Do a search for ‘Milton Keynes copywriter’, and RLC Words is top of Google search results under the paid ads and job vacancies – and I’m so proud. When I launched my website, you had to click through eight whole pages of results before you got to me. And the secret of this success is most definitely blogging – because that is what has driven the most people to my site over the years.

Out of the 195 blog posts I have published on my website (to date), these are my best-performing blog posts of all time – and they make for surprising reading:

3: My Love Letter to MK – 1.2k views

2: Apocalypse Now: Our Drive-Through Covid Test – 1.5k views

1: Where Did Jack Frost Come From? – 3k views

You may well notice that they have nothing to do with my business – and that’s true. But they all fit in with my ‘Three Pillars’, and their exceptional performance has contributed to boosting my website’s SEO overall – and I’m very excited to report that I am consistently on Page 1 of the search results on Google when you look for ‘Milton Keynes copywriter’.

Here’s a little background about each post – which will hopefully give you some ideas for doing the same on your blog to get similar results for your business too…

In at Number 3: My Love Letter to MK

Read the post: My Love Letter to Milton Keynes

Content Pillar: Milton Keynes

I created this post in July 2019, which marked the five year anniversary of our move to the area. I listed out the attributes of this fair city that we’d fallen in love with – and how many of these realities were quite different to the dark warnings we’d had from people before we moved. (People, incidentally, who’d never set foot in MK themselves.)

I shared the post in all the usual places, and it did unusually well on my social media – it’s a topic that people enjoy if they know an area, and also tempts them to click to see if they agree. So in itself, it was set to be a strong performer for me.

I also decided to try an experiment on Twitter (as it was in the happy old days). I tagged in a few local organisations I thought would find it interesting, and was delighted that Destination MK not only commented, but shared my post too – bumping its reach and clicks much higher!

What I learned: local interest posts that intrigue (or could be controversial) are a good draw for readers – and it’s always worth a try to see if you can get larger local organisations to pick it up and share it!

At Number 2: Apocalypse Now

Read the post: Apocalypse Now: Our Drive-Through Covid Test

Content Pillars: Family and Milton Keynes

This somewhat dramatically-titled post was completely unplanned, and I created it after our first drive-through Covid test experience at one of the Milton Keynes test centres. The title does give me a slight cringe now, but looking back, everything felt a bit like that at the time – and I’d never experienced anything like it before.

It was June 2020, and we’d avoided the need for a drive-through test up to that point; in fact, the four of us were fortunate enough to have been cocooned in a home-working, home-schooling bubble for the whole pandemic, and were quite unversed in the arrangements for confronting potential Covid-carriers in person, as the test centre staff had to do every day. What struck me most was not the suits, the regulation and the whole bizarre process – but the kindness and care that the staff still managed to put into these most peculiar interactions. And I wanted to share that with the world – so I did.

It rocketed immediately that week to over 1000 views – and the icing on the cake was that it was found and shared by the local BBC network too!

What I learned: off-the-cuff posts that respond to a major event or experience can be very effective – especially if you can tap into something that’s at the top of many people’s minds. Don’t forget to hashtag on social media – you never know who might pick it up!

Top of the Posts at Number 1: Where Did Jack Come From?

Read the post: Where Did Jack Come From?

Content Pillars: Family and Writing

If you’ve done any of my blog challenges, you’ll know about this little chap and what he’s done for my website’s SEO. Currently sitting at a staggering 3000 views, my post on the origin of the Jack Frost legend is by far my best performing post – although it didn’t show any signs of that in the beginning.

I wrote this in February 2020 after a hard frost, and a wonder that crossed my mind about where the notion of Jack Frost may have originated. I was doing a post a week back then, and I had some gaps to fill in my schedule – so this little family / literature interest piece seemed like a good idea. There wasn’t much out there on the web when I started researching, but I put enough together for a decent post and some conclusions.

When I shared it, it wasn’t one of my most popular posts initially – and that’s fine. Jack’s purpose was to be part of my regular posting habit, and I’d enjoyed writing it, so that ticked most of my boxes. But a few weeks later, the clicks started to rack up – and they were mostly from the United States. Curious, but this pattern continued – and I soon realised that the lack of origin information out there was suddenly working in my favour. Google had begun to show my post in the search results, and the more clicks it got, the higher up the rankings it went – and the more clicks it got.

But my biggest surprise came when I saw that many of the clicks were coming from a Wikipedia page – the very one I’d used in my research. And when I visited it again, I discovered that my post was now listed as a citation at the bottom of the article!

What I learned: it’s hard to predict, but you never know what gap in the information market your post could be plugging. Get your keyphrase right, and you could get yourself a post that just keeps on performing, and racking up the clicks to your site overall.

It’s not about the topic – it’s the traffic

These posts have nothing to do with what I do as a business – copywriting to get other businesses heard and understood. But their performance has been one of the biggest factors in my website’s SEO – the thousands of visitors they’ve driven to my website have raised its profile with Google and shown it to be a site worth seeing. And now, I’m the top result in Google searches for ‘Milton Keynes Copywriter’ (under the sponsored ads and vacancies, at least!).

So the moral of the tale is that your blog can boost how you are found – even if the posts aren’t always about what you do.

OK…Ideas for You?

Let’s get the creative juices flowing and find you some brand new inspiration! You can book a Blog Blast with me to do that 1:1 – or you can come along to my next masterclass, where I’ll be joined by Sarah Wood of Small Business Web Support. We’ll be talking about new ideas for topics, local keyphrases and backlinks that can all do wonders for your SEO – and how it will benefit your website overall. It’s on Tuesday 9 April 2024 at 10am, live and online – free for my Writing Club members, and £25 for non-members. Tickets below….