Blogging Deconstructed: How I Created My Latest Small Business Blog Post

Do you ever wonder how other small business owners create their blog posts and what is the specific method behind their madness?

I’ve been so preoccupied lately trying to create compelling small business social media content for ProBlogger that I realized I hadn’t updated my own small business blog in a couple of weeks. Not wanting to risk undoing the social media footprint work that I’ve undertaken, or slipping from the front page of Google for particular keywords (see screengrab below), I decided it was time to get some fresh content posted.

keywordandranking

I like to think of my small business blog posts as one part creative endeavor and one part research experiment. For my latest post I decided to get back to the basics, and at its core, small business blogging (for me) is about three main goals:

  1. Providing value
  2. Ranking well
  3. Subtly promoting the business.

Additionally, because I own a tourism related business I get a ton of questions emailed to me on a weekly basis, so this post also had to serve as a resource where I could point potential guests.

My Small Business Blog Method

1. Keywords – I typically use the Google Keyword Tool to see what terms, related to my niche, people have been searching for lately.

keywordenter

I read through the list of suggested phrases and words, but ultimately I scrolled down to the Additional Keywords to Consider section. That’s where I saw “Culebra Beach” with a monthly global search volume of 12, 100.

keyword

2. Title – With my key term secured, I needed to come up with a title that was relevant, grabbed attention and included the keywords “Culebra” & “Beach.” After some brainstorming I decided on, “Ultimate Culebra Beach Information Guide.” Granted it sounds a bit awkward, but it gets the keywords in and lets the reader know that this guide is a resource post.

3. Content creation – with keywords searched and titles crafted it was now time to search my photo archive and draft the content for the post.

culebra beach example

Within the post I decided to include eight of the most popular beaches on Culebra, which I have written about before and could then link back to the archives.

4. Post SEO – when I draft small business blog posts I am concerned with SEO, but ultimately I am most concerned with obtaining greater search engine visibility (SEV). However, I do always try to customize the title (I shortened the actual title), add proper tags & categories, and include an excerpt.

excerpt_post

WordPress gives you amazing flexibility to customize many SEO centric items before you publish your post. If you are like me, then you too are always in a rush to hit the “Publish” button to get the post live. But, if you can hold off for a few more minutes to proofread and take care of the SEO minutiae to ensure that you really are getting the most value for the time you have invested.

5. Publish – with all of the above steps completed, I then hit the publish button! And here is the final result: Ultimate Culebra Beach Information Guide

finalpost

6. Promotion – I don’t really do any promotion of my small business blog. But for the sake of this article I sent the following Tweet to show how you might want to go about it.

ultimatebeach_tweet

That’s it. That is the method I typically use and exactly how I went about drafting my latest small business blog post.

How about you – do you run keyword searches when you draft your small business blog posts, customize titles, and complete proper SEO? What is your method?

Want more must read small business social media tips? Then please consider grabbing my RSS FEED or following me on Twitter @mark_hayward.

7 thoughts on “Blogging Deconstructed: How I Created My Latest Small Business Blog Post”

  1. Mark,

    Thanks for the detailed post on how you go about optimizing your posts. I use the free version of SEO PowerSuite (which works wonderfully for me) after I chosen the keywords I want to target via Google Keyword. Once I run a few tests and check out my competition, I do my best to make my optimization rates competitive with those websites with the highest rankings. I make sure to add my relevant meta tags and always proofread my posts (I’d rather have proper grammar and terrible optimization than the other way around) and then head over to publish. Once my post gets indexed by Google, I then run the Website Auditor program from the SEO PowerSuite to check and see how it actually ranks against competitors. After reading over the data, I go back and tweak the post some and then I leave it be.

    I also promote my posts via Twitter, Digg and Reddit (and sometimes StumbleUpon, though that is fairly hit and miss). Reddit seems to give me decent traffic, but it is very eclectic. I am quite new to this blogging thing (not quite two months into it), but I am hoping that all my SEO efforts will pay off soon!

    I’m definitely going to be following this blog.
    Thomas

  3. Great article, thanks for sharing. That’s got some tips I hadn’t thought of in. As a photographer writing and sharing tips on photography, I sometimes find it quite difficult to write articles that will help me in the core SEO areas I want to advance in. ie. My area of England, commercial, stock, photographer.

    However I think I’ll try and write more articles that reference where I am in the country in order to boost my Google rankings.

    Thanks for sharing the tips.

  4. Hey Peter – thanks for the thought and for the tip on noblesamurai!

    Hi Chris – let me know if you have further questions about targeted SEO. Happy to help.

  6. Hi Nabeel – I don’t have any advertisements because I prefer to (perhaps at some point) monetize my site by selling a product or my consulting services.

Leave a Reply