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Local Blogs

Dylan Cohan
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Local blogs on your Mosquito Squad website are designed to create traffic from potential customers. To be recognized by Google and other search engines, they must be hyper-local in all forms of content. When done properly, a local blog can complement the national blog and dramatically increase the value of a local website.

 

For any questions or updates, contact the MSQ support inbox at msq.website-support@authoritybrands.co. For any content requests, submit this form:

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Here are  5 ways blogs can benefit your business:

  1. Increase traffic to your site.
    • Gives people a reason to visit your website regularly.
    • Be sure to create content that speaks to your target audience's pain points, and make sure the headlines accurately describe the content to follow.
  2. Attract new customers.
  3. Turn your website into a destination.
  4. Show and tell what your business can do.
  5. Give your business results long after the initial post.
    • Old blog posts that have gained authority/ranking over time and are bringing in a good amount of organic traffic can be easily updated to serve current campaigns/goals

 

Blogging Best Practices:

Lastly, on writing blogs, here are some topics regarding what to include when blogging, best practices, and general writing tips.

What to include

  • Keywords you would like to rank higher for within the organic section of a search engine rankings page. You can always utilize the Search Engine Ranking page in the Scorpion Dashboard for ideas on keywords to incorporate in the blogs. Scroll to the very bottom of the page to see a list of keywords: https://my.scorpion.co/my-business/search-engine-ranking/
  • Always incorporate a couple of the services you provide, such as Mosquito Control, Special Event Sprays, All-Natural Protection, Misting Systems, etc.  
  • Mention service areas you are trying to generate more leads from (is there a specific geo you need more caregivers or clients from).
  • All content must be unique. Duplicated content can negatively impact SEO rankings.
  • As a side note, we always want to include how the event or post relates to the business.
  • Lastly, within social posts, always link to the website where unique content is added, which helps generate more traffic back to the website.

 

Below are some additional resources that can be used when creating content

 

GMB Posting Best Practices:

Creating a post on GMB and Facebook is recommended any time you add a blog to the website to help drive more traffic to your sites! Our team created a GMB Posting Best Practices document, which you can view here: GMB Posting Best Practices

 

In addition, here is some feedback from my SEO team on a few blogs to give you an idea of what to watch for. Here is some common feedback on a few blogs and items to consider when choosing blog topics and writing the content.

  • The content appears to be well written, but consider more in-depth coverage
  • Add more subheadings
    • Take the ‘The Impacts of Weather on Mosquitoes’ draft, for example:
      • 5 paragraphs will just appear as mounds of text to the end-user
      • Adding subheadings makes the content easier to digest and communicates to Google what the article is about
      • Bolding key bits of in-body verbiage also helps with user engagement and helps Google understand what’s important on your page
  • Add contextual links
    • Of the blogs that I went through, I did not see any links included
      • Find natural opportunities to link to relevant service pages, corporate or location blogs, and/or high-authority external sources

Blog posts that fail to gain traction may be because they fail to cover the topic better than what’s already ranking in the SERPs. For your blogs to generate traffic and/or benefit your business in any tangible way, it’s important to understand and focus on a few key items outlined below.

  1. Which articles they are competing against for search visibility
  2. If the topic they are covering carries any weight (has search volume or traffic draw)
  3. Which topics and inner topics to cover to hit search intent properly

Knowing the above is just half the battle. The other half is delivering quality, engaging, and well-optimized content.

 

 

What to Blog About

The interesting and difficult part of creating a local blog is to systematize the articles so that they create items of interest for your potential customers. Here are some do's and don's:

  • Create a master plan for articles that includes keywords that customers of Mosquito Squad find valuable, such as backyard mosquito problems. You can obtain a full list of keywords from Mosquito Squad's franchise resources.
  • Do include articles on items that are specific to your market. Include hyperlinks to references. For instance, if you create an article on local parks, include the county park's website. An article on pollinator gardens might include a site that identifies butterflies.
  • Use rich content that you create, as in photos, videos, and charts, and use meta-tags on them to help identify each, e.g., a file labeled "Dog Park in Dover, IA.jpg"
  • Never copy material. Never. Google will figure this out and penalize your site for it.
  • Create as many relevant categories as possible to make your articles easy to find.
  • User deferred publishing of articles, so they are released weekly during the selling cycle.

Summary

Local blogs can significantly increase the value of your website and, thus, the traffic, but they need to be current, uniquely local, and genuinely beneficial to have the desired effect.

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