Blog Difficulties: Optimizing Your Blog And Creating Fresh, Relevant Content

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

Optimizing a Blog is the Simple Part, Really!
Simply put, optimization is the easy part because creating fresh, new, and engaging content is, by far, the more difficult task. It is amazing just how much time it takes to continually find new and interesting topics to write about. Sometimes it seems like nothing is available but if you dig deep enough in your industry using resources like Technorati or Google News you will likely find a concept that sparks a new article.

First, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Blog optimization must be done in several different ways at once, but blog optimization is really no different than optimizing a web page. If you can optimize a web page then you can optimize a blog, which doesn’t require any HTML. Here are a few key tips to optimizing your blog:

• Use your keyword in your title
• Make your blog body keyword-rich
• Use anchor text
• Create subheads, especially for long posts, and use h2 and h3 tags
• Bold a keyword phrase from time to time
• Use lists (ordered and unordered)
• Choose a significant category that coincides with your keyword
• Make tags that are related to your keyword and tag every post

Blog Research: Finding Things To Blog About

Finding new and fresh information to blog about is a different story. It is a bit difficult, especially after you’ve been blogging for a period of time. Here are some helpful tips:

• Before you ever start blogging, brainstorm a list of potential topics and make it LONG!
• Do keyword research specifically for your blog
• Subscribe to the three most popular blogs in your industry to see what they think is important
• In addition to those three, pick three other blogs in your industry to subscribe to
• Keep track of industry news through two or three social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us
• Join Google or Yahoo Alerts to be notified when information on your important keywords is published
• Conduct a survey of your customers to find out what information they want and need

If you need help figuring out how to subscribe to blog news feeds give me a call or e-mail. I’ll be happy to help you get set up. If you’d like someone to ghostwrite your blog let me know and I’ll share a great deal with you!