One of the roots of a successful search engine optimization strategy is new content, filled with keywords that aren’t forced, links that fit keywords and most of all, original content that people are interested in reading. It may seem weird to say this after a bit of a hiatus (sorry – I’ve been very busy!) but consistency is the key. Nothing turns people off your site like a blog that hasn’t been updated in ages. People often start blogging with gusto but lose interest before they have a chance to build traffic. Given that Google has first hand experience with dead blogs in the form of thousands of moribund Blogspot accounts, you should bank on their algorithm being smart enough to penalize blogs that look abandoned.

Whether you handle your blogging internally or get the help of a copywriter there are several things you can do to ensure a steady stream of entries. Take the danger of a dead blog seriously even if you’re in the first blush of romance with your new WordPress installation, because you can’t rely on spontaneous inspiration and amusing office anecdotes forever. The ability to write regularly isn’t easy or common, but by running with these ideas, you can keep your blog fresh.

Batch, but React: Set a target number of articles per month and write them immediately, editing the time stamp to postdate the articles. Batch updating immediately imposes discipline on you, by making blogging a scheduled task instead of just waiting around for an idea. Don’t use this to replace spontaneous posting. Stay ready to run with an inspiration, secure in the knowledge that you’ve already done the minimum needed to keep the blog rolling.

Everything is Bloggable:Â When I write for clients I really try to emphasize that they can put anything they wouldn’t mind sharing with the public on my table, including brochures, weird stories, pictures of pets, half-finished prose in point form – all kinds of stuff. The danger is never that your business is too boring to blog about, but that you’ll dismiss what’s going on as uninteresting or not commercial enough for your SEO interests. Give your blogger all marketing material you’ve got floating around. Define what’s allowed to leave the office based on practical concerns, not whether you think it’d be interesting. It’s your blogger’s job to make it interesting.

Check Out the Competition:Â This basic element of marketing is often lost on bloggers. Yeah, blogging is part of the cool, post-marketing “conversation,” but every conversation includes discovering, adopting and redefining the topic. You need to know what everyone else is talking about. I often head over to Seomoz for inspiration. Google your competition and tell your blogger what’s happening. Define your competitors and give your blogger a list so they’ll look this stuff up.

Sometimes It’s Okay to Go Off Topic: Blogging is a social medium – bedrock and grandfather of the social web. That means people want personalities as well as content. The Web is so overstuffed with content it takes empathy to make a difference, and to empathize, you have to feel that there’s a real person there, not a marketing robot. Honestly speaking I could be better at this part, but I always have a backlog of SEO matters to talk about so it’s hard to find the time! As a compromise, you can ease in by adding a bit of eccentricity to on-topic entries (such as the time I linked to cool rayguns to explain how to fix negative search factors). Give a blogger some leeway here so he or she isn’t eventually struck by blogging fatigue due to repetitive writing within an overly rigid agenda.