Content marketing is currently one of the most popular marketing communication strategies. SEO plays a very important role in content marketing.
How To Optimize An Article On A Company Blog?
Definition: SEO plays a very important role in content marketing. Regardless of the format, all content created by brands as part of this strategy, in order to be found by Internet users and contribute to the improvement of the website's position in search results, must be properly optimized. How to do this, we show below with the example of a blog article.
Content marketing is currently one of the most popular marketing communication strategies. Many companies commonly declare that they want to increase budgets in this area from year to year, mostly at the expense of spending on traditional advertising formats.
The blog is the most frequently used platform for publishing content by companies. This is because it is the best way to improve a page's position in organic search results. However, in order for our each blog entry to be another brick on the way of building a company's reputation in the search engine, it must be properly optimized.
Identification of topics important to our clients
The goal of each individual blogger is to write texts that will interest a much wider audience than just the immediate family. It is similar to creating content for a corporate blog. If we want our corporate journal to be regularly read by a large group of readers, then we need to discuss their interesting problems.
The key question in this regard is what topics will be attractive to our clients and at the same time contribute to the promotion of the site in search engines. The company knows its clients best and knows what they are interested in. If she is not sure about the issues that bother their own clients, she can easily obtain this information.
It can be an electronic survey or simply an analysis of comments on a company's social media profile. In turn, Google AdWords: Keyword Planner or Google Trends. In the case of blogs, it is worth following trends, at least monthly.
Data from Google Trends can be exported, embedded and quoted. To place a chart from the trend table on the website, just: Open Googe Trends, search for a term (e.g. content marketing) and click Place </> under the chart displayed and copy the HTML code that will appear on the left in the new window and paste it on the website:
Title and metadata - optimization addition to having an attractive topic, each blog entry must have an attractive headline, introduction and description displayed in the Google preview. The main heading (H1) is usually the title of the article.
Not only does it have to be intriguing for Internet users to want to visit it, but it also has to contain keywords relevant to the problem raised. Such a template, but effective form of the title is an open-ended question, for example: "How to properly optimize on a blog?".
There should be only one H1 header, the next ones should also be placed hierarchically. The H1 header should ideally consist of 6-7 characters and be approx. 50-70 characters long. It is not worth using longer ones. When Google encounters a very long title, it will usually replace it with its own proposition. And such a title is already losing its SEO effectiveness.
The introduction to the article, i.e. the lead, strengthens the message contained in the headline. It is not worth laying out all the cards in it, but rather to increase the interest of people who have already clicked on the title. On the other hand, the description of the page with the article should be a marketing incentive to read the text (optimally around 155 characters).
Rich Cards are another incarnation of extended descriptions (Rich Snippets). They are created on the basis of structural data contained in the HTML code of the page. They are displayed between the search window and the list of results. URLs can be scrolled left or right.
This functionality is highly appreciated by internet users who use smartphones. Rich Cards is an opportunity to stand out from the crowd in mobile search results, effectively attracting the attention of search engine users. The card contains a website address, article title, average ratings given to the blog by users, number of votes.
Optimization for social media - well-prepared metadata will guarantee us an optimal view of the text in social media.
Pictures - in the civilization of the image, photographs have become an inseparable element of Internet publications. This is not only due to the fact that with the help of a photo you can effectively visualize the content but also to the favour of search engines on which such websites can count.
A blog photo (also in preview) in search results is a magnet for attention. In the context of SEO, it is not worth using photos from the so-called free stocks. Blogs containing author's photos, thematically matching the content of a specific post, can count on a better position in the ranking.
Photos can be posted horizontally or vertically. However, you have to remember that those in portrait orientation are easier to scroll on mobile devices. The main theme should be at the centre of the photo. Photos should be published contextually, not as a background, but the right image (2: 1 aspect ratio, 1400x735px resolution).
Pictures in the form of wallpapers are poorly visible in the image search engine (besides, they are not displayed as thumbnails in social media). Photos should be optimized for search engines. It is good to include keywords in the ALT tag. Recently, infographics have been very popular among Internet users, they are both frequently sought and disseminated.
Multimedia - Video content is the current content most searched for by users. The published videos on the blog should be optimized, this will allow us not only to attract a large number of viewers but also gain recognition from the search engine. You can use the Sistrix - Video Rich Snippet Generator application to optimize published videos embedded on YouTube.
Call to action - each blog entry, although it is part of the company's overall marketing strategy, has its own small individual goal. Sometimes it is an increase in sales of a specific product, sometimes a change in the image of this product or the desire to present it in a new context.
A blog entry can also be an incentive to take part in a competition or subscribe to a company newsletter. You can place a call to action button either above the text or at the very end. It all depends on your goal. Regardless, however, it should be clearly visible.
Links - Both calls to action and links in the text should be closely related to the content of the article. Otherwise, they will be considered spam by readers. Links can refer readers to the company's website, where they will find an extended analysis of the topic presented on the blog.
Text - many studies show that what matters more than the length of the texts is their quality. If the article is interesting, even its above-average length will not affect its popularity. Most specialists indicate that the optimal length for a blog post should be between 3,000 and 5,000 characters.
