You should submit your blog article because your time is valuable.  You need to make every minute count.  Think of a blog article as an advertisement that costs you nothing and also lasts forever.  Advertising is costly.  And, most advertising has a finite duration.  But, with a blog article, you’re creating content that people are searching for.  And, your content will be around for a very very long time.  So, a blog article that takes an hour or two to write, could generate dozens of new leads over the next few years.

First of all, these aren’t our guidelines.  Well, a couple are ours.  But, for the most part, the guidelines listed below come from major SEO companies who know everything about SEO.  In keeping with these guidelines, your blog article will rank higher with the search engines.  So, when you submit your blog article, please adhere to the following set of parameters.

Copying content from one platform or website and copying it to another is a big time foul.  Google’s web crawler bots are smart and they’ll know that it’s a copy.  And, simply changing a word or two here or there isn’t good enough.  So, please submit your blog article that is 100% yours.  Sure, it’s ok to get inspiration from another site.  Just make sure you’re using your own words.

This is one of the most important things to figure out before you write your blog post.  Then once you have it figured out, you’ll want to use the keyword in every paragraph.  And, it should also be the title of the blog post.  Basically, the focus keyword or key phrase will be sprinkled throughout your blog post.

On my website www.SouthTexasSportCourt.com, I’ve written around 50 blog posts.  These are all search engine optimized so that when people search for a topic that I’ve written about, they’ll be more likely to find my page.  In the blog post, “What is the Safest Gym Floor? ”, you’ll find my key phrase throughout the blog post.

In the above paragraph, I included 2 links to my website.  These are called outbound links because they take the viewer to another site.  In this case, to my website.  It’s also good to have internal links to other pages within the website in which the blog post is being published.  In this case, that would be to the Friday Networking Lunch site.  Did you just notice that I linked to the home page of this site?  So, I just created an internal link.  But, please don’t stress about the internal links when you submit your blog article.  I’ll handle the internal links for you.

Images are helpful, but not required.  If you don’t have images, I’ll find some.  Google likes text to be broken up with images.  If you do submit images when you submit your blog article, please make sure they are not someone else’s property.  Or, if someone else owns the images, get their permission to use them.  You can also find stock images at 123rf.com, pexels.com, or shutterstock.com.  Some images are free while others cost a few dollars.

Please don’t worry too much about image size.  Any photo taken with your camera or downloaded from a stock image site, will be good quality.  We’ll scale and crop the photos as needed and apply alt image attributes.

There is technically no minimum word count.  However, it is widely accepted that around 300 words is the minimum for good SEO.  And, can you really provide valuable content in less than 300 words?  Probably not.  So, strive to write several paragraphs, with each paragraph having 4 to 6 sentences.  You’ll blow way past 300 words pretty quickly.

Continuous back to back paragraphs are discouraged.  They’re just no good for good SEO.  As mentioned previously, images can be used to break up text.  But, sub-headings work great as well.  Most of the bold text on this blog post are sub-headings.  They break up the paragraphs and they also define the purpose of the paragraph.

It’s a good idea to get your focus key phrase into one of the sub-headings.  I’ve done this in the first and last sub-heading of this post.  But, it could be in any of the sub-headings.  You just need to see where it makes sense.

This was a big frustration when I first started blogging. I had some technical writing in my background.  So, I was used to long sentences and big words.  But, this isn’t ideal for SEO.  Reader’s Digest magazine is written for a 5th grade reading level.  This is a comfortable reading level for most people.  So, that’s how you should write, if you want better search rankings.

Most people either think they cannot write well or they think they don’t have time.  Let’s tackle writing quality first.  You don’t have to be a writer.  You’re 10th grade English teacher is unlikely to grade your blog post.  And, I think most readers will overlook poor writing, if the content is valuable.  But, maybe writing just isn’t your thing?  That’s ok.  You do not have to write.  You can talk instead.  Simply use an audio recording app on your phone to record your blog post.  Then transcribe it, or have someone with awesome typing skills transcribe it for you.

Write what you know.  If you’re a financial advisor, then write something helpful related to money.  Think about what people need to know.  Or, consider what people search for.  Just go to Google.com and start typing a search.  Google will provide auto fill suggestions.  The auto fill is what people are searching for.  So, use one of these auto fill suggestions as your topic and as your focus key phrase.

Blog posts on the Friday Networking Lunch website should be about your business or business related.  We do not accept posts about politics or religion.  And, we want PG rated posts.  So, nothing about sexuality.

We only accept blog articles from active members of the Friday Networking Lunch.   You can submit your blog article in any word processing format or even copy and paste it into an email.   Please no paper submissions.  Only electronic submissions will be accepted.

We reserve the right to make minor changes for better compliance with SEO guidelines.  We also reserve the right to reject articles.

Please email your blog articles to Eric Meyer.