Is your blog ranked by search engines and producing results (i.e. leads) for your business?  No, read on.

So many companies embrace the principles of inbound marketing by reading up, learning a bit here and there and piecing together an inbound marketing plan without fully embracing and internalizing the Inbound Methodology.

The results for these companies are often underwhelming and as a result many are yet to see a return on their efforts simply because they haven’t followed a process or the principles properly.

Core to any inbound marketing strategy is content and blog creation.  

Regular sustained blogging of valuable, informational and educational content that your personas are highly interested in is ultimately the route to driving more visitors to your website and more importantly the right kind of traffic.  

One issue I see many companies run into is when they are doing all the hard work of creating the blogs however not optimizing these so that the search engines can rank it.  Essentially writing the content and camouflaging it by not following some very simple steps to amplify it to search engines like Google and Bing.

We use HubSpot and it gives us the suggestions automatically based on the content we are creating inside of the blogging tool.  For all those using their own systems or other CMS platforms here are 10 essential checks to make before publishing a blog post:

1. Included Keyword(s) in your blog title
   Select 1 or 2 long tail keywords to focus on for your blog.  Ensure you include the primary keyword in your blog title.  
   
   
2. Blog title less than 70 characters
   Search engine results pages max out at 70 characters in the Page Title preview text area.  Ensure that you stay below this so both Search Engines and the readers can instantly tell what the blog post is about.
   
   
3. Keywords in your blog body copy
   The main body of your blog is the principle opportunity to mention and add your keywords to convey relevancy of your content.  Don’t be tempted to stuff your keywords here to try and game the Search Engines.  That won’t work and you may be penalized accordingly in the rankings.  Use your keywords naturally throughout the copy in a way that makes sense for the blog post and for the reader.  Don’t overuse them either, HubSpot recommends using your keyword no more than 5 times.
   
   
4. Have you included your keyword in the URL?
   The URL of your blog should include your primary keyword.  Search Engines use your URL to determine what your post is about.  Match it to your blog title and you’ll be fine.
   
   
5. Internal links to other blogs or webpages
   Consider inbound links to your content as votes by the internet on the quality and relevancy of that particular page.  A simplistic way of looking at it is - more inbound links = higher rankings.  Internal links act in a similar fashion.  Try to use internal links between your content to demonstrate the relevancy of the earlier content and also to keep people on your site consuming more information and increasing the likelihood of conversion.
   
   
6. Have you included call-to-actions
   This is a biggie.  It’s also one of the first things I check for when speaking to clients in the early stages of their inbound marketing journey.  Inbound Marketing ultimately is about lead generation for clients.  Any optimized post has to include multiple routes for visitors to convert into leads, i.e. exchange their details for some kind of offer.  In the IT space it’s historically been a free trial as an example.  Many companies don’t realise that their blog pages can often be their most trafficked parts of their website and therefore don’t capitalise on this by using the blog as a lead generation asset.  The simplest way to do this is by including a call to action with a valuable offer at the bottom of all their blog posts.  Give your readers an opportunity to convert.  Offer them something they HAVE to have, something that’s going to solve a problem and educate them on your chosen topic. 
   
   
7. Have you included an image?
   Blogs with images, from a human standpoint help the reader understand your content and add to the look and feel of any post.  Search engines however can’t read images for SEO like they can text therefore it’s important to also optimize your image.  Do this by naming the image properly, if you have a pic of a kitten name your image 'kitten', equally same for the Alt-Description component of the image.  This is what the search engines pick up on to determine what the image is.
   
   
8. Optimised your Meta description
   The meta description is the text that appears below your Page Title in the search engine results page that explains what the content behind the link is about.  It’s important to the reader to encourage them to click into the main link.  Best practices are to keep it below 150-160 characters and include your primary keyword.  Keep it brief and to the point.

Use the above points for every single blog post going forward as well as review historical posts to ensure that you give the Search Engines every opportunity to rank you high for your given keyword(s).  Executed correctly will, I am confident of it, create favourable returns for any organisation serious about Inbound Marketing.