If you’re not already blogging for your business, why not? When you have a website, blogging is an essential part of it that helps to boost ranking factors, audience engagement, and brand awareness. When people think of blogs, their mind typically tends to wander to subjects such as fashion, beauty, lifestyle, home interiors, food, and gaming. And for some reason, business and marketing don’t tend to crop up on that list. However, when you actually own and manage a business, a blog is a great way to convert consumers into customers. But how? Why is blogging good for SEO?
Blogging + SEO = Online Success
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of it all, first let’s take a look at why all online businesses – no matter how big or small – should have a blog. Not only does it work perfectly hand in hand with SEO, but blogging allows you to:
- Build your network
- Point an interested audience towards your website
- Gain more of an online presence
- Increase brand awareness by putting yourself out there
- Obtain valuable insights into your target market
Your Website Has Fresh Content
Google likes to see a website that is being regularly updated. Now that’s not to say that you should be creating new content every hour of every day, but you don’t want to go neglecting your pride and joy. Publishing blog posts is a natural way for you to update your website, even if you’re only doing it once a week.
Page Numbers are Increased
This is something that’s a little complex. The more pages you have, the more there is to crawl, right? Technically yes, but this isn’t always a good thing. Getting the structure of your website right is essential, as you don’t want the page’s value to be decreased. If you dilute it too much, this may confuse search engines. However, what blogging does is provide crawlers with a better understanding of your content. It also offers you an opportunity to branch out with the search terms you want to be found for as opposed to stuffing them on one page.
Great for Adding Backlinks
If you’re writing a blog for your own website, adding links will be natural. You can add links back to specific products or categories, so it’s great for when you’re wanting to push a certain aspect of your business. You can also invest in guest blogging, which is actually one of the most valuable ways to spread your brand’s message. And if you can get a blog post on a website with a high domain authority and trust score, you’ve hit a real winner. As well as fortifying your backlink profile, guest blogging enables you to:
- Gain instant exposure to targeted traffic
- Expand your personal network
- Stimulate social media shares
- Grow your social media following
- Improve your online authority
- Grow brand awareness
- Generate qualified leads
- Shorten the sales cycle
- Receive feedback from your audience
- Sharpen your content marketing skills
Strategically Placed Search Terms
Each blog post you write offers a new opportunity to play around with keywords. If you already know what search terms convert well for your website, great. If not, then you can always do a bit of research to find out what it is your users are actually searching for. By using your findings strategically within each blog post, you’re sure to see an improvement in your rankings. Remember to avoid keyword stuffing while also getting a nice balance of short and long-tail keywords within your content. Keywords should be used in a range of places on your blog, including:
- Content
- H1
- Page title
- Meta description
- URL
- Images
Be Found Via Images
We previously spoke about how imagery affects your brand, so choosing the right pictures to complement your blog posts is a must. Not only will images make your blog entries more interesting and engaging, but when implemented correctly, they are another way for search engines to find you online. You can name pictures and add alt text to them based on the keywords you want to be found for. Alt tags are used by screen readers so they should describe what’s going on in the image. You shouldn’t spam your images with keyword-heavy phrases, but they are a good place for you to add in additional search terms. Instead, what you should do is use good, high-quality images related to the blog post where you can include the keyword within the alt text.
To enrich your online presence and take complete control of your online identity, blogging is a must. But we get it, sometimes there’s just not enough hours in the day. If you already have a list as long as your arm and are worried you won’t have the time to add blogging into your day-to-day work routine, you may want to consider outsourcing this to a digital marketing agency. Lucky for you, that’s exactly what Colewood are. Visit our main website to find out more about the work we do and get in touch with our qualified marketers to discover how we can assist with your online efforts.
