How to promote your blog for free
Blogs are a fantastic marketing tool, but you can only reap the benefits if it gets seen. The good news is that promoting your blog can be easy to do – and it doesn’t need to cost you a penny! Here are my top tips on making sure your blog reaches the people it should.
Use keywords to optimise your blog for search engines
Keywords let search engines know what your blog is about and are crucial to helping people find it on the internet. You can use free tools, such answerthepublic.com and Google’s keyword planner, to help you narrow down exactly which words to use. Both show you what people are searching for on the internet.
As a minimum, you need to include the keywords in the main body and the headings, and sub-headings, of your blog post. For the greatest effect, you should also include them in the page title, URL, alt image text and page metadata too, but this is where it can become a bit overwhelming if you aren’t confident amending the back-end of your website. Speak to whoever designed your website for advice on this, or get in touch and we can have a more in-depth chat about it.
You will get the best results if you use a combination of short and long tail keywords.
Short tail keywords are simple search terms, only one or two words long, for example ‘baby clothes’. They are wide-ranging and searched for often, so they have the capability to drive loads of traffic to your site, but as there is so much competition in the results, it can be hard to achieve results for those who have recently started to focus on their SEO.
Long tail keywords are longer phrases that are more specific and so have a lower volume of searches. For example, ‘organic unisex baby clothes’. If you can get these right, they have the potential to bring people to your site who are already looking for what you are offering.
It is important to refrain from cramming your keywords in as many times as possible. This will mean you are penalised by the search engines and it may make the blog hard to read. The text should flow naturally and the keywords should blend with the rest of the content.
Make the most of social media
Sharing your blog on different social media platforms is a great way to reach out to potential readers. Plus if you can get people to like, comment, and retweet it, your content will spread even further.
To make social media work effectively for you, you need a strong social media strategy. I’m not going to cover how to create one now, but here are some things to bear in mind.
When you send people away from the Facebook platform, the algorithm penalises you and won’t show your posts to as many of your followers. If you blog frequently it may be worth including the blog content in a post (or split across two), instead of linking to your website. Linking to external content every so often won’t harm how much your posts are seen, but keep an eye on your analytics to see what’s happening.
As you can’t put links in Instagram posts, make sure you include a link to your website or latest blog in your bio instead and refer to it in your post. You can use software such as Canva to create an eye-catching visual to show people it is a new blog post – and don’t forget to include that fact in your hashtags.
Hold their attention
Once you have someone’s attention it’s the prime time to keep them interested and show them more of what you are about. Keep the reader moving around your website by linking to your other posts and pages during, and at the end, of your blog. As you publish more content, revisit old posts and insert any relevant links to revamp them.
Once your content has been live for a day or so, check your site analytics to see what visitors are doing. Consider if they spending long enough on the page to actually read your post and if not, why not. Look at where they are going after visiting that page, or if they are leaving your site. Don’t be afraid to go back and edit what you have written if it doesn’t seem to be working for you.
Maintain the relationship
Starting up a newsletter is a great way to re-engage with people you have already had contact with. You don’t need to have masses of content for each email, one blog post is enough. Or, you could mix it with new product releases and special offers.
MailChimp is not only free and easy to use, it also allows you to create sign-up boxes you can embed onto your website to capture people’s data. Include a clear sign-up box on your home page and at the end of each blog. This way those who like what they see can sign up for more with hardly any effort.
These methods and any other ways you decide to promote your blog should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. If you don’t have one or want someone to write your blog posts for you, why not work with me?
Missed the other posts in my blogging series? You can find them below:
Why you should have a business blog
How to write the blog your business needs
