Clearly, one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to a business blog is to share new content. But what about those older blog posts that are hanging out on your blog somewhere?
Why not make good use of older content? Make it easy for your blog readers to learn more about your solutions to their problems. This requires that you do more than just write an article from the heart. Yes, writing with passion is great, but as long as you’ve got readers on your blog, lead them to older posts.
For business blogging, you’ll need to become keyword-savvy, and use a plugin or two will help make it easy and automatic.
The screen-capture image at the top is a sample from Chip Scholz’ LeaderSnips blog showing how at the end of each post you can provide suggestions for related posts. It uses the YARPP plugin.
Business blogs can be tricky creatures. While it seems like blogging should be pretty straightforward, there are a lot of nuances to building a successful business blog that your potential clients can actually find.
The good news is, you can put every piece of content that you write to work for you. Here are some suggestions that can help you build content and optimize the content that you already have on your site.
- Make sure all of your posts are keyword rich. We all know that keywords are critical when it comes to being found by search engines. Are you making it easy for search engine systems to identify what each post is about? Learn how to optimize blog posts for keywords, or start using a tool to help you (Scribe SEO Optimizer is great but there’s a small fee.) Go back and re-read your old posts, identify important keywords, and add them into your headline and content body if the posts are lacking. When you first started your blog, maybe it was just for fun and not because you wanted to make it a business entity. But now, you’ve moved in that direction. Make sure your keywords relate to your business and how people would search to find you.
- Promote older posts. In addition to promoting your newest content on social media sites, it’s a good idea to occasionally remind readers where they can learn more from older posts as well. You’ll draw in more readers by featuring a wide variety of topics, and you’ll get more clicks through to your website as well.
- Link back to older posts. This is probably the best way to get people to go look through your older content. Linking at the end of each post is a good idea but drop links in throughout the body of your article. Link relevant words or sentences back to old posts on the same or similar topics. Once your readers figure out that those links will take them to other places on your site (and not to advertising), they are more likely to let links guide them around your site. Search engines are also more likely to find your site if you have lots of relevant backlinking.
- Provide a list of other relevant posts. There are several useful plugins that will automatically provide readers with titles and links to similar posts at the end of each post. One I love is YARPP – Yet Another Related Post Plugin. It’s free. You’ll see an example in the list of related posts at the end of this article. It provides images as well. Nice, isn’t it? (Also see photo above.)
Paying attention not only to new content on your site but also how the old content is performing as well will help your business blog be more successful in the long run. People who are mindful of all aspects of their blog or website will gain more readers. Remember to check your website’s stats on a regular basis. This can also help you to determine what kind of content resonates with your readers.
Guest Author:
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
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