Social media platforms have increased in popularity, but that doesn’t mean the traditional blog is going out of style. According to Public Relations Today, 410 million people visit blogs on a monthly basis around the world. Blogging is still an effective tool for libraries to leverage in order to get their information out to the public. There’s two key parts to writing a great blog. First, the writing itself — feel free to brush up on common copywriting mistakes to avoid from our previous blog post. Once you’ve written a great blog, you’ll want to make sure everyone can find it, and that’s where SEO comes into play!
Keywords & Tagging
There isn’t one main action that will make your blog come up in the first page of a Google search, however, having a comprehensive SEO strategy is what will create success for your blog. One part of this strategy is using meta tags. Using meta tags communicates to search engines what the page is about, how to read it and who should see it. The title tag is an anchor to your post and meant to provide a clear idea what the post is about. A well-written title could increase the number of clicks and traffic, so be sure to be specific. But do so in 50-60 characters because longer titles will get shortened in HTML. Include keywords that sum up the page or blog and even add your brand name into the title (even if it’s shortened) because it could still make a difference in search engine optimization.
Whether they’re in the title or a part of the blog, Google looks at keywords as indicators of the strength of a piece of content and assesses if the content is reliable and trustworthy. Adding in keywords could help establish the relevance of your content for search terms. Conduct keyword research to find out if the topics you’re looking to highlight are being searched by anyone else and who your competition is for these content topics. This groundwork will help you target the right keywords and prioritize them to make sure you’re getting the traffic you worked hard for.
The other forms of meta-tagging can get complicated and it might feel like too much for your library staff to handle. If it interests you, feel free to dig deeper, but if it makes your head spin, don’t worry! The gist of it is this: Emphasize your topic through keywords and write a couple of sentences that really describe the purpose of your post that will get picked up as a meta description. As long as you’re clear with a descriptive title, headings and researched keywords included, you’ll hit the mark for tagging and SEO.
Custom URL
Having a custom URL tells visitors right from the link what they can expect to see. The link should include your brand name, the category of content as well as the type of content, all in one hyperlink. People like to have things spelled out for them and it also looks more trustworthy when a link is specific rather than a jumble of letters and numbers that go on forever. Most domain providers offer URL customization features at no added cost, so this simple change can be made to increase click-through rates.
Internal Links
Another great way to legitimize your content is by adding in links from other pages or posts across your website. Not only does this bring related content together and make it easier for patrons to be directed to the information they need, but it makes it easier for search engines to index the content. The more page views your website gets and the longer amount of time a patron spends on your website will indicate to search engines that your content contains valuable information. A search engine can also “crawl” through your site and understand the relationships between pages through internal links. On top of links, enriching posts with image and video content that are directly relevant and sum up the content through graphics can only help SEO as well. Overall, the more targeted and specific your content is to the topic it covers and the audience you’re writing for, the better optimized it will be for search engines!
