Optimize Your Cleaning Business Blog For SEO

I'm finally starting to see cleaning business owners dip their toes into the blogosphere, which is a good thing! If you want your website to be ranked high, then one of the things the search engines like to see is ever-changing content. And writing a blog is a great way to do that.

But if you want your blog to have SEO value, then you should do these 4 things:

1. Use keywords in your title
Every blog post needs a title that uses keywords. For example, instead of writing a title like, "Don't Rub In That Spot", write a title like, "Carpet Spotting Tips For Home Owners". If carpet spotting is a service you provide, use it as one of your keyword phrases. Home owners is another keyword phrase being used in this title.

2. Use hyperlinks in your blog post
Linking from your blog to various pages on your website is a good thing. But you need to make it easy for search engines to figure out what your website pages are about.

Instead of writing this: For tips on removing gum from carpet, click here

Write this: Tips on removing gum from carpet

"Click here" doesn't mean anything to the search engines but "click here". But when you hyperlink your keyword phrase to a page that talks about removing gum from carpet, the search engines "get it"!

3. Use SEO Permalinks on your blog
Like hyperlinks, SEO permalinks help the search engines figure out what your pages are about. The default web page url may look like this:
http://www.mywebsite.com/?p=123

But you can customize it to look like this:
http://www.mywebsite.com/carpet-spotting-tips

4. Add alt tags to your images
Every time you upload an image to your blog, tell the search engines what the photo is about. This also helps people who are using text only browsers because instead of a white box with a red "X", they'll see the description of the image.

These are 4 simple tips that will help you optimize your blog for SEO (search engine optimization). Happy writing!

Comments

[Marla Hughes]

My favorite resource for everything SEO is SearchEngineLand and for great insight on blogging ShoutMeLoud can't be beat. Tell Harsh (that's his real name) I sent ya. :-)

[Craig Sedoris]

Jean,

Thanks for the information. I've been trying to incorporate your suggestions into our site. How do you customize the SEO Permalinks?

Thanks,

Craig

[Jean Hanson]

Craig,
It depends on what kind of blog you have. If you have a Wordpress blog it will depend on the theme you're using but there should be a setting that allows you to change how your permalinks.

[orion stafa]

Does it matter if the blog is not in your website but it has links from the blog that link to the website through out the article?

[Jean Hanson]

Yes, that is fine. This blog is not on our website but I link to it in articles.