3 Elements of an Effective “Seo Formula” for Your Blog Posts
By Jen Phillips April
What I’m going to share with you is a little controversial among blogging purists. After all, they’re all “blog from the heart” because your ideal clients will be attracted to your passion.
However, I’m going to guess that if you’re like most of the pet care providers I’ve worked with over the years, you’re more confused about blogging than excited about it. Which is fine, because I’m going to share a strategic way you can incorporate SEO (Search Engine Optimization) elements into your posts.
Here’s the thing, SEO has a lot to do with quality content. Yet, it’s also a series of “micro–tasks” that help search engines find your blog and deliver it to your ideal clients.
The SEO Formula
The majority of good SEO starts with your topic. What do your clients want to know about their pets that you can answer? I’d venture that the answer is, a lot. As a pet professional, you’re an expert on most things dog, and maybe cat. Your blog is an opportunity to share that knowledge with your current and future clients.
1) Choose Your Topic:
Some topics are more searched than others and it’s easy to discover what your potential clients want to know by using keyword search tools, which are easily available online.
Let’s say our keyword software tells us that 250,000 people a month are searching for “How to Check for Ticks on Dogs.” As a pet care provider, you have a lot of experience in this area and you can write a post giving your best tips on where ticks like to hide and safe methods of removal.
You can even use this as your blog title too. Keep it simple.
2) Use an Image (and Name It):
We live in a visual world and statistics show that blogs with images get more views. Plus, if you name your image appropriately, that’s a “micro-task” that can help boost your SEO.
There are lots of places where you can find high–quality, royalty–free images. Pexels.com and pixabay.com are two I like. You can also hone your photography skills and take them yourself. Then, when you save the image to your computer, name it with your keyword term, “ticks on dogs”—for example, rather than image 001234.jpg. Then, when you upload the image to your blog, remember to fill in the <alt> tag with the name again. This is what SEO is; a series of micro–events that, on their own, are small, but taken together, make a difference.
3) Don’t Forget Your Meta Title and Description
This is the title and description that will appear on the search engine results page (SERPS) and every Content Management System. Squarespace, WordPress, etc. all have fields for you to fill out with your title and description.
Use your existing blog title in the title field. For the description area, write two medium sentences, one of which includes your keyword term. For example, “Atlanta pet boarding facility owner, Karen, shows you how to remove ticks on dogs safely. You’ll also discover how to identify ticks.”
The goal is for you to entice someone to click on your post.
As you can see, SEO starts with your content and then moves into simple, technical matters. If blogging is part of your marketing strategy, incorporate these elements into each post and reach more ideal clients.