Managing a Blog Requires SEO Research, Planning, Promotion, and More
by Josh Clark | Posted 2-20-2023
If you're a business owner, you know that blogging is essential. It's a great way to connect with customers and create a relationship with them. But many business owners don't realize that blog management is about more than just writing content. Many other things go into managing a blog successfully. This article will discuss some of the most important aspects of blog management and how you can use them to grow your business.
Set Goals for Your Blog
The first step in successful blog management is to determine your goals for the blog. What do you want to achieve with it? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or sell more products or services? Once you know your goals, you can create content that aligns with them and helps you reach them.
Create a Content Strategy
Once you have determined your goals, you need to create a content strategy. This will outline how you plan on achieving those goals and what types of content you will publish. It's essential to be realistic with your content strategy and make sure that the kind of content you post is something you can produce regularly.
Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is essential to a successful blog. It helps you stay organized and on track with your content strategy and ensures that you are publishing new posts regularly. One of the most challenging aspects of blogging is content ideation. Using a content calendar can help you develop new ideas for your blog posts and keep them on schedule.
Tips for creating a content calendar include:
- Determining the frequency of your posts
- Planning out ideas for blog content in advance
- Assigning topics to specific days or weeks
- Determining what type (long-form video, short video, infographic, etc.) of content, you will publish each day/week
SEO Keyword Research
Keyword research is a vital part of blog management, and it ensures that your blog posts will be found by search engines and help you rank higher in them.
To perform keyword research, you need to know what kinds of terms your target audience is searching for. You can do this by using Google Keyword Planner or entering a phrase into the search bar at the top of any website (like Amazon). Once you find some relevant keywords to your business and customer base, use them in your blog posts to get ranked higher on search engines.
Additional SEO keyword research tips:
- Include keywords throughout your post, including in the title, URL, and metadata
- Use different variations of your keyword(s)
- Target long-tail keywords (keywords that are more specific and have lower competition)
- Use tools to spy on competitors' keywords
Promotion via Social Media
Promotion via social media is crucial to the success of any blog. You can't just publish a post and hope your readers or followers will share it. You need to promote it on your social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more. Each platform has its own best practices for promoting blog content, so make sure you are familiar with them. This will help you reach a larger audience and get more traffic to your blog.
There are several different ways to promote your blog posts on social media, including:
- Posting a link to the post on your Facebook page
- Sharing an excerpt from the post with a graphic or photo on Instagram
- Tweeting about the post and using relevant hashtags
- Creating a pin for the post and adding it to your Pinterest board
- Including the post in an email newsletter blast
Comment Moderation
Comment moderation is essential for understanding how people interact with your blog and their thoughts on the content you publish. If a comment is off-topic, spammy, hateful, or otherwise inappropriate, it should be removed from your site. It's also essential to respond to any questions or comments that readers leave so they know that you care about them as audience members.
Helpful tips for comment moderation include:
- Set up a system that allows users to flag comments as inappropriate or offensive so the site's administrators can remove them
- Responding quickly to any questions
- Removing links from spammy comments trying to sell something (unless relevant) or include promotional language in their posts.
Website Maintenance
Website maintenance is essential for the health of your website and blog. You need to make sure that it's up-to-date with all plugins and themes, as well as any new features or changes in design.
A broken link on your site can be frustrating for readers and make them less likely to come back again in future visits if they cannot get what they're looking for because of a technical issue like this one. Broken links are also bad from an SEO perspective; Google doesn't like websites that have too many of these errors, which may result in lower rankings overall (and thus fewer visitors.) A faster website is also a better website in terms of SEO, so make sure all images load quickly, there aren't too many plugins installed at once or anything else that could slow things down.
Additional tips for website maintenance:
- Make sure all plugins and themes are up-to-date
- Check for broken links regularly
- Perform a speed test to make sure your website is loading quickly
- Use caching plugins to speed up the loading process of your pages
- Ensure that there aren't any coding errors on your site.
Link building
Link building is essential for SEO and helps drive more traffic back to your site. There are many different ways you can build links, such as guest posting, creating infographics, or other shareable visual content on social media platforms like Pinterest or Instagram. You could also reach out directly via email outreach campaigns to other bloggers in your industry who might be interested in linking to one of their blog posts from yours (or vice versa). This will help increase brand awareness because it puts both blogs front-and-center for each other's audiences which may lead them down a path where they discover something new about what you're offering.
Best practices for link building:
- Create infographics and other visual content that can be shared on social media
- Participate in roundups or expert interviews where you can share a link to one of your blog posts
- Submit your website to directories that are specific to your industry
- Do email outreach campaigns with bloggers in your industry.
Market Research & Analytics
Market research is essential for blogging because it allows you to understand your audience. Analytics tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter analytics can give you insight into the most popular topics with readers.
You need market research to create a successful blog post. Market research does not have to include specific keywords, but it should give you a sense of where the overall market stands and what type of content resonates best with readers. Knowing this information will allow you to predict which trends the industry is currently following and how you can capitalize on them.
Tools for market research & analytics:
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Insights
- Twitter analytics
Graphics & Design
Graphics are important because they help your blog stand out from the crowd. It's also a great way to get readers engaged with post content and keep them coming back for more! You don't have to spend money on expensive graphic designers, though: there are many free tools available online that can give you everything you need in terms of design elements like fonts, colors, shapes, etcetera, without breaking the bank or making sacrifices when it comes time budgeting time/money resources.
Tips for creating graphics & design:
- Use free tools like Canva to create your own graphic designs
- Keep it simple with fonts and colors that are easy on the eyes
- Create templates for recurring types of graphics (like social media posts) so that you can save time in the future
Analyze Website Metrics
Analyzing website metrics is essential for understanding how your blog is performing. Metrics can include page views, unique visitors, bounce rate, and time on site. This information can help you to identify which posts are resonating with readers the most, as well as where they're coming from (geographically speaking). It can also show you any areas of improvement that need to be addressed, such as a high bounce rate or low time on site.
Tools for analyzing website metrics:
Blogging is an essential part of any online marketing strategy, and using the right tools and techniques will help you create successful blog posts that engage readers and generate leads. If your blog isn't performing as well as you'd like, or if you'd like to find an all-in-one management solution for your content marketing efforts, consider hiring our team at CertiBLOG to help take care of those tasks for you. We would love to help you take your blog to the next level!