How To Write a Blog Post for SEO and Sales!
How to write a blog post for SEO and click through is a tricky business. We get it, blog post writing isn’t everyone’s favourite past time but a great blog can bring you SEO goodness, credibility, buzz, links and sales so it’s time to do some truly heroic blogging. As a leading SEO agency, Media Heroes is delighted to bring you our latest instalment to help you with your own SEO success!
Make a heroic effort when writing for your blog
There’s nothing worse than content for content’s sake (well maybe content for Google’s sake, but we’ll get to that). Truly heroic content takes time and effort. You need to think carefully about what your audience needs right now. What is on their minds? How can you answer that need? What information do you have at hand and what do you need to find? Then it’s time to put in some research and gather your facts. Never waste your audience’s time with general, pointless, unhelpful or hard sell content. Once you’ve delighted them, POW, the sales will come rolling in.
Sound altogether too hard? It’s true, blogging is one of the most hated jobs by business owners. Talk to Media Heroes if you need some help!
Decide on your blogging goal before you start writing
If your goal is “get something up on the blog” then you’re doing it wrong! Blogs just for SEO are also not the way to go. Understanding why your audience is reading this blog entry is the key to nailing your own business goals. Here’s the three key steps you MUST take before you start writing:
Who is the reader and why are they on your website?
Why does your potential customer want your product? Once you can answer that, you can better “treat” her to some meaningful content. Is she a twenty something looking to spoil herself with an aspirational purchase, or a forty something willing to pay more for quality? Maybe it’s a husband who needs gift ideas or a cashed up career woman who loves to impulse shop. Decide which customer you’re writing for and then write especially for that one person. If it helps, reference a “real life” example of your ideal customer and imagine you’re writing just for them. From here you’ll have more insight into how to write a blog post that appeals – and it may help you come up with the right “voice” too.
What is their current problem
The answer isn’t “they’re time poor”. The answer may be, they are career driven and have a growing family, so the time they used to spend browsing online has been greatly limited. They enjoy shopping and have a current and specific need for items like yours. They now use online shopping as a recreational activity and are likely sipping a glass of wine as they shop. They do however have goals in mind while they relax. Before you start writing your heroic blog, consider your customer’s frame of mind and how to best deliver the information they’re seeking.
Where are they in the buying cycle?
Are they just becoming aware of their problem and need more information or are they on top of it, educated and ready to buy. If they’re seeking basic information, consider the keywords they’re thinking about when they start searching.
What this all means for your blog SEO strategy
Writing a blog that is stuffed with keywords but offers no real value will end in low conversions and social sharing. Yes, blog SEO is important, vital in fact, but you shouldn’t write JUST for search engines. The blog must entice your reader to move through the stages of the purchase decision on YOUR website (funnelling) or arrive at your website at a crucial time (keyword targeting).
Here’s an example of how they may be searching at different stages in the buying cycle:
#1 Awareness Stage:
She thinks: I am tired and have a small amount of time and money – I need a holiday.
She searches: “Short holiday ideas”, “holiday destinations near Brisbane”
#2 Consideration Stage:
She thinks: Ooooh, a beach holiday sounds good, where should I go?
She searches: “Sunshine Coast Attractions”, “Gold Coast Attractions”
She thinks: Gold Coast looks too bustling, I just want to relax in the sun and do some shopping.
She searches: “best beaches Sunshine Coast”, “Shopping Sunshine Coast”
#4 Decision Stage:
She thinks: Wow, I think I’m in love with Noosa. Beaches, national parks, designer shopping. I’m in!
She searches: “Resorts Noosa”, “Accommodation Packages Noosa”, “Book Noosa Accommodation Online”
In reality, you need ALL of these blog posts to capture your market’s attention at a time when they’re ready to move forward in the buying process. When you set up all these blog entries, funnel readers through to the next stage by including enticing links to your next stage content in each blog post.
These “funnels” should all end in a place where she can spend some money with you (or sign up to your mailing list, a desired action of some sort). In Consideration and Decision stages, you can even suggest she skips ahead and signs up right away. This can work for “impulse buys” but holiday research and other considered purchases, you may need to educate her further.
“The most successful companies have a minimum of fourteen different conversion funnels on their websites”
Hubspot
Content types matter
There are scores of different types of blog entries and each has its own benefits and drawbacks. It’s vital to think about the customer and how they prefer to absorb information. Multi-media blogs get good SEO results, downloadable white papers and ebooks are amazing conversion tactics for some businesses and an influential infographic can get a whole industry linking to your website. It’s all about what your ideal reader wants.
Picture Blogs
Not all “blogs” are long written pieces. For visual products some very attractive hero pictures that excite the imagination really do tell a thousand words. These are key to click through from social platforms and sales conversion but images alone are practically useless for traditional SEO. You may wish to create a picture blog with tons of amazing images and a few optimised paragraphs in between.
Video is all the rage
Google Think – an absolutely ESSENTIAL tool for blog writers, reports that 86% of people watch a video when planning a holiday. Facebook gives high priority to video content and YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Corporate video production is costly and it can be difficult to achieve a polished professional result. Read more about our corporate video production services here.
The rise of Slideshares, Prezis and other cool info sharing tools
It’s the evolution of Powerpoint Presentations. They’re pretty, they’re fun, and they allow you to break down complex issues in to attractive slides with funky graphics and effects. They’re dressing up boring information as delightful eye-candy, just the way that Powerpoint never did. They’re also simple to create and cheap or free to use. These are perfect for businesses where the product is targeted to visual learners.
From podcasts to webinars, case studies to interactive games and apps…there are so many ways to spice up your blog and appeal to your audience in the right way.
Vertical Search and Multimedia
All this diverse media and multi-media also triggers “Vertical SEO’ algorithms and tools. Vertical search, the result of Google’s ever expanding Knowledge Graph is yet another advancement in Google’s technology. Vertical Search is where searches are done down one narrow topic field or format (YouTube is a Vertical Search Engine). Instead of the usual Google search results – across a broad, horizontal selection of results, the goal is to return greater precision in search results. To you it looks like the “Image Search”, “Shopping Search”, “Google Scholar” or “Maps” options when you go looking for something. In standard search results pages, it is a band of images, or places of interest, or YouTube results or news articles that appear amongst the standard listings.
This is the future of search and is already a big influencer in click through and rankings. Consider these options when creating your content as it’s a “SEO shortcut” that will grow and grow over time.
Once you’ve made some big decisions on how to craft the perfect post for your blog, you can start creating something amazing. Amazing is the key to excellent blog performance – for both conversion and SEO purposes. Now you know how to write a blog post for both SEO and sale conversions, it’s time to put on your heroic red undies (over your suit of course) and create some real magic.
If blog SEO and multimedia content sound like it’s all just too hard, talk to us about our digital strategy Brisbane options in Brisbane, so we can help you find the right solution for your business.
