When it comes to people learning about you and your work, content (marketing) is king. And when it comes to content marketing, blog posts and SEO are a great way for readers to find your writing.
CMI outlines 7 steps to building a long-term content model, which includes finding that sweet spot intersection between audience interest and your knowledge base, writing about a niche that is not too crowded, optimizing your content for search, and building your audience over time. You can start with one platform, such as a blog, and then build out other channels to direct people back to your blog (such as through social media).
The good news is, as an author, you already have a niche to write in. It’s the one related to your books!
Blog Posts
For your blog post intros, CMI recommends you write the intro last so you make sure it’s strong and you let your readers what to expect. And for your ending, CMI writes you should make sure you have some sort of call to action (such as where readers can find more of your great content), and summarize what the article is about.
Once you’ve written a few articles, you can take a look at your Google Analytics to figure out which type of content is the most useful and engaging for your readers. It helps to look at the search console’s landing pages, and then on your best performing pages, add a call to action or a video.
You can also link to your other relevant blog posts (internal linking), to help with your search rankings and to make it easier for readers to find more of your content.
SEO
CMI recommends three ways to improve your search ranking for your posts: optimize your articles for keywords and phrases for a particular subtopic, including heading tags and page titles (information architecture), and write shorter articles that complement your longer articles (keyword cluster content model).
As for how to choose your keywords and phrases, look for keywords with low search volume, that’s related to your existing content, and keep an eye out on your analytics so you know when you need to make adjustments.
Last, for Google, don’t forget to write descriptive SEO titles that are short, and track and test how well your page titles work for search.
What tactics do you use for writing blog posts and ranking them for search? Share in the comments!
