How to Utilize Blogs to Enhance Your SEO Strategy
It seems like everyone nowadays has a blog.
Whether it’s a local business, the never-ending trail of social media influencers, or even your neighbor down the street; the latest marketing trend is taking pen to paper (or better yet, fingertips to keyboard) and designing a lengthy blog post that someone (hopefully…anyone!) will read.
But… how can you as a business owner justify the amount of time it takes to think up a creative topic, research, and execute an enticing blog post that someone “might” see? What is this really doing for you, and how can you truly benefit from it?
The answer: blogging has the opportunity to enhance your overall SEO strategy, your online presence and yourself as a business in the eyes of a consumer. And here’s how:
Just Having A Blog Isn’t Going To Cut It
Let’s start off by agreeing that having a company blog is great; it makes your website look more appealing to your consumers, and showcases the true personality of your business to potential customers. However, it can be used for much, much more. Utilizing blogs will not only accomplish these goals, but it will also help your overall SEO strategy.
The goal at the end of the day is to be there when someone is searching for your product or service. Just having a blog alone isn’t going to help you rank on search engines. But, having a blog that is updated frequently and appeals to the audience you are aiming to target, you will increase your digital footprint and help your website rank organically on search engines.
Google’s mission is to provide relevant content to users when they are searching for it. If your blog is stale, and hasn’t been updated since 2015, the information that you do have listed probably isn’t relevant anymore… meaning Google isn’t going to show it to anyone.
You should aim to have a blog that offers new content regularly and establishes unique, interesting information that is used to educate and help your audience during their journey through the buying cycle. This is the kind of content Google loves and will put in front of the audience you are aiming to target.
Blogging Drives Users to Your Website & Keeps Them There
Think of the Internet as one big spider’s web; when it comes to SEO, it’s important to create enough “strands” to drive users back to your website. This is known as external linking, and your blog posts will help create these outbound links through the Internet. The goal is to use your original content to lead consumers back to your website in the hopes that they convert to frequent website visitors and eventually, customers.
For example, let’s say a user searches for “Tips For Traveling To Australia” and lands on your website. They then spend a significant amount of time reading your blog post, going through other recent articles, checking out your service listings, and getting to know you as a business. This increases the time spent on your website, increases the consumer knowledge of your business and helps achieve the goal of getting users to stay on your site for longer periods of time. This checks off yet another item of Google’s ever-changing list and gives you more of a chance of ranking organically.
Blogging Helps You Rank For The Keywords You’re Striving to Rank For
Blogging gives you the opportunity to include keywords that you are trying to rank for, but don’t necessarily have listed all throughout your site. Before you even begin to brainstorm a topic for your blog post, it’s important to do keyword research and really think about the keywords you want your website to rank for.
For example, if you sell hiking gear, you most likely want to appear when someone searches “hiking gear.” However, this is an extremely competitive keyword and other, bigger companies have just the same strategy as you do!
So, focusing on long tail keywords such as “hiking gear for Australia” or “hiking gear for the heat” will give you the opportunity to rank because the keywords are less competitive. This also gives you creative freedom to design content around what you are trying to rank for. For example, if I was aiming to rank for “hiking gear for the heat” I could write a blog about “What to use while hiking in the heat.” This is original content that is helpful information for my consumer, and includes the focus keywords I want to rank for.
Your blog post gives you the canvas to paint yourself as the expert in your field. You have the platform to educate the masses and turn them into lifelong customers. By implementing a blog that is updated frequently, drives users to your website, and incorporates strong, effective keywords, you have the ability to be found organically when someone is searching for your product or service. And that’s the Bottom Line.