There’s probably no one who hasn’t heard the phrase “planting the seed” in some form or another. The phrase, “You’ll reap what you sew” is common too, but how does it apply to business?

Think of it in terms of gardening.  You plant a seed, you nurture it, it grows, and you get the rewards of the finished product.  In business, hard work is the seed. You put in your dedication, time, and hard work and grow a quality business you can reap the rewards of.

Likewise, a business without the planting and nurturing of seeds can’t grow. Without putting in the hard work necessary to grow your business, you can’t expect to have a reward.  Sometimes, even the smallest action can allow you to reap great rewards.  Being idle, however, will not yield rewards.  In other words, do nothing, get nothing.

You can spend half your life building a business.  It may be your most significant asset.  Success of this business may result on the economic future of your family.  Planning your business and planting the necessary seeds lays the groundwork for the success of your business.  Nurture it, and it can grow into the type of business that will yield you great rewards.

In order to help make sure your business is successful it is not only important to plant seeds, but to plant the right seeds.  Any farmer will tell you that certain seeds won’t grow in certain areas of the world.  What thrives in one area will wither away in another.  Here are a few of the right seeds you should plant to help your business thrive:

Post valuable, keyword-targeted content to your blog

It is obvious that anything you post to your blog should be valuable.  Readers simply won’t want to read it otherwise.  Here the phrase, “Think before you speak” applies.  In other words, “Think before you blog.”  Think of important, valuable information you can pass on to your reader, and provide it in a way that will entice them and make them want to return to read what you have to say next.

The second part of this seed is a bit more complicated.  You can have the most valuable content on the internet, but if no one ever sees it, it isn’t doing you any good.  In order to make sure that they do, you want to use keyword-targeted content in your blog postings.

Businesses have been using keyword-targeted ads for a long time, but many fail to realize how important it can be for blog content.  Since search engines pick up on these words and make your blog pop up in searches, they can be a valuable tool to increase traffic to your site.  You don’t, however, just litter your content with a few words and hope they get picked up by search engines.  There are a few steps you can take to be sure you get the right keywords.

  1. Keyword Research—Research to see how many people are searching for your site. There are tools available from Google and other software developers that can help make the process easier for you.
  2. Target low competition, niche keywords—Google Adwords can be very helpful to see how competitive a keyword is before you decide to use it.
  3. Don’t focus only on your main keywords—Try to think outside the box. Targeting keywords isn’t just about the most popular keywords.   For example, if you’re a realtor, just targeting your blog for real estate will get too many hits for you to even be noticed.  Target for specific real estate instead, and you’ll get visitors to your site others targeting just real estate won’t get.
  4. Think about what your target market is looking for and put it on your site. Always think of your market first.  They want quality content, not keywords.  Once you have the quality content, you should write between 200-300 content words for each keyword used.  That’s around three to five keyword phrases on each page.  Don’t force it.  Keywords have to be used naturally, so they flow within the content.
  5. Customize titles and descriptions for each page—Search engines can’t figure out what your subject is or the relevance of each page if you use the same tags for all the pages.
  6. Prepare a site map telling where everything is on your site—Search engines like site maps. Although you’ll get around 1% click through rate, a site map will really help those who know what to do with them.
  7. Build popularity—Just doing the above steps won’t get you on the first few pages of the search pages. To do that, you need to build popularity.  One way is having sites that link to yours.  You can offer important information so others will want to link to your site.   If you don’t spam, and are a well-linked site, you’ll do better in search engines.

Once you’ve written your valuable content and placed in the targeted keywords, there are other places you can use the keywords as well:

  1. URL—Using keywords count more in the root domain than sub domains, but good root domains are often difficult to get. Try to put in at least one keyword in the root domain if you can’t use the entire phrase.  If not, putting it in the sub domain will still help you rank higher.
  2. Titles of Pages—Page titles are excellent for search engine rankings. Using a keyword in the title of each page, especially at the beginning of the page title, will help in the rankings.
  3. Inbound Links using Anchor text—This is the part of the text of a link that is clickable. If your anchor text is the targeted keyword, it will improve rankings for the keyword.
  4. Header—Header texts, like page titles, count more in keyword rankings than content does. Having one part of your header with a keyword will be an advantage for you.
  5. Bolded Text—Bold text stands out on the page, but it also stands out as a keyword in search rankings.
  6. Image ALT Text—Search engines don’t read images, but you can put keyword-driven ALT text on images. This will help the page rankings.  For some websites, being found in an image search can be valuable.

These are only a few suggestions, but they are valuable ones.  Using the right keywords in your blog is an imperative seed to its growth.

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