Boomtown Blogging Recommendations and Best Practices for WordPress

Boomtown would like to recommend the following tips and guidelines for bloggers who are looking to get the most out of their efforts. Although we encourage our clients to use WordPress because it’s both SEO friendly and easy to use, these tips apply for other blogging applications as well.

Here are some of our blogging “best practices” you can put to use for your next blog post or contribution:

Post at least four times per month.
Create blog posts using your keywords as they relate to social trends.
You can find social trends by setting up alerts on keywords, using most searched features on social sites. Google News is another resource.
Make sure all blog posts have been optimized for keywords.
To save time, automate blog posts on Facebook and Twitter.
Ping social media sites about your blog posts (Boomtown uses a list of about 80 sites).
Site visitors and potential customers are fans of blog posts that feature “similar situation stories”. If you choose to share a story about how your team solved a problem, someone with a similar problem will trust us to solve their problem. It’s often a good idea to email some of your customers to get an idea how products or services have been used (not necessarily a testimonial, more like stories and use-cases.)
If appropriate, have your current customers share stories as well.
Review current blog categories and create new categories if necessary that better reflect your chosen SEO keywords.

If you have a team of writers and content producers, share the following blog posting tips.

General Blog Posting Tips for Writers:

Title: Intriguing titles go a long way. (example: Customer Hold Time – The Deadliest Receptionist Sin). “How To” titles are a good choice, as are ones including a number. “5 Web Design Trends for 2012”. When possible, offer analysis and “new tips and tricks”.

Keywords: As much as possible, use your top keywords in the post title, links to older posts, or client web pages and tags.

Images: Including an image with a post is recommended. Use your keywords in the image “alt” attribute when possible.

Post Length and Content: Mix up length of your posts. Don’t be afraid to be brief – 250 words – 500 words are fine for blog posts.
Respond to Comments Regularly: This will grow the conversation and add more value to your posts.

Making Use of the All in One SEO Pack:

If you have a WordPress blog, it’s easy to optimize your posts with the All in One SEO plugin. You’ll just need to fill out the Title, Description, and Keyword fields.

Title: Most search engines use a maximum of 60 characters for the title. Include your keywords/keyword.
Description: 160 characters – should be a brief summary of the post or what visitors will learn. Include keywords as well.
Keywords: The keywords targeted for the blog post.

Use the “Post Tags” and properly categorize the post as well. Both “Post Tags” and blog categorization should be keyword-related.

Should you have additional questions, contact a Boomtown representative: Erica.ronchetti@boomtownig.com.