For businesses in Orange County that are new to the world of SEO, the entire reasoning behind its existence might not be clear. You might have heard the term before as a business owner or operator, but the mechanisms and the logic behind implementing it may have escaped you up till now.

The reality is that SEO is not as intimidating as you might have been led to believe. When you strip away the technical jargon, it amounts to you improving your website, social media feeds, and off-site elements so that you’re likely to get noticed by the search engines. This will lead you to be more prominently placed, which will lead to more individuals discovering your site, and will then result in more sales. Since more sales are always going to be your ultimate goal as a business, it becomes evident why SEO is therefore so vital.

But as a beginner, what are some things that you can try related to SEO that will do the most good for your company in Orange County? The first area toward which you should look is the blog on your website.

Optimization of Blog Post Titles

There’s a plethora of things that you can do from an SEO standpoint that will make it more likely that people will want to interact with your blog posts, but the initial place you’ll want to look is at the titles. The title of a blog post is usually the same as the H1 tag, and it’s one of the things that Google crawlers index when they’re going over your site.

Because of this, your titles matter. While you want them to accurately describe whatever it is that the blog is about, they should also contain keywords. You’ll need to research those keywords with one of the many tools that are available these days and make a list of the ones that you think you most need to incorporate.

Beyond that, you need to input the keywords or keyword phrases in such a way that they sound natural, not as though they were shoehorned in. That way of doing things might have been acceptable at one point, but Google and other search engines have become more advanced now, and you need to write naturally.

It’s helpful to mention stats or numbers in post titles, as research has shown consistently that these sorts of titles get more clicks. For instance, instead of a blog post titled “How to Build a Birdhouse,” you’ll probably do better with a title like “10 Birdhouse Building Tips You Need to Know.” It seems like a small thing, Orange County businesses, but it’s these kinds of improvements that help you gain ground in the often cutthroat world of SEO. Remember that even as you’re trying to optimize your site, your competitors are doing so as well.

Optimizing Blog Post Content

As for the content of your blog posts, there was one point where short posts seemed to be getting the most engagement. Websites were coming up with frequent blogs that were in the range of 350-400 words, these being easy to read in just a few minutes. The emphasis was on posting every day, or at least multiple times a week, the thought being that Google would rank your site higher if there was new content appearing there frequently.

While it is still true that Google appreciates new content, that new content is not going to help your site to rank if it isn’t relevant to your niche, nor is it going to give you a boost if it’s not well written. Disgorging daily blog posts that are rife with spelling and grammatical errors is going to harm your position, not help it. The same is true if the content is off-target or derivative.

What Makes for the Best Blog Posts?

The best blog posts from an SEO standpoint at the moment follow this formula. They’re longer than they used to be, some of them between 1,000 and 2,000 words, or even more. It does not matter so much how often you post them. If you publish one per month, but the content is amazing, that’s much more helpful for your website than if you’re releasing one every day, but no one cares about what you have to say.

The best blogs form a personal connection with the reader, your potential customer. They tell personal stories. They’re optimized with original, relevant images, and they speak to a pain point that a customer has, meaning they answer a question that has been plaguing that customer. Any time one of your blogs can positively impact a site visitor while also demonstrating your expertise within your niche, that’s perfect.

They shouldn’t have enormous blocks of text, but rather, each paragraph should be no more than a few sentences, a sound bite that can be quickly digested before moving on to the next idea or the continuation of the theme. It’s just the same as in literature. Few people enjoy paragraphs that take up an entire page unless there seems to be no alternative.

Brand Identity

Your blog posts should also help to establish your brand identity, Orange County. You can let an SEO company write them, or you can do so yourself, just so long as the voice you use is powerful and can connect with the reader on a personal level.

They should be written in a voice that is consistent with the one that epitomizes your brand. If your brand is a little bit playful, your blogs should reflect that. If it’s more serious, you shouldn’t deviate from that. The longer you write for a website, the better you should become at staying in character, and it will grow easier for you.

There are many more SEO elements that are worthy of your attention, Orange County businesses, but your blog can be a unique way for you to connect with your fan base that is difficult to duplicate. Social media affords you another chance to do so, but if you can give your blog the reputation that it’s worth coming back to, then it’s a great way to promote brand loyalty and the desire to visit your website again and again.

You need to come up with topics so interesting and a writing style that speaks to your niche so well that the release of every one of your blog posts is an event worth celebrating. It’s certainly challenging, but like every aspect of running a business, no one ever said that it was going to be easy.