5 Ways Blogging Can Improve Your SEO
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to improve a website’s search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is critical to every business – unless of course you’re Google, Amazon, Apple, or Craigslist. Since most of us don’t benefit from that type of brand name recognition, we’ve got to work a lot harder to get noticed.
Optimizing your web pages and blog posts makes your website more visible to people when they enter any keywords associated with the products or services you’re offering into search engines – like Google.
Let’s say you have a brand new, beautiful website with all the bells and whistles – huzzah! Now what? You may be thinking that because your new site is live that everyone suddenly knows that you and your company exists and that they know how to find you. It would be great if that’s how it worked, but it’s not quite that simple.
We’ll discuss web page optimization in an upcoming article, but today we’re putting the spotlight on how blogging can improve your search engine page ranking.
1. When it comes to blogging, consistency in posting and offering valued-added content are key.
Ask yourself:
What do your customers need or want from you?
How can you address topics that are important to them?
How can you make it easier for them to use your services or purchase your products?
Answer these questions thoughtfully with the intent of providing content that’s relevant, helpful, and meaningful.
Ok – I know what you’re saying – that’s only about five or six posts worth of content, now what?!? If you need help coming up with content, there’s a great website called Answer the Public where you can enter your topic and the tool generates all the questions people are searching about that topic. Answer the questions that most pertain to your service or product and answer those; it’s really just as easy as that!
2. Having a targeted-keyword is the number one most important thing you can do when you create a blog post.
Determine what keyword phrases are likely to bring in relevant traffic. The type of research you do will depend on your goals for the post. If you’re chasing a timely topic – check out Google Trends or Google Suggest to find keyword phrases. A few things to keep in mind when writing your keyword-targeted post:
- Use your keyword in the title tag. It’s a key signal for search engines.
- When possible, introduce new concepts in each of the blog posts you post.
- Even if you’re doing a video post, you’ll want some text on the page. Use your keyword, and relevant variations on your keyword, in the text.
- Promote your post—on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
3. Write and optimize your post.
Once you know what you want to write about, it’s time to limber up those fingers and write something beneficial for your customers that has substance. Keep creating content tailored to your specific offerings and also share posts that area aligned with your business/brand/service that your customers might find valuable.
4. Think about the substance of your content.
Introduce new concepts in each of the blog posts you put out – keep things interesting and exciting.
- Think about what kind of media would enhance the content experience– there are lots of types of supplementary content you can use to accompany your blog post: Videos, memes, gifs, diagrams, graphs, infographics, quizzes, and calculators are just a few of them!
- Consider what the intent of people searching for the thing you are writing about are looking for – and how can you fulfill their need.
5. Length matters.
The best blog length for SEO in 2021 is 1,760-2,400 words. According to numerous studies over the last ten years, Google’s algorithm prefers more content (over a 1,000 words) as those posts rank better on average. At a minimum, blog posts should have at least 300 words. Having more than 300 words keeps your blog from being considered weak on your website and, therefore, overlooked in the rankings.
Just do it.
Admittedly – and ironically – we have not yet embraced blogging on our own website. It seems to be the one thing that gets put off because we get busy building websites and optimizing rankings for our clients. But, friends, sometimes we gotta do the darn thing – so – here we are and, as we near the end of what can only be considered the craziest year in human existence, we figured – why not? Let’s make consistent blogging a thing in 2021!
Are you in the same boat? Struggling to come with ideas to write about? Wondering if your efforts will pay off? Let’s find out together! This time next year, we’ll do a side-by-side analysis to show how consistent blogging improves our own SEO ranking. Let’s do this!
