How to SEO Your Blog to Rank on Google #341

Hi, welcome to the SEO Podcast with E-Web Results. I am Charles Lewis, your Client Results Advocate. And I am Daniel Gildersleeve, your Content Results Specialist. Our Content Results Specialist. I bet you're like, what is the Content Results Specialist and who is this guy and where is Chris Burris? Well, CB is in Vegas right now. He's at a sales training with our business coach. So, CB, miss you. Travel safely. We'll see you Monday. And, yes, we broadcast without you. So, dig that. Hey, and this is, I really wanted to do this for all our fans and people listening right now to kind of introduce you to Daniel. He writes our content. He helps deal with keyword research and SEO and PPC and all these other things. A really good guy. And so, he wrote some content today. What's the name of his article? How to Use Your Blog for Website SEO Ranking. How to Use Your Blog. So, we're going to talk content all over again. And so, we're going to get into that like 16 tips. So, we'll figure out what all of those are and see if we can help you guys. These are highly usable practical tips for small businesses. So, get out a piece of paper and a pencil, jot some notes, and visit our blog. We'll give you the URL at the end of the podcast. And that's how we do this. So, we're going to get into our potatoes right now. But before we do that, we always look for some shikos. So, we won't go through our games in a kind of normal rigmarole we do with Chris is here. But I will say, shiko us. Those are shares, likes, and follows. That's our kind of branded term for social engagement. So, hit us up at eWebResults across all platforms. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. It's all at eWebResults. Hit us up. Now, I'm going to keep moving. I do got a little algo cat. Can I get to this algo cataclysm? Absolutely. Too bad Chris isn't here. This is

his favorite portion of the program, the algorithm cataclysm. But understand this. Last week, we talked about Penguin being now part of the Google's core algorithm. So, no more were they just running it periodically. It's now part of the core algorithm. So, it's always running. That was the previous algo cat. And that was like 9.9 on the Richter scale. Well, the follow-up tremors to that, right, are the fact that now, since Google Penguin is part of the core algorithm, now they just released a statement that any sites that were previously penalized by Penguin should now start seeing their rankings come back up. Because the penalties are being removed for anybody who fixed those sites. What does that mean for you guys listening right now? Well, if you were penalized by Penguin, that means it was likely due to some bad links or some sort of linking structure or something like that. And if you remove those links, you disavowed those links, you fixed those links, well, then this Penguin refresh should get your ranking back up. So, hopefully, you've done that. That's our algo cataclysm. I got some more news for you guys also. So, we're getting to some news. This news is really about Google and, more importantly, Google Maps. So, you use Maps? All the time. All the time. So, here's a new feature you'd probably like. Google Maps is maximizing their voice search capabilities. I like this. I tried to do this when you couldn't. So, I'm actually glad they did it now. When their latest update. Basically, they updated the Google Maps app. The Google Maps app. The Google Maps app. That's what it is. With search capabilities, which can help people keep their eyes on the road while driving. So, now the phrase, OK Google, will work when you have Google Maps activated. OK Google. OK Google will give you that. And you've got some commands you can use, like, high traffic or unmute the voice guidance or avoid tolls and ferries or house the traffic ahead or show alternate routes

and all kind of other voice commands they already pre-programmed when you use OK Google while Google Maps is running. Thank you, Google Maps. Appreciate the update because this sucks to have to look at your device and try to find an alternate route or answer any one of these questions. I really appreciate it. Got a couple of punches in the face, those who hit us up on Twitter. Yeah, I'm going to share those today. We got a punch in the face for Megan Sally, a girl with two first names on Twitter. Essential listening, as always, at eWebResults. And we have one from Jamso, at JamsoValueSmart. Enjoy the knowledge, the show, and the results from your shares. Hashtag gratitude. Hashtag gratitude. Well, look, thank you guys for tuning in. Appreciate you sharing this. And hit us up. Let us know that you're tuning in. Let us know which podcast you're tuning into, which one you're watching, which one you're listening to. We'd be glad to punch you in the face. I've got another punch in the face. I want to give a punch in the face today to all the fact checkers out there who made this week's debate so enjoyable to watch. Oh, they did. Yeah, the fact checking was, I believe, was awesome. Shout out to, frankly, Hillary's production team, because the web content they had was up. It was constantly updated, live, during the debate. That was pretty cool. The only aftermath is, as I was preparing for this podcast, I did notice that about 60% of Americans do not trust the media fact checkers. So, entertaining, as always, but reliable? Not sure. Not sure. Exactly. It's amazing how the fact checkers can't always be trusted. Interesting. Well, so let's get into our article. All right. Let's get into our article. So, like I said, this is our content writer. We brought him in-house, because content is really, really important. And so, before we get into this, you know, how to use your blog for website SEO ranking, I wanted to share a little

