Here are a number of tips that can help get your blog better visibility, which in turn will increase its search engine rankings:

Links

1. Use your social media to promote the blog. New posts are great content for these mediums. (post to Facebook and Twitter and link back to your blog).

2. Continue to use links of authoritative sites in your posts. If you blog about an article on a major news network, link to that site in your post. Also, in your social media posts, mention the handle of the network to increase visibility.

Location, location, location

3. Move the blog higher on the homepage or just promote the thing shamelessly! This could help increase traffic. The more traffic, the more authority your blog will assume, which equals higher rankings.

4. Use feeds to stream your social media content on the homepage. If you follow tip 1, your content will show up in your homepage feeds.

So you think you can rank?

5. What do you want to be ranked for? If you are wondering why the blog doesn’t come up for specific keywords, check if those keywords appear in your posts.

6. Following on the above, write posts about what you want to be ranked for.

7. The use of labels/tags helps readers identify subjects they may want to read about. This is also a way for Google to index each post. If you have an article that mentions legal marketing, for example, you can use this as a label. Also, don’t limit labels; use as many as you need.

Use your social media

8. Use ow.ly or another URL shortener (that enables you to track) so you can track the type of content that draws the most interest. Check the time of day that you get the most clicks and adjust your posting schedule using this data.

9. Check Twitter for trending topics. If they are relevant to you, or if you can tie them into your posts, odds are these hashtags can get you in front of a much larger group of people. This means an increase in traffic to your blog or even links, which will elevate your authority.

10. Interact with your existing followers so that they will be more likely to advocate and push your content further. Social media is based on the principle of spreading the word (in this case, blog posts).

Organize and keep ‘em separated

11. Don’t use your blog as a catch-all. You have subscribers, an audience to build. Keep enrollment forms, sign ups, downloads and event promotions out of your blog post. These can make a user stop scrolling and view the blog as a trap or misleading. Best practice tells us to keep these things on your website and link the blog post back to these related pages for more information. The blog should be about thought leadership. Other sections of your site are for prospecting.

The above is just a start. Remember to use keywords in your posts that you want to be known for. Call those keywords out as labels and use your social media accounts to drive traffic to your blog.