Having a blog is a great way to spread information about your business or industry. Optimizing your blog for SEO is just one of the critical elements to ensuring as many as possible land on your blog and read what you have to say.

Here are a few ways, from both a content and back-end perspective, to optimize your blog for SEO.

Content

• Choosing a topic:
  • Choose a topic that presents a new angle on a specific matter; provides a good hook in the beginning so people will want to read on; and contains information that is in some way important to your readers. This can mean that it’s useful, entertaining, or otherwise valuable.
  • Engaging blog content will attract more traffic, link marketers (people that link their sites to yours) and social sharers.
• Outline Key Phrases and Keywords for your article.
  • Make a list of key phrases and keywords for your article. These are important to include for the overall SEO value of the page.
• Create an engaging, searchable title.
• Body content
  • Proper grammar and spelling are crucial.
  • Blog posts tend to be most effective when broken up into short paragraphs with sub headers.
  • Do not overuse keywords or key phrases. Intersperse them naturally throughout the text in the natural reading rhythm of the article.
    • This is vital! Overuse of keywords can be considered “spam” and will most likely hurt your SEO efforts.
• Whenever relevant, include links to other pertinent websites.
  • Utilize anchor text vs including the entire link
  • All outbound links should open in a new tab or window
  • Be sure to include rel=“nofollow” on any outbound links

The Back-End

• Include the meta description.
  • Should be approximately 150-160 characters (most search engines will truncate anything beyond 160 characters).
  • Create a clear and concise description of the page content.
  • The description tag is used to increase your click through rate from search. Think of it as providing a reason for individuals to read your post.
• Include a meta keywords tag.
  • Should be 2-4 keywords that categorize and describe the content of the page.
• Customize your URL to be similar to the title of your post.
  • Should be searchable and conversational.

Sharing 

Tweet Your Blog Post to Your Twitter Followers

Twitter is a perfect place to share a link to your blog post as soon as you publish it. There are many tools that enable you to automatically publish a link to your latest blog post on your Twitter stream, or you can share it manually.

Share the Blog Post on Facebook

Given how many people use Facebook, it’s highly likely that people who want to read your blog posts are on Facebook, too. Therefore, be sure to share a link to your blog post on both your Facebook Profile and Page (if you have a Facebook Page for your blog).

Share the Post on Google+

Google+ is a powerful tool for blog post promotion, and it shouldn’t be missed.

Share the Post on Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual social bookmarking sites. If you include images in your blog posts, then Pinterest is a great place to promote them.

Share the Post to Your LinkedIn Followers

If you write a blog about a business, career, or professional topic, then LinkedIn is one of the most important places to promote your blog posts.

Include a Link to the Post in Your Email Newsletter

If you have an email opt-in form on your blog and collect email addresses from readers in order to send email newsletters and communications to them, then those email messages are a great place to share links to your blog posts. Make sure you include a snippet along with the link to entice them to click through and read the complete blog post.

Share the Link with Online Influencers and Bloggers With Whom You Have Relationships

Have you been taking the time to find online influencers who have the attention of your blog’s target audience? Have you taken the time to connect with online influencers and bloggers to get on their radar screens? Have you begun to build relationships with them? If you answered yes to these questions, then you should share links to your best and most useful blog posts with them and ask if they would share it with their own audiences (if they like the posts). Make sure you don’t spam online influencers and bloggers. Instead, be very selective about which blog posts you ask them to help you share. And if you haven’t started to find and connect with online influencers and bloggers in your niche, you’re missing a big opportunity to grow your blog.

Consider How to Repurpose the Blog Post to Extend Its Life

Immediately after you publish a blog post, you should think about how you can repurpose the content within that blog post to extend its reach and its life. A blog post can be used as a promotional tool for your entire blog when it’s repurposed.

Share the Post on Social Bookmarking Sites Like StumbleUpon

Social bookmarking enables you to share your blog posts with people who are actively looking for content. These aren’t as big as they used to be, but there’s still no hurt in utilizing them.

Share the Post with Relevant Parties

Do you participate in any online forums related to your blog’s topic? Any travel-related organizations? If so, then those forums are great places to promote your blog posts. Be sure to offer more useful information and comments than self-promotional links in your posts though, so you don’t appear to care more about self-promotion than the members’ conversations. Local CVBs would probably be happy to share, too.

Promote Your Blog Post Internally

Internal linking within your own blog is an important part of search engine optimization and keeping people on your blog longer. Think about how your blog post fits into your internal linking strategy. For example, can it be included in a list of links that are part of a series or other multi-part piece of content? Is it an evergreen piece that explains a topic frequently discussed on your blog in great detail? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then there are opportunities to link internally to your blog post now and in the future.
By leveraging content, back-end coding, and social sharing, your blogposts are sure to be seen by many.