Now, you’ve often heard the term ‘SEO’ being thrown about a lot when it comes to websites and marketing, and you probably know that it’s important… but what on earth actually is it?
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation. This simply means the steps you can take to try and boost the amount of traffic to your website, and the easiest way to do that is to creep up that first page of Google. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! There are millions of websites out there, so adding in a few keywords isn’t going to automatically get you front and centre straight away, especially if you’re only a new, small business with lots of established competitors. Boosting the amount of traffic to your website is a long process, but there are plenty of ways you can start to improve your SEO, and one of these is blogging.
But Aren’t Blogs Just for Influencers?
It might take you by surprise that all businesses, regardless of their industry, should have a blog. Not only that, but it should also be updated frequently. We always think of blogs as being something only those YouTube beauty gurus or travel inspo influencers use, but this isn’t the case. Blogging is essential for SEO, in fact, if you blog 15 times a month, your website will see an increase of around 5 times the visitors! Now that’s an awful lot of blogging and unless that’s your business, once or twice a month is perfectly adequate and will still make a difference.
Keep It Looking Pretty
Building trust plays a huge role in generating a sale, and ensuring your website is continually up to date is an easy way to start earning it. No one wants to see information that’s three years old on a website. This might mean it’s providing you with incorrect information, or that the company may even have gone out of business. The fresher the content on a website, the more we trust it, no questions asked.
Google also trusts it more when websites are regularly updated. The search engine wants to provide its users with relevant and recent information, not outdated, incorrect content. Therefore, by publishing a blog post every now and then, you’re showing Google that your website is alive and providing people with the latest info. It’s also much easier to write up and post a new blog each month than it is to change your homepage, and it keeps your site exciting for visitors, which is likely to lead to them returning each month to read your newest article.
Time is of the Essence
When it comes to Google, it wants to provide people with accurate information as quickly as possible. If a website at the top of the first page is visited and closed within a few seconds on a regular basis, this is telling Google that the site isn’t providing the right information. Getting people to stay on your website for as long as possible is one of the keys to successful SEO.
By producing a monthly blog post, the chances of people not only staying on your website longer, but also revisiting the page, are increased. This will start to tell Google that your site is giving people the information they are searching for, thus you might start to see it ranking higher and higher. It seems longer blogs are more successful at getting people to stay on your website, but you need to make sure they are informative, engaging and exciting so people want to read the entire post.
It’s All About Specifics
The keyword convo is one that us marketers have sat through one too many times. Yes, keywords are vital when it comes to SEO, but when you’re a new startup with huge rivals, expecting to rank high for the most relevant words for your business is a little over-optimistic. What you need to do instead, is focus on what we call long-tail keywords. These are