1. White Paper: Business Guide to Blogging
An introduction by Kevin Gibbons,
Director of Search, SEOptimise
The SEOptimise blog began as a
way of marketing our search engine
optimisation services. We used it
initially to attract customers, add to
the site’s content and showcase our
expertise. It still does all those things,
of course, but it has also become so
much more.
Our blog has grown incredibly over
the last few years. We now have more
than 6,500 subscribers and over 8,500 Your blog fills your pages with relevant will be able to see you have eloquence
Twitter followers. Our search team content, providing an ideal platform and opinions, meaning you stand to
regularly contributes, as well as other for your targeted keywords to be used gain exposure and publicity.
authority bloggers. in a natural setting.
I have been invited to write for other Sales
resources, including the prestigious It encourages people to link to your Although a blog should never be used
Search Engine Land and Econsultancy website, adding to your credibility for bare-faced selling, it can still be a
- showcasing SEOptimise’s name and in the search engine’s eyes, but it great platform for driving sales.
enhancing its credibility. also allows you to build internal links
within your site, making it more easily Your posts should always offer the
The benefits of our blog have gone far navigated by search engine spiders. reader value and not simply be an
beyond simply attracting the search extension of your sales literature,
engines’ attention and it has become a Your blog will be filled with regular but they can still mention and link to
real source of pride to all my team. fresh content, which means the relevant products elsewhere in your
search engines visit your pages more site.
Blogging has worked incredibly well frequently. That means that breaking
for us, so in this guide, we want to news, product launches and other Personality
show how it can work wonders for important events gain maximum search Blogs are, by their nature, much more
your business too. exposure as quickly as possible. informal than the rest of a business’
website. They are chatty, casual, and
We’ve tried to keep it as accessible Authority a platform for opinion, humour and
and non-technical as possible so you By regularly updating your corporate advice.
can see how quickly you could make a blog with industry analysis and
corporate blog work for you. comment, you cement your business as For a visitor considering whether or
an authority within your sector. not to purchase a service from your
The many benefits of blogging organisation, this makes you seem
A successful blog allows you to be the more approachable and gives your
Why blog? Done well, there are many opinion former rather than just another business a human face.
benefits to a business blog, and these business. It shows that you have a deep
are far more varied and extended than interest in your sector and are more The internet can be impersonal, but a
might be immediately obvious. informed than the average participant. blog is definitely not.
Your potential customers will find this
Although this guide begins with the a compelling reason to choose you over Traffic
most obvious reason for blogging – to competitors. If your blog is interesting and relevant
assist in your company’s search engine to someone’s work or life, then they
optimisation (SEO) campaign – you Media will continue to visit. Perhaps they will
should soon see how useful a corporate It isn’t just your industry that will see subscribe or save you to their favourites
journal can be in enhancing other areas you as an authority. If a news story – either way, a useful blog will soon
of your marketing efforts. happens that closely involves your have a crowd of regular followers.
sector, the press will be looking for
SEO someone to discuss it with. Even if those followers are not in the
When it comes to organic optimisation, market for your particular product or
namely, where your company ranks in The more obscure your industry, the service at the time, when they come to
the search engine results pages, a blog more the media will struggle to know do so, your website will be at the front
ticks every box. who to interview, so having a blog will of their mind.
make you a prime candidate. Journalists

2. What to blog about anyway, these should flow seamlessly be interesting’. Don’t worry, industry-
into your content. specific blog posts don’t have to be
Perhaps you’re reading this guide and interesting to the wider community,
thinking: “Well, this is all very well for Make your headlines work hard just to your target audience. Make sure
some businesses but no one wants to The headline is the hook that will entice they are!
read a blog about my industry.” You’re the reader into clicking on the story, so
very wrong. don’t stuff it with keywords. However, Be snappy
if you can use them then do and aim to Online readers are lazy. It’s much more
Okay, so if you manufacture pesticides use H1, H2 or H3 headings. difficult to read something on a screen
then your blog may never make the and crowded paragraphs and crammed
Guardian’s Most Recommended Blogs Inside your content, break up the post text is hard to read and unappealing.
