How To Write Blog Posts Using RB's CMS

I have been reading many of the excellent blog posts from the RustyBrick team since the launch of our new site. The blog posts are educational, witty, fun and even tasty - making for a great balance of topics for a wide-audience. In short, I am loving the content being produced by our programmers and designers - most of whom (including myself) have no formal professional or higher level education in journalism. Don't you just love blogs and blogging. :)

But one thing that I took notice to was how everyone was writing blog posts without necessarily thinking of how searchers would search for this content in a search engine. Since I am fairly well-known for my writing about search engines and SEO (search engine optimization) topics at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land, I figured I would do a small internal meeting at RustyBrick on how to think about searchers, search engines and - ultimately - the readers, when writing these blog posts. But then I figured, since I am a "blogger," why not blog it, so we can reference back to it when writing future blog posts.

Some bloggers first write their blog post titles and then write the content (I do that), while many others write the content of the post and then think up a nice title for the post. Either way, the first step, when thinking about titling your post and writing the content is what words people would type into Google to find your content. If it is a review of the My Touch 3G or spending time in Sesame Place, thinking how people would search in a search engine for your blog post is half the battle. Happy cupcakes might sound good, but how many people are searching for cupcakes that make them happy? I am not too sure.

In the backend of the custom and search engine friendly CMS, we have several fields which can be customized for each piece of content on this site. They include "Title," "Name," "URL," "Meta Description," "Meta Keywords," "H1" and some others, including selecting the category the post belongs in. Let me explain how each one can be used optimally for helping your blog post reach the search engines, searchers and ultimately the reader.

Title: The title is what shown in the title tag of the source code, shown in the browser bar, the words used when you bookmark a page and what is shown in the search results page as the clickable link to the page. This title should contain the prime keywords you want the blog post to rank for, but at the same time, it should read well enough to encourage people to click from the search results page to your blog post. That is the key, you want to show up in the search engine for the related keywords and have a click-worthy title for searchers to click on.

Name: The name is really the link's anchor text, the clickable link found on the various internal RustyBrick pages that link to the blog post. They show up on the home page, on the news page, several blog pages, and within feeds and other sections. They are important because search engines read what words you use to describe the page you are linking to, it is a fairy key indicator. The issue here, is you typically want those links to be relatively short and at the same time, contain readable and keyword rich text.

URL: The URL, in my opinion, is not that incredibly important. But we have the option of customizing it, so take the three seconds it takes to do that. I actually recently learned that Google indeed looks at the keywords in the filename and it is useful to use that for keyword variations, such as singular and plural words (i.e. change vs. changing). So it can't hurt to title the blog post "Changing" and in the filename URL use "change." In short, keep the URL keyword rich and short.

Meta Description: Just a one or two line summary of what the blog post is about. Yea, use keywords that are relevant to the blog post, but keep it simple and even make it a teaser. Search engine sometimes use the meta description for the snippet in the search results, under the title (or link) and above the display URL. It also helps a bit with showing unique content for an advanced search operator, known as the site command.

Meta Keywords: Leave it blank, Google ignores it and Yahoo will eventually outsource their search technology to Microsoft. Leave it out. Why is it there? So people will ask.

H1: The H1 tag is a header tag, it is used on the blog entry page, as the heading directly above the body content. It should be similar to the name and title tag, but can be more press or newspaper snazzy. Use the keywords in the H1, but you can be more creative with it. Search engines do look at this tag, so they matter and they look pretty.

Finally, it is important to hyperlink throughout the content. Link to past blog posts, link to services or software pages on the site or on external sites. Hyperlinking within content, with keyword rich anchor text that describe what you are linking to, helps search engines and readers understand what you are linking to. So link often, link with keyword rich words and link smart.

For this blog post, I used the following attributes:

* Title: Writing Blog Posts That Work Well For Search Engines & Searchers in a CMS
* Name: Crafting Search Engine Friendly Blog Entries
* URL: /writing-seo-blog-posts.html
* Meta Description: Tips on how to write blog posts and entries that work well for searchers, readers and search engines.
* H1: How To Write Blog Posts Using RB's CMS

Any questions? Comment below. :-)

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