If you didn’t know already, your website’s blog is the mouthpiece of your website and serves as a huge part of your overall online presence, as it is the perfect place for you to break through to your audience. Whether talking about current events at your place of business or community, news, or new products, your blog is the perfect medium to reach your shoppers and potential customers.

It’ll be hard to share these blogs with potential customers if you’re not reaching them. Whether your writing is Dickensian or you’re sharing stellar photos, or whether your blog is on WordPress or located on your main site, there’s no guarantee of traffic heading to your posts if they’re not properly optimized.

Don’t worry; with a few simple steps, you can learn how to optimize your blog content and get the online traffic that you and your business deserve.

Geotargeting for Brick-and-Mortar Businesses

One of the most important aspects of your blog content is the strategy behind it. For businesses looking for walk-in business, every piece you write and publish should have a specific geotarget.

A geotarget is a region close to your business’s location that you’d like to receive business from. By using the region’s name in the content of your blog post strategically, the chances of Google finding it and ranking for that phrase organically are increased. This is because people may be searching for your specific business’s services in their area or hometown. This will then make your blog content relevant and appear in their search results.

To keep the searches relevant to your business, you will also want to keep the geotarget name close to any links leading back to your website in the content. Now, many businesses make the mistake of putting too many links in their blog content, but you and I, along with Google, see this as “spammy,” causing Google to pass over your blog and move on. Keep the maximum amount of text links at two, with the geotarget close in the sentence to the link itself.

For example: Is your showerhead leaking? Don’t let that constant dripping drive you crazy and call our plumbing service (Link “plumbing service”) serving (Geotarget) today!

You want it to flow and you want to keep the linking and keywords simple.

Alternative Text on Links

Make sure that you’re also giving alternative text to the links that include the geotarget as well. Alternative text is the little yellow box that will hover over your cursor when you go to click a link. Google and other search engines see these and they will boost your visibility in organic searches.

As mentioned before, don’t overuse in-text linking. Keep it simple in natural and readers will respond.

Break Up Your Text with Images

Your blog will also need some photos. A block of text is always going to be intimidating. But with relevant and interesting photos, your chances of drawing in readers and potential customers will increase, and your blogs will be more reader-friendly.

Also, be sure to appropriate name the images with alternative text and titles when published that include the Geotarget in relevant phrases. Since Google can’t read images, this practice will be a big help to optimizing your pages and ranking them with Google and other search engines since you’re telling Google what they’re about with the alternative text.

Use Meta Data to Complete the Picture

While Google does read the content of your page, the meta data is another opportunity to tell Google (and your audience) what each page is about.

The meta data, which is made up of a meta title and meta description, should be unique to each page. By briefly describing the post in a title with the geotarget in no more than 70 characters and with a description that also uses the geotarget and your business type in less than 156 characters, your blog content will start to rank through relevant searches.

The URL title that you choose to name the page should also include the geotarget in reference to the blog’s subject matter.

Engage and Attract with Titles

Another front of your blogging presence that will help your visibility is the titles and secondary titles (headings) that you choose to use. One of these should include the geotarget and your business’s service in them, while the other can be a little more natural and organic.

Optimizing your blog content isn’t hard, and while these procedures may sound daunting and tedious, they’ll become your standard procedure and start to accumulate online and pay off. Your posts and online presence will start to get the traffic that they deserve, along with your business.

About the Author

PCG Digital Marketing is an award winning digital agency headquartered in Eatontown, NJ. We help our clients get found online through innovative search, social and online advertising campaigns.