Get Writing for the St Albans Businesses Website
One of the great things about SAB membership is that we can upload our own top tips and articles to the St Albans Businesses (SAB) website. All this lovely content contributes to a great site with more visitors and great exposure. We all struggle to find time to blog on our own websites, but as a team we are so much more powerful! If we work together, we can take over the world, and take all us lovely members with it.
So let’s work together for world domination SABbers! Here are some tips written by SAB members Wagada to ensure that we get the most out of our SAB membership and that the content works to boost our lovely community:
1. Add lots of high quality, unique content regularly. Google loves fresh content so don’t be shy!
The more (high quality) content on a website, the more likely it will get found. So get writing. Let’s all aim for a monthly tip and blog.
2. Length (size does matter)
Google does not favour websites which have lots of pages of thin, short content. Currently, Google favours long form content – so 500 to 1,500 words. Yes 1,500 words! Particularly for the longer, more niche keyword phrases, Google is ranking the web pages which are more comprehensive and longer. Longer content makes more use of the keyword, looks more relevant and more informative.
However, large paragraphs of content can be off-putting – so do consider how you present this long content to make it easy to read and scan on the web (see below).
3. Topic tips
When choosing your topic, think about the keyword phrase that you would like the page to rank for. Web searchers tend to search their problem, rather than the solution – so think about the sorts of problems that your target audience could be facing. What questions could they be asking? Make a note of the questions that your clients ask you – these make fabulous blog titles.
The website Answer the Public is a fabulous source of questions that people are asking on the web and great for generating ideas for keywords and blog topics for your own sites.
Google loves comprehensive content – so think about the phrases that you might use in addition to your keywords which might demonstrate that you have covered all elements of the topic. So these would be related phrases on and around the topic. Looking at competitor’s websites is a good idea to see the range of related phrases that they have included.
4. Presentation – make it easy to read
No-one likes to be faced with a long chunk of content on the web – it’s hard to read and it’s off-putting. We are all rather impatient and task orientated on the web – so we have a tendency to scan rather than read web pages.
So make your content easy to digest and scan:
- Split longer content into short paragraphs/bitesize chunks
- Write in accessible language with shorter sentences that are easy to follow on a screen
- Use sub-headings to make scanning easier
- Don’t forget white space – you’re not short of space so spread it out
- Use images to split the content up and make it more engaging
- Bullet points are our friends – they split out the content and make it obvious that we are listing several points. Easier to scan too!
5. Spice it up with strong images*
Use images to bring the article to life and make it more engaging. They illustrate the text and make scanning easier.
When you save the image prior to uploading it – think about the keyword you are writing the content around and include it in the filename of the image before you upload. This will help Google to understand what the image is about. Also don’t forget to include your keyword in your ALT tags. The purpose of ALT tags is to describe the image to blind people – so don’t forget to make sure that the ALT tag properly describes the image.
6. Don’t copy, or duplicate your content please!
Don’t be tempted to copy the blogs from your own website onto the SAB site. Just don’t! Google does not like duplicate content, and while it won’t directly penalise you, Google can decide not to include pages of duplicate content in its index – so it won’t rank when people search for that phrase.
Don’t copy paragraphs or sentences from other people’s websites either.
7. Link out, shake it all about
Make your content look more informative and useful to Google by linking out to authoritative sources. Links out were once considered bad, but now Google favours articles which link out as they make the article look more useful and informative.
8. Internal links
Link internally within the SAB site to other relevant articles. This helps Google to see how these topics are related. It also encourages readers to view other pages of the SAB site – which can send positive user signals to Google. The more engaging the site, the more pages that people will visit – so let’s show Big G how engaging our content is.
Think about the text that you include in the link – called the anchor text. Using phrases which relate to the keywords of the page that you are linking to can help reinforce its relevancy.
As a team we can achieve more than we can alone – so let’s join forces for success!
* make sure you have permission to use all images. Unauthorised use of images is not fun for anyone.