2010 as it’s unlikely to have widespread into sections and use subheadings,
appeal. again preferably in H2 or H3. It will be Write snappy sentences and keep your
easier to use your keywords in these paragraphs short. Each paragraph
However, you don’t want your blog to subheadings and it also breaks down should only be one or two sentences
have widespread appeal, you want it the copy for your reader and makes it long.
to contain very specialised information easier to digest.
and analysis that those interested Readers will often only scan the first
in your services or operating in your Don’t be afraid to link out few paragraphs (newspapers call this
sector would read. Many people don’t want to link out of the pyramid effect – they read all of
their blog posts, for fear the Google the first paragraph, then a little less,
Think about some of the questions you spiders will zip off to other pages and even less, and then barely anything
had when you first moved into your never return to you. by the end of the article) so make sure
industry and then answer them. List any important points or links are made
off advice you share with clients and However, links are an important aspect early on.
flag up interesting case studies - the of the online community and by linking
opportunities are endless. to relevant pages and resources you’re Grab them
enhancing your readers’ experiences Make your headline and introduction
By freely giving out advice and and also building useful connections exciting. Pick the most relevant point
information you will become an online to other websites. They may well link and outline it – tell the reader what
repository of specialist knowledge and to you in return, especially if you’ve your article is going to do. This is
this will attract the specialist, relevant written a response to a blog post of essential if you are going to encourage
audience you need. theirs. your readers to click through to the full
post.
How to write for search engines Make your meta data unique
Avoid duplicated content like the Avoid punctuation
When blogging, the most important plague and give each blog post its own Now, obviously, don’t avoid
thing to do is write for people and meta description. Spelling it out for the punctuation that you need, but do
not search engines alone. Google et search engines never hurts. limit the amount you use. Once again,
al have become far more sophisticated remember that the online reader is very
and keyword-stuffed content is not URL lazy – unnecessary punctuation crowds
what they’re after. There’s no point Don’t just use a unique number as a the copy and makes them less likely to
having brilliantly optimised copy that URL, for example ‘yourdomain.com/ read it. Keeping sentences short will
visitors click away from once they get blog/00012345’ isn’t going to get mean you don’t need to cram it full of
there. Those all-important inbound anyone’s attention. Use your headlines commas and semi-colons, so bear it in
links will only come if a blog’s content as the latter part of your URLs - it’s mind.
is interesting. better for the reader, easier to keep
track of and it will make the search SP&G
However, there are some other key ways engines happy. Remember your spelling, punctuation
to make a blog even more attractive to and grammar – get them right. Online
search engines, here are the key ones: Internal links readers are a little more blasé about
Your website’s internal links will keep what they’re reading than they would
Keep going the search engine crawlers zinging be with a newspaper or magazine,
There will be times when updating the around inside your site, so it’s worth but that doesn’t mean you should be
corporate blog is so low down in your adding them wherever appropriate. complacent.
list of priorities that you just discard it
– but that’s dangerous. Search engines Link to your site throughout your blog Do check your copy for grammatical
want regular, fresh content – it keeps and consider adding a ‘recent blog errors and typos, or ask a colleague
them coming back to your pages more posts’ fragment to your home page to scan your content. Your blog is an
often and gives greater visibility to any or somewhere on your pages. This will extension of your corporate persona
changes you make on your site. also encourage your readers to click so errors could damage your authority
If you don’t have time, ask another through. Use your keywords as the and appeal.
member of staff to contribute, or hyperlinked text where you can.
even occasionally use a professional About SEOptimise:
blogger to create an article for you. If Blogging do’s and don’ts
you allow your blog to slack off, the Writing for the web is different to SEOptimise is a leading search engine
search engines and your readers will writing for print, an offline brochure marketing agency that helps businesses
lose interest. or email, and it’s a new skill you’ll need increase their website’s visibility on
to work at. the internet. SEOptimise also runs
Consider your keywords one of the top English Language
Keep keywords in mind throughout the People read differently online. Most marketing blogs in the world, ranked
content and use them naturally. Talk to importantly, they are much less on the AdvertisingAge Power 150 List.
whoever is managing your wider SEO committed to the content. They haven’t The blog has more than 6,500 RSS
campaign and find out what the long- paid for it (usually) and have probably subscribers and is followed by more
tail keywords being targeted are i.e. the just clicked through to it. Bore them than 9,000 Twitter users.
more specific and lengthy search terms, or offend them and they’ll easily click
for example ‘car insurance for women’ away again. Website: www.seoptimise.com
instead of just ‘car insurance’. Since
you’ll be writing about the industry That means the most essential ‘do’ is ‘do Blog: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog
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