bit about Daniel, and what kind of credentials you bring to our company. Absolutely. I was a writer before I was an internet marketer. So, that's what I bring to the table, is those writing skills. Now, I've added on to that marketer, Google partner, SEO, blog writer, web developer. I wear a lot of different hats around here. But, a lot of the businesses who come to us, we always talk about the importance of the blog. Yep. The importance of content. And the blog is how we add content. Exactly. So, what I'm going to bring to the table today is the how-to steps. And we're going to fly through this fast, because this would be an hour-long podcast. Definitely. If we nailed home on every single point, we could talk about it for hours. So, we're not going to do that. We will give you the URL. The podcast version, 30 minutes, then you go click the link and read the whole thing. Exactly. So, a blog is an essential part of your website's SEO strategy. The search engines favor new content, engaging content, relevant content. So, we're going to teach you how to do that, how to find out what you should be posting, and how to post it on your website. And the reason you want to do that, let me say this, is because, like you said, search engines are always looking for new and fresh content. And usually, your main page content doesn't change that much. Your services, your products, your prices don't really change that much. So, having an active blog on your domain name gets the opportunity to constantly publish new content that's fresh, that's relevant around what you offer. And let's remember, the number one goal of internet marketing is to get people to know, like, and trust you, and nothing does that better than a blog. There you go. So, how to write a blog for a website SEO ranking? Well, number one, we hope you're monitoring your keyword ranking, whether you're using a service like Moz or a

different service. Keep track of where you're at. If you depend on new customers and new money coming in through where you rank in the search results, be tracking that. You know, understand where you rank at, which terms you rank for, which terms you don't rank for. And that sort of decision making should really go into the keyword ranking that you're monitoring. Help you determine which keywords you want to go for. Right. So, what I do when I'm preparing a new blog is I go to that report. I find out where I'm doing in my keyword ranking, and I try to identify an opportunity. If you're hanging around number, spot 11 or 12 in Google, that's a good opportunity to get to page one. If you just crack the top 50 and you're at 48, well, that's a great opportunity to probably boost yourself about 10 or 15 places, depending on how competitive your industry is. So, monitor your keyword ranking. Monitor your keyword ranking, and then identify an opportunity. Identify which of your target keywords you want to go after. And identify, that's number two, is identify your keyword challenge or opportunity. Right. Okay, awesome. Number three. Number three, after we identified what keyword we're going to go after, we're going to go to the Google Keyword Planner or another tool to find a variation that people are searching for, something relevant. So, Google Keyword Planner is the tool that I use to find relevant keyword phrases. The technical term for these are LSI keywords. That's latent semantic indexing. Let's call it a secondary keyword phrase. This is not in your top five to ten. It's just a little off. If you have music lessons for kids, this is kids' music lessons. Yeah, this is the secondary key phrase that's usually wrapped around your first keyword. So, if you do, you know, AC repair Houston, and then the second keyword, secondary keyword is repairing your Houston AC or some variation of the term. Usually, longer tail, a little bit more focused, but definitely relevant to

the target phrase. Yeah, Google's going to pick that up. It's going to know that it's related to that other post. And if you link them together, which we'll talk about later, you'll get SEO value for both posts. Number four. All right, four. So, we've identified our secondary keyword. Now, we want to identify a blog topic. There's a lot of ways to pick a blog topic. I like going to your FAQs. FAQ is a double win for you because you're creating valuable content about a question you are frequently asked all the time. And guess what? When people ask you that question again, you refer them to your blog. Yes. Or even from an internal linking perspective, if you have an FAQ page, and then you've turned around and written a blog post for this FAQ, it's a great linking opportunity from FAQ to the blog post. And the fact that it's an FAQ probably says that there's some search volume there because it is frequent. Exactly. Number five. Number five. We're going to write a keyword rich title that includes this secondary keyword phrase. So, this is not your page title, right? This is a secondary title. So, consider your H1, which kind of has your primary term in it. And then this blog post has an H2 secondary title that has that secondary term. Right. Number six. We're going to create a quick blog outline. Why is creating the outline important, dude? The outline is so important. I know some of you guys are going to feel like you're back in high school, but it's going to save you so much time. It's going to keep you from rambling. It's going to keep your content focused. And it's going to keep your reader engaged because you'll get a bird's eye view of what you're about to write. And guess what? You didn't waste time writing it before you just hacked and slashed half hour worth of writing because it didn't fit. Number seven. Number seven. We're going to create a new blog post on your

