Give ’em What They Want. Add a Blog.

Your blog provides valuable keywords that visitors surfing the Internet are searching for on Google and other search engines. 

 

Imagine this scenario: You’ve built a new website for your business. It’s user-friendly. It looks great. Your mom says she loves the colors. You show it to clients and they praise you for your hard work. 

 

You say “Mission Accomplished” and move on to the next fire. 3 or 4 months later, you log into Google analytics and discover that after your initial launch and self-generated “buzz”, you are getting about 10 unique visitors a day. Bummer.

 

What happened?

 

First, check the number of pages on your site. Do you have enough pages to attract the number of visitors you think you should be getting? Take in consideration the amount of content on all of your pages as well.  Every page on your site should be valuable to the visitor reading it, and optimized for the same reason. No “under construction” pages allowed! Any pages less than 250 words long should be re-evaluated.

 

Next look at the number of keyword searches that your site generated. You can do this by logging into Google Analytics and looking at the keywords report. What this tells you is the number of unique keywords that visitors used to find your site at the search engine (Google). As with most things in life, the bigger the number, the better.

 

And lastly, ask yourself, “Do I have content that people want to read and share with their friends, family, and business contacts?”

 

So what do you do if you determine you don’t have the quantity and type of content that will attract the number of visitors to your site that you seek?

 

Determine specific people (customers) who are relevant to your business. In other words, who is searching for your company’s services? Are you targeting CEOs? Are you targeting purchasing agents? Are you targeting CPAs? Are you targeting stay-at-home mothers?

 

Next, you need to determine the types of content this audience will be interested in. Do your research. Immerse yourself on sites where your target audience lurks. Find successful sites already catering to your target audience. What are the articles about?  How are the article titles worded?  Familiarize yourself with the things that make your audience tick.

 

Once you determine who you are going to write for, and what you’re going to write about, you need to create a keyword list for your content. This keyword list will act as a reminder of the topics, phrases, and buzzwords that you were audience is searching for in reading about. Keep this list handy and refer to it often when writing. Scrutinize your posts. Ask yourself, “Will my audience be interested in this article?” “Does my article utilize the subjects and keywords on my target list?” If not, you should consider editing your post, or throwing it out altogether.

 

Lastly, keep your momentum moving forward by creating an editorial calendar. Your blog post schedule should have a certain cadence to it. Decide if you are going to write once a month, once a week, or daily. Whatever intervals you decide on, stick to it. Your visitors will pick up on this schedule, and begin looking for your content on a regular basis.

 

Google analytics can tell you if your blogging efforts are making a difference.

 

After you have been on this regimen for a few months, log back into Google analytics and check your keyword report. You should begin to see an increase in the number of active keyword searches on your site! This means your hard work is starting to pay off, and your visitors are getting what they want!