post in a thematically related blog category.
• Basic on-page SEO should include a “page title”, “meta-description” and a “meta-keywords” in the page HTML header.  If your blogging platform provides this capability, use it.  For example, with WordPress you would want to install an SEO plugin such as “All in One SEO Pack” to enable this basic on-page optimization. Include your primary keyword in the “meta-description” and “meta-keyword” list.
• Sprinkle at least 3 or 4 instances of your primary keyword phrase throughout your post.  Keep it natural.  Don’t force the language, or it can become stilted and unnatural sounding for your reader.
• In your keyword research, identify additional lateral keywords related to your primary keyword (synonyms and alternative phrases).  Use these lateral terms appropriately throughout your post.
• If your blogging platform includes support for tags, use it.  Add your primary keyword as one of the tags.

If you follow these basic on-page SEO steps, you’ll have most of it covered.  Keep the following high level perspective in mind to strike the right SEO balance:

• Get your keywords organized first.  Before you start writing your blog post, you should have your primary keyword phrase selected, and a short list of lateral thematically related keyword terms pulled together.
• Then write your post, maintaining a natural, conversational tone.  Keep your focus on telling a good story.  Try not to allow your keyword focus to get in front of your writing flow.  But do keep your keywords, and how you pull them into your content, close at hand.
• When you’re finished, you can go back and tweak your language and phrasing around your keywords if necessary.

That covers the essential on-page SEO for blogs that you want to pay attention to.  We’ll cover the all important off-page SEO for blogs in an upcoming post.

Remember, write great content first and foremost.  And be sure to keep it keyword focused.  Get into the habit of following a keyword-driven structure.  And with a little bit of practice, it will become natural and second nature for you.

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