I’ve preached the importance of having a blog for all business owners. It doesn’t matter if you’re a service provider, an e-commerce site, a huge organization, or a solopreneur, a blog can benefit your business. But I often see business owners starting a blog without doing a few key things first and they end up frustrated and quitting.
Skipping these things might be the easy thing to do in the beginning. I just want to get the blog up as soon as possible! I’ll go back and fix things!
But will you…?
Doing these seven things BEFORE starting a blog will help you stay consistent with your blogging efforts and ensure your blog is optimized for search engines.
1. Have an SEO-Optimized Website
You 100% need an SEO-optimized website. The point of a blog is to improve your SEO. You can optimize each post for a new keyword, which increases the number of keywords you rank for. The more keywords you rank for, the more opportunities you have to reach new people in your target audience. It all works together!
Without a fully optimized website, users won’t have a good experience on your website once they do land on it from a search engine. And when users have a negative experience or can’t find what they need, they bounce or leave your website to find someone else who will provide a better experience. This negatively impacts your SEO because Google wants to provide positive experiences to its users. If you don’t do that, they won’t recommend your website in search results.
So, to optimize your website for SEO, make sure to hit these key points:
- Write unique metadata for each page
- Write image alt text
- Mobile responsive
If you have WordPress, I highly recommend the Yoast plug-in. It will give you recommendations to better optimize your website! Here are some instructions on how to download and use the Yoast plug-in.
Wondering what the best website platform is for blogging? My recommendations are in this blog!
2. Select Content Pillars
Content pillars, categories, or content buckets are the main topics you’re going to talk about in your blog. I recommend starting with 3-5 content pillars. You can always add more as you grow but don’t go overboard. Content pillars should be very broad topics so every blog you write will fall under at least one.
Right now, mine are:
These are the topics I write about the most and they also relate to my services.
Content pillars aren’t just a way to organize your blogs; the category pages can also be optimized and ranked in search results. That’s why I recommend using categories versus tags to organize your blogs. Tags will also create new pages on your website, and we tend to go overboard in creating tags. This blog has a better explanation as to why I prefer categories over tags!
3. Brainstorm Content Ideas
Soooo what are you gonna write about? Before starting a blog, create a backlog of content ideas. Sometimes thinking of topic ideas is the hardest part of blogging. If you have a list ready to go when you sit down to write, it makes it much easier.
These are some places where you can find blog topic inspiration!
- Well-performing social media posts
- Keyword research
- Review past content to see where you can expand on a topic
- AI
- Common client questions
- Ask your audience on social media
Download my free blog content calendar template to help you organize all your ideas!
4. Commit to a Posting Frequency
I don’t care how often you post, just make it consistent. Consistency is key to earning trust and credibility from search engines. Obviously, the more you post, the faster you grow. But if you can only commit to posting one blog a month, great! Commit and make it happen.
Once you’ve decided how often you’ll post, start to schedule your topic ideas. A content schedule gives you a plan and ensures you write evenly between your content pillars. For example, I don’t want to write four SEO posts back-to-back. I’ll throw in a post about blogging, a case study, and maybe an online course review to mix it up. Plus, that will start to fill your category pages with new posts and earn THOSE pages some authority with Google.
5. Perform Keyword Research
Keyword research gives you some direction when writing a blog. I’ll decide on the topic and then do keyword research to find a term that fits well with my topic. While I’m writing, I already know the term I want to optimize the post for. It helps me write the content strategically while making it engaging for my audience.
When doing keyword research, it’s okay to have a mix of low and high volume, and low and medium competition. I don’t recommend targeting highly competitive keywords. There are likely big organizations and ad spend behind those terms and as a small business, you don’t have a great chance of ranking.
Focus instead on the more niche terms with lower competition. These typically convert better anyway because they are SO specific to what people are searching for. You’re giving them exactly what they want!
I recommend the tool Ubersuggest for keyword research. There is a free version that gives you a few searches a day, but I think the paid version is worth it. You get lifetime access for a one-time payment!
My free content calendar also has a field for you to add keywords!
6. Set a Content Promotion Strategy
SEO is a great way to promote your blog. By optimizing a post for SEO, you’re helping it rank higher in search results, which earns you more visibility with your target audience. But you still need a blog promotion strategy. You can’t rely solely on SEO to earn traffic, especially not when first starting a blog.
I use a variety of marketing channels to promote my blogs. First is my weekly email list. They’re the first to know when I publish new blogs. The blog is published on Friday and they get the link on Wednesday.
I also promote the blog on Instagram. I’ll make a post notifying my followers that a new blog was published. I’ll also share it on my story with the link. Then, I usually repurpose the blog content in another form, like a reel or carousel. Repurposing is the greatest content hack!
My Pinterest manager then shares my blogs on Pinterest. Pinterest and blogging work so well together because blogs often answer people’s questions that they search for on Pinterest. I think we’ve all searched for a recipe and ended up on a food blog before!
Other ways to promote and repurpose your blog are:
- Other social platforms (LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook groups, etc.)
- Podcast outline (for your own podcast or to be a guest on someone else’s podcast!)
- YouTube video
- Freebie outline
7. Set Up Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a must-have for any blogging strategy. Before starting a blog, make sure this tool is set up. Let’s see if I can make this sound simple (because actually it is once you understand it!)
Before a webpage can be shown in search results, Google needs to review it and understand the content so it knows when to show the page in search results. First, it crawls the page. It scans your metadata, headlines, and content to see what you’re talking about. Then, it indexes the page. It figures out where your content fits with search queries. Finally, it ranks the page. It decides how relevant your page is and where it will show up in search results.
Once you have a free Google Search Console account, you can manually request indexing so your page can be approved for search results faster. If you don’t do this step, your page will eventually be indexed, but who knows how long that will take with how many pages are added to the internet every single day. After manually indexing, it usually takes a few days for Google to approve content. It’s worth the extra step and something I do for all my blog writing clients!
BONUS: Create a Lead Magnet to Promote in Blogs
A bonus step to do before starting a blog is to create a freebie so you have something to promote in your blogs. Of course, your services or products are great to promote, but sometimes people just want free stuff!
When someone is reading a blog and they come across a relevant freebie, they’re likely to download it. You’re giving them another easy step to take in the customer journey. And when they download it, they’re added to your email list where you can further nurture them into becoming a paying client one day. A blog is a great place to promote free offers.
Are You Starting a Blog?
Starting a blog is an opportunity to reach new potential clients, share your expertise, and help other business owners in their journey to success. These seven steps will help you get your blog up and running and lower the chances of you getting frustrated with the lack of results from your efforts.
And if you’re thinking, “Nah, too much work. I want someone to do this for me,” I’m accepting new blog writing clients! My monthly blog writing package includes blog writing, keyword research, topic ideas, a strategy call, content pillars, indexing, and reporting. That’s 5/7 steps right there!
Explore my packages and let’s hop on a discovery call to discuss!
AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER
Some links in this blog post may be affiliate links. I only recommend products and services I trust and believe would be beneficial to you.
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