This is a common question we get from our locksmith customers, and indeed all our website and marketing customers.

The answer… it depends!

Writing a blog for the sake of writing a blog “because someone said I should” could be the wrong thing to do if done poorly. It may just create dead content on your website that devalues and dilutes the other important content you have on there.

So why should you write a blog?

  • It shows potential customers and search engines that your website is active
  • Assuming you write blogs helpful to customers, it shows you care, are an authority on your market and not just there to sell.
  • It gives you a great opportunity to build quality internal and external links
  • If marketed outside your website correctly it builds your brand, and brand is key for search engines as well as creating brand recognition for future potential customers
  • It creates traffic to your website, and if done well, may lead to reading of other blogs and possibly services you provide, but quality traffic with a long dwell time is fantastic for SEO regardless if for a service or simply to read your locksmith blog.
  • You might just get a customer from the blog but that is secondary and shouldn’t be the goal as it needs to genuinely address an interest of the reader or give advice to a problem they have with their home or business security.

Some simple rules to writing a blog for your locksmith website. Only if you do all this is it worth writing a blog!

  • Don’t use key service search terms within the titles

This could cause interference with your SEO for your key locksmith service landing pages. We had to help a client who did just that and because the SEO for the key search term was weaker than the SEO on the landing page it ranked lower than the landing page. Google shouldn’t have indexed that page for that search but they did!

  • Make the topic relevant to the reader

Write about a topic that you know is something that interests people or that gives great advice to people or solves an issue for them. Even if that means they don’t need to call you, a locksmith. That isn’t the point of creating the blog

  • Do your keyword research

Find out how people search about that topic. Typically it will be a long tail search term that you should write about as more competitive search terms will be difficult to rank. Include that search term in your blog title and in the first sentence. Use variations of the search term / topics in your subsequent subheadings.

  • Build internal links

Look for opportunities to link to other related blogs or service and contact pages on your website but don’t overdo it – only link where it helps the reader.

  • Build authoritative external links

Look for opportunities to link out to authoritative websites such as the MLA, the local police, Trading Standard, .gov and so on. Again, don’t overdo it, link where it is natural and where it helps the reader understand better the point you make or stats you use.

  • Write titles and content in an engaging way.

Did you know that users spend less than 1 second to decide whether they want to stay on a blog or not? So think about the intent of the searcher and what answers they are trying to find so that you grab their attention with headlines that satisfy their search intent.

Once you have grabbed their attention and they want to read more about your thoughts, your blog must be interesting, engaging, and easy to read so that the readers really want to stay on your site. Write in easy to read ways, using some nice images or videos that engage the visitor and structure the page so it is not daunting! Remember the longer they stay on your website or more they move about different pages, the better for your SEO.

It can also be very helpful to use power words in titles and content to draw readers in. Words such as You, Save, Secrets, Discover, Easy, Don’t Miss, New, Risk Free, Save, Limited, Only For… etc

Don’t forget to use the key search term throughout the blog but don’t be spammy, aim for around 3% search term density.

  • It’s important so write full content

Write a minimum of 300 words but somewhere around 1,000 words to 2,300 words is ideal. However, as long as you are writing enough to satisfy answering the searchers intent, you should be OK. That is the focus, more so than the word count

 

  • Write a Meta Description to Your Blog
    1. The meta description is an short text advert that you can add to any page and search engines display in search results below the blog title.
  1. A good meta description can explain a lot about your blog and is a teaser to try to get the searcher to click through to your website blog. Social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn also show your meta description when your content is shared on those platforms.
  1. Ensure you mention your focus keyphrase once in the meta description for search purposes. The likes of Google will bold text that matches what the searcher typed. Also, use the focus keyphrase earlier in the meta description rather than later as hotspot analysis shows this is where readers focus initially

Lastly, the SERPS display limit for meta descriptions is 160 characters. Try to stay within that or your meta description will be cut off after 160 characters. This gives a poor user impression. However, sometimes it can be a useful tactic as it might draw users to want to read more. As long as you have the key search terms at the start so that you grab their attention you should be OK

  • Use categories and tags to organise your content

Categories and tags help you sort your content not only for yourself (think internal linking!) but for the readers and, off course, search engines such as Google and Bing.

Use categories correctly. Think about your website blog section as a book. Categories are the table of contents and tags are the index part of the book.

Categories divide your content into MAIN topics discussed on your blog. Tags, on the other hand, are the topics discussed within in an individual blog post.

To understand more about categories and tags WPBeginner’s guide on using categories and tags for maximum SEO benefit can be very useful.

Don’t forget to go back through old blog posts that share the same category or tags and link to this new blog where appropriate and it helps the reader!

  • Actively Encourage Social Media Shares

As we said at the start, blogs that aren’t read are dead content that can harm your website and SEO. So you should make sure that you actively share your blog on social media such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook. Don’t forget some of the new platforms such as Rumble. Some of these newer platforms might fade but if they survive and grow, creating content on them now builds a great strong history

Make sure you have social share buttons on your blog as content that’s shared more on social media ranks higher in search engines. More people will visit your site when they see something interesting you’ve shared or your readers have shared on social media.

There is also the potential benefit that social media users will link to your content from their site or social media, which increases your rankings on Google. You could also approach friendly social media owners to link to your blog – this is very powerful!

Some Final Thoughts

Seems a lot doesn’t it? Well yes but doing this regularly you will get into good practice and it will come naturally. It does take time but its an investment. Doing it poorly is a waste of time. Doing it well, or engaging a company to do it for you is the only way to approach this.

So, when complete, don’t forget to preview your blog post. Look at it from a readers point of view. Does it look nice, read well, any errors and does it look good on different devices? Get a friend or colleague to give an impartial view and adjust as appropriate.

Once happy, go live and share share share!

Content Is King

Finally, don’t forget that quality content is king!

Up to a few years ago, SEO grey / black hat tricks were enough to get your site to rank well in Google and Bing but those days are long gone. Writing high-quality original content is critical if you want to compete for top rankings on Google/Bing or to get readers to stay on your website long enough to improve your engagement scores.

Remember, good content leads to more links, tweets, social shares, and returning visitors to your blog.

We hope this blog has helped you decide if writing a blog for your website is the right thing to do, and if you do, you have some useful insight into how to go about it the right way.

Of course we are more than happy to discuss doing this professionally for you. Our clients get a great return on investment from our services. They focus on being great locksmiths, we focus on building great content for you that gets the leads to your phone.