website. We're going to... Keyword on your website. On your website. Now, why is this done on the website and not like saying on Word, Microsoft Word or Google Docs somewhere? So, if this is particularly for people who are starting out, who are not SEOs, who haven't done this for years, do it on your website because number eight. Okay. You're going to use a checklist while you write. And if you're working on WordPress and if you're using the Yoast plugin... Like we are. Writing it on your website is going to give you a real-time green light checklist of whether or not you've accomplished all the things you set out to do with SEO. If you had the right number of keywords, if you had the right number of characters and number of words, if you have the right image and all sorts of other items that Yoast will give you in order to see if this page is what they consider optimized. It's one of the many reasons why we recommend WordPress as a tool and especially Yoast. If you want to check out the blog post on our website, I have actually taken screenshots of this blog post of how I came out in the Yoast checklist and that's readability, how easy is it to read and it's also the SEO indicators, the alt tags, the title tags, the slug. Yeah. Your description, your page titles, all of that information is there. Yoast does a great job of letting you know if this page is optimized. And so we just choose to take advantage of the tool. Yeah. They're going to give you the red light, yellow light, or green light. I don't stop till it's all green. These guys give me a lot of trouble sometimes because sometimes I try finessing it a little too much, but that's where you get the big wins. And that's how we produce quality content. Number nine. Number nine. After you've written your title, after you've written your blog, you need to end it with a call to

action. This is the big conclusion. Yes. So that's going to be another H2 or an H3 at the end of your blog post with your CTA. Buy my widgets now. I'll tell you why this is important. This is important because understand that if someone is taking the time to read your, you know, seven, eight hundred thousand word post and they've gotten all the way to the bottom, that means they likely appreciate this content. They found some value in it. And that's call to action. That CTA has a lot more importance, a lot more value for someone who's just absorbed your content versus someone who's fresh on your site. And so you want to take this opportunity to include that CTA at the bottom of the content. So that way, after they finish reading it, you can punch them with your offer again. And we're going to keep it real with the Chris Burris kiss here. Keep it simple, stupid. You're going to tell them what, you're going to tell them why, and you're going to tell them how. How to do it. Exactly. Download, subscribe, purchase, you know, this book, this newsletter, this e-guide, whatever it is right now. You know, give them some specific instructions. And if they engage with you, they'll likely follow it. And something we've been testing here, we're having really good results with, if you know how to place a button, if your call to action is buy now, call now, get pre-qualified, put a button at the bottom of your text that says the exact same thing, because people love pushing buttons. It just works. It just works. Number 10. All right, number 10. If you're using Yoast, we're going to go back down to your Yoast plugin, and we're going to write a custom SEO title, and a custom description, it's going to auto-fill it for you, but you want a little bit more control. Remember, this is what's going to show up on Facebook, on LinkedIn, this is what's going to show up in the search results,

and you have 100% control over what people see. So, make sure you have the keyword there, that's going to make people comfortable, know that they're in the right place, and then in the description, make sure you introduce the subject, the keyword, and you have a call to action. Now, he's talking about inside the title. So, he's talking about your metadata. So, the title and that description, you want to make sure that you emphasize this keyword there, because people need to see it, and understand from a search results perspective, that keyword will be bolded if it's an exact match or a phrase match of what they searched. And so, that makes your ranking stand out a little bit more, and increase your click-through. So, you want to include that keyword there. So, if you want to see what I did for this post, there's actually a screenshot of that metadata at the very end of this post. But, another thing we're experimenting with, really great results. If you're a local service, if you want your phone call to be ringing, save people an extra step, put your phone number in your meta description. They don't even need to click through to your website. If you are advertising emergency plumbing repair, if you have water coming out of your light fixtures. Exactly. Remember that? We had a client who had that. If you have water coming out of your client, if your client has water coming out of their light fixtures. They're not going to click the link. They're going to click the phone number. No. They're going to look. Have your phone number in your meta description. Huge win. Number 11. Number 11 is always add a featured image. And this is obvious to me. So, I'm going to take it to Charles. Why do we always have a featured image, Charles? You need a featured image for multiple reasons. Let's address search first. Well, we all know that posts that have images get a little bit more value. This is an opportunity for alt tags

