Best SEO Practices for Launching a Blog

By Annie Ye, SEO Account Manager

Blogging presents an opportunity for a website to rank and grow visibility outside of its core pages. With an increased focus on content, blogging for a website has become more important than ever in capturing a wide audience.

For starting up a blog that capitalizes on the opportunities of blogging, follow these guidelines:

Where the blog should live

• Ideally, the blog should always live in a subdirectory on the domain:

Do use:    www.domain.com/blog

• The subdirectory structure allows you take advantage of existing domain authority better than a subdomain
• This directory allows for you to build new pages and content for domain.com, which can increase SEO visibility
• It’s better integrated to the website (not to mention requires fewer tracking updates)

Don’t use:            blog.domain.com

• Subdomains were historically considered to be separate websites
  • This changed awhile back, with links being seen as internal now; however, SEO value/ranking propensity flows between subdirectories better than subdomains
• If technical limitations cannot allow subdirectory blog structures, hosting a blog as a subdomain is the next best option
  • Leveraging a proxy server can be a solution for taking a subdomain blog and showing it to users in a subdirectory fashion

Optimized URL structure

• URLs should be nested in the blog subdirectory and include target keywords
  • domain.com/blog/top-blogging-platforms-for-seo
  • Always use lowercase characters, encoded in UTF-8
  • Leverage dashes rather than underscores to break up words in the URL
  • If your blog URLs are generated from a backend database, try and allow natural language words rather than numerical identifiers
    • Example: domain.com/blog/article-87243 (try and make this keyword-centric)

Posting schedule: consistency > frequency

• A steady flow of content publication is better than publishing large amounts at singular times
  • We recommend posting 2-3 times a week
    • Base your cadence upon your users and their content consumption habits. If you post too frequently, you could be diluting the numbers of users who reach each article

Length of posts

• Longer-form content does tend to rank higher
  • While there is no magic number, a widely-recognized study noted that page 1 rankings have 1,890 words per page on average
• For blogging, we recommend 500-2,000 words per post
  • Post length will directly correlate to the weight of your topic. It’s strongly recommended against writing posts to reach a word count. Discuss your topic in depth and use as many words as you feel appropriate

Amplification methods

• Getting eyes on the blog post is highly important, so make sure the URL is shared across your brand channels
  • Email campaigns
  • Social Media (Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.)
  • Paid search
    • In addition, when promoting your blog content, make sure to tag your URLs appropriately with UTM tags

When your blog gets momentum and influence, it opens up a wealth of possibilities for both thought leadership and promotion (Yahoo’s small business site has some good tips for both B2B and ecommerce companies.) Put in the time and effort consistently and follow the above guidelines – and above all, post content that appeals to your audience – and the clicks should start piling up.

Good luck!