Making sure your small business ranks well in the main search engines isn’t easy, but there are several SEO best practices that you can implement to increase the likelihood of achieving and/or maintaining a good ranking for relevant search terms.

If you spend any amount of time at all reading up on SEO, you’ll see the same mantra repeated over and over: content is king. Search engines are designed with the goal in mind of prioritizing websites that users are most likely to want to visit. Thus, if you make sure your website includes content that people are likely to be interested in and, consequently, link to, it earns your webpage virtual currency in the view of search engines.

For most businesses, descriptions of your products and business in and of themselves won’t necessarily bring the level of attention to your website that will encourage repeat visitors and links from related websites. One option for developing regular, enticing content is to begin a company blog.

The blog can be a mix of announcements directly related to your products and company, posts that speak more generally to your industry and any topics that are likely to be of interest to your customers. Its worth investing the time and resources into producing quality content whether you decide to maintain the blog yourself, or bring on writers to develop blog posts for you.

Starting a blog isn’t too difficult, many webhosting services have features that make it easy to install a WordPress blog. Designing it to look how you’d like it to and implementing SEO features can be a bit more of a challenge, but there’s a thriving support community for WordPress users and plenty of free templates, plugins and other resources to help you get started. You can always bring on a consultant to help create content and get your blog started.

If you’re still at a loss for the best topics to write about or how to get a blog going, spend some time seeking out blogs related to your industry to see what others are talking about. Seeing what works well for others is a good way to find ideas. Don’t be hesitant to leave comments and begin making yourself known as a contributor to the larger conversation happening about your industry online. A big part of developing a successful web presence is becoming part of an online community.

Testimonials

Kristen is such a talented writer and an overall subject matter expert as well. As editor of Velocitize.com, I worked with Kristen for more than a year and have seen firsthand how much research (and personality) she puts into her writing. Whether it's content marketing trends, diversity in the workplace, or the Covid-19 consumer, she's able to wrap facts and figures into solid storytelling. I highly recommend working with Kristen if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity!

Eileen Smith, Velocitize

Kristen has been one of our go-to writers for the last two years, and at this point I consider her an essential member of the team. From the first assignment, Kristen immediately understood our brand voice and strategy, and adapted her writing accordingly. She's reliable, talented, and hard working, and can be trusted to work independently, reaching out when she needs information and consistently meeting deadlines. I highly recommend working with Kristen for your content marketing projects.

Andrew Gori, Zendesk

If you are looking for the perfect copywriter, you’ve come to the right place. Kristen is a content marketer’s dream. She consistently produces extremely high-quality content that is both compelling to read and written with an eye for SEO. She requires very little direction and is always ahead of deadlines. Whatever the subject matter, tone, or format, you can rely on Kristen to deliver an expertly-written piece designed with your particular audience in mind. I couldn’t recommend her more strongly.

Amelia Wilson, HostGator

Kristen is an exceptional writer. In my role as the content manager for a SaaS company, I am constantly reviewing new content and some of it needs extensive work before publication. I've been working with Kristen for several months and appreciate that I can always count on her to deliver high quality articles that are ready to publish and need very little editing. Kristen is detail oriented, writes knowledgeably, and is a great communicator. She's also never missed a deadline. I highly recommend Kristen.

Becky Trowbridge, eComEngine

My department has been using Kristen as a content creator for some time, and we're incredibly lucky to have her skills available to us. I'm not exaggerating when I say that literally everything she composes is clear, concise, well-written, and well-researched. I often assign Kristen a variety of topics, and she always submits great content, no matter how obscure the subject matter. She also makes my life much easier, because her work requires little no no edits and is always top-quality. We've seen significant progress in our blog traffic in recent years, and I know that the quality content Kristen creates for us has been monumentally helpful in improving our SEO. I would highly recommend her for any content project!

Andrea Kinnison, Volusion

Kristen's writing is consistently accurate, up-to-date and free from errors. She makes working with her a breeze by always turning in projects on time that are high-quality and well-written. I highly recommend hiring Kristen for any of your content and copywriting needs.

Alexis Krasinski, HostGator

Kristen was a stellar contributing copywriter for our Directional Cue Amazon consultancy blog. She was able to research and write on a diverse set of topics with little instruction and provide quality pieces for lead generation and thought leadership. Many of her articles were among the highest converting on the blog. I would recommend her to anyone looking for an excellent and well-organized copywriter and hope to work with her again.

Abby Kaplan, Adlucent

Kristen is a star contributor to the Kuno Creative blog. Her articles are always well researched and well written, with highly relevant and educational information for our target audience. I wouldn't hesitate to hire Kristen for your content needs.

Brianne Rush, Kuno Creative

As a contributing freelance writer for HostGator, Kristen is thoughtful in her writing, particularly as it pertains to our audience needs and our business goals. She consistently delivers articles on time and on budget. What's more is that several of her articles have received top traffic ranking on our blog and even earned Google Snippets to improve our SEO! The best part? Instead of simply waiting for new assignments, Kristen will thoughtfully pitch article ideas to us based on her expertise and timely research. I highly recommend Kristen as a contributing writer.

Blair Williamson, HostGator

As a responsive and perceptive copywriter, Kristen asks the right questions. The articles she has delivered to our organization have been pitch-perfect: her voice is professional and her finished work is a pleasure to read. Kristen is a virtuoso in the technological writing realm.

Sabine Zimmer, Shared Assessments

Austin Copywriter

Austin Copywriting & Content Marketing

SEO Best Practices: Blogging