At Blogger Local, I talk to my reporters about the dual-focus of the content we create for clients on our Kansas City blog (which is our first city site). While we definitely do things to make our content more search engine friendly for our clients’ benefit, we also have to publish content that is beneficial to readers – content that readers want to share. Whether it be via email, social media or another medium, we want our readers to not only react to the content we publish, but to share it with others as well.

When we focus on the readers of our blog – who also find us through Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus – we like to publish content that is timely and informative. Subject matter for our posts includes special offers & sales, new business launches, “how to” articles, customer reviews, new product introductions, event announcements, job openings, etc. That is, we like to publish content that our readers can’t get anywhere else, or would have to search specifically for them. Additionally, we always like to provide a link to the business that’s obvious to our readers.

While the content might be for readers, we certainly have to make it search engine friendly! How do we do this? Within the article, we have to naturally fit in a client’s core keyword a couple of times or so, and we link that to different places on their website – maybe the home page, an internal page, or possibly even to a previous blog entry on their site. For example, if the client is a doggy day care in Kansas City, we will say something in the piece like “Searching for doggy day care in Kansas City…” and link “doggy day care in Kansas City” to the client’s website.

This tells the search engines that there is a relationship between the phrase “doggy day care in Kansas City” and the client’s website. While a core element of search engine optimization, and there is more to it than this, fresh content that is search engine friendly will go a long way with helping your organic rankings.

So, if you’re trying to help your business by blogging, make sure to do make the content something that is interesting and useful to readers. Additionally, ensure that the content helps your rankings by making it search engine friendly.