and other keywords. So, you want your image there. Right? From a user perspective, there's nothing like a visual to aid with the content. And so, you need that visual there. You need to give people an understanding of what this content is visually. Now, you can take it a step further. And what we tend to do on most posts is we'll turn them into a meme. Try to repurpose this featured image. And so, now the same featured image that's referenced in the blog post can be repurposed on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and things like that that have the same content that's on your site. So, there you get some continuity from whatever device, whatever platform, whatever they find this blog post. They see the same image. They get the same branding. They get the same experience. And furthermore, who likes to read content that doesn't have pictures? So, I'm going to step on Charles' toes for a second here. And I'm going to give a pro tip about what he just said. Pro tip. If you're using newsletters, okay, and you're driving to a page on your website that has a featured image, include that same featured image in your newsletter. Yes. It's going to, when people arrive from your newsletter onto your website, it's going to let them feel reassured that they're in the right place. Yeah. Continuity. Continuity. And this is just from a content perspective. But the same concept works across the board. A paid ad, the page that they land on, you really want the messaging and the content they read to kind of reference the ad that they just clicked. So, same thing from your newsletter. If they see an image and they click, you want the content and the image that they clicked on to be the first thing they see when they click. Must have a featured image. Now, I like this about the featured image also. You want to get it at the right size. Right? Let's hang out there for a minute. Because in the previous

tip, we talked about making titles that show up on Twitter and Facebook. Well, when you paste that link in, if your featured image is the right size, like 1,200 pixels wide, 600 pixels high, then Facebook will grab it and use that as the card. If that image is not the right dimensions, then they'll pick one image from your site that is or no image at all. You had the opportunity to control that by just making sure your featured image is the right size. Take advantage. Number 12. Number 12, additional SEO boosts. These are great to have. You don't need them, but I hesitate to say you don't need them because these are important as well. One, add internal links to your other pages and posts. That's kind of like the FAQ example we gave earlier. You got an FAQ page. It has 10 questions. And you begin writing blog posts for each one of these questions. Then you link over. So, now your FAQ page has a paragraph summary, but they can click the link and get the full shebang on the answer to that question. Yeah, there's a reason why the bots are called spiders because they're looking for that web of links between the pages. Number two, use external links to high-ranking websites that are not your competition. Yeah, so let's say you're a countertop installer, right? And you install granite countertops and quartz countertops. And so, you may not want to link to your competitors, but you may want to link to your manufacturer. You may want to link to your distributor. He's not in competition with you. He's extremely relevant. He has some of the similar imagery. And it's a great outbound link. Google values it, and it serves as a resource for the people who visit your site because they can't purchase from them because they're manufactured. They still have to purchase from you. So, anytime you can use an external link in that said blog post about quartz countertops, you know, we get ours manufactured from link, link, link.

And now you have great outbound links. And now, if that company's doing SEO, and they probably are, they'll likely recognize that those links are coming in and return a favor. A great way to build links also. Number three is include additional images as examples or infographics. Yeah, so we keep referencing this post. When you go to our website and you check this post out, you'll see screenshots of the Yoast plugin. You'll see screenshots of the custom metadata. But then you'll also see our main featured image. And so, that's our primary image. And then our other screenshots are the kind of secondary images that support the content. Anytime you can have more media, more rich media, the better. All right. And our fourth additional SEO boost is embed a relevant YouTube video, preferably on your own channel. Preferably on your own channel, preferably your own content, and all of the above. Anytime you can add some more media, video media, on top of a post that's already quality and has good images, then you really increase the likelihood of that page ranking. Video just helps, period. Number 13. All right. 13. We're getting close to the end. Is preview and proofread. These are both very important steps, but you can do them at the same time. You want to log in on a mobile device. You want to make sure it looks good on mobile. And you also want to make sure it looks good on desktop. But while you're reading it, look at the grammar. Look at the spelling. If you're not good, give it to someone else. Let somebody else do it. If you are good, let somebody else look at it. Because a lot of times, you can just be in the forest and can't see the trees. And so, because you're head down. And it can take a fresh set of eyes to catch the fact that that said off instead of of. Yes. Right. Microsoft Word or Yoast, frankly, won't catch that because it's spelled correctly. And so, you need an

extra eye to catch some of those things there. Definitely preview it and proofread it. Yeah. Our project manager here, David, he loves and hates me because I'm always interrupting his work and saying, can you read this? Can you read this? Plus, if you are a client of an internet marketing agency, speak up. I had a client today say, hey, you forgot a word here. Was that intentional? I was like, no, that's not intentional. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, you know. Yeah, I forgot the, you know. Yeah, so if you're a client, and not just that. If you're a client, then you should expect these things. You should expect that your agency is proofing and reading this content. And if you guys have an open dialogue, some great communication, then there should be no challenges in giving that type of feedback. If you are having challenges with your agency in regards to the content they're putting out or how this content is updated and even written, you may want to reconsider. Number 14. All right, 14 is quick. Once you get that far, hit the publish button or schedule it for a later date, depending on your editorial calendar. But basically, you're saying it's out there. It's out there. Market is done. Yes. Market is done. So, number 15. Just because you published, you're not done yet. Usually, your post gets automatically cataloged in Google, but not all the time. And I guarantee you, because I've seen this happen. The next thing you're going to do is submit your new URL to Google. And on our blog, we have a link to where to do that. You copy and paste that URL there. You click that you're not a robot and click submit, and Google will file it away. You have to do that. And here's another pro tip for you. Pro tip for you. One of the fastest ways, literally, one of the fastest ways to get your new page, whether it's a blog post or web page, indexed by Google, faster than resubmitting

it to Google? Let somebody plus one it. Somebody plus ones it, or somebody clicks this link and they begin reading it, Google will catch that and index it faster. And that's being written on their blog. So, take that. Excellent. Number 16. Well, I did create a screenshot there to make sure you are cataloged in Google. Search by your title and company name. If it doesn't come up, keep working at it. It will show up within a few hours. Yeah. It just takes some time. I mean, there's some other things you could do, like updating your sitemap and then resubmitting that while you're in Webmaster Tools, doing a quick Google fetch of the domain while you're in Webmaster Tools. All of those things will kind of cue it to be read and get the spots, get the bots active. But, yeah, if you can get it plus one, that'll help. All right. 16. Our last step is to continue and monitor to improve your SEO. So, after all of this, now you have to monitor. Yes. Remember, we're back to number one, monitor your keyword ranking, right? So, this paragraph starts off with, and SEO's work is never done. It's never done. And that is the real theme here. First page website SEO ranking takes constant work, constant updating, vigilance. You've got to track it. You've got to know it. And guess what? If you don't have time, hire an agency to do it for you. Well, what you should do is just you want to make sure that your efforts aren't futile. You want to make sure that the time you spend creating an outline and finding an image and writing this content and getting it proofed and submitting it to Google. You want to make sure all of the time and the resources you spend doing that actually generate something. And the only way you will know that is if you're monitoring it. So, why don't you do this? Log in to analytics and flag it. New blog post posted on this date. And

then monitor it every week. Check analytics. Check your search queries. Check your traffic. Check traffic specifically to that page. Figure out where that traffic is coming from, where it's ranking. And then figure out how you can improve it. And that's, you know, check this. You can probably revisit it for the same post. You figure out some other secondary phrases. May want to make some changes. Come up with a better image. Go replace it. You know, and that type of deal. You finally decide to make a video, come back and update the page. And that way, those type of activities help that page continue to rank. Two very important call to actions on this blog, I have to point out, is the first is continue to improve your SEO skills. It's going to make you a faster writer, a better writer, a better blogger. And the best way to do that is... Watch this podcast. Check us out. Hashtag SEO podcast. And the second very important call to action is if you want to improve your website, if you want to improve your ranking, then call us for a free website analysis. Let me pause here and say, remember a few tips ago we said at the end of the post, include the call to action. I'm kind of experiencing that right now. Look, dude, great article. Great article. This is how to use your blog for a website SEO ranking, written by our own. And this is just for those, you know, who did post some reviews about us using other people's content all the time. This is original content written by our own, Daniel Gildersleeve, our content results specialist. Great article, sir. Great pleasure. Hey, well, you just tuned in to the SEO podcast, 341. Appreciate you tuning in. Until next time, I'm Charles Lewis. I'm Daniel Gildersleeve. Catch y'all later. Peace out. What's up, Soundcheck? One, two, one, two. It's your podcast, 341. It's your podcast, 341. We getting it done and we back with another one. So get ready because it's time

to talk content. It's the advocate chilling with the specialist. Yeah. It's your podcast, 341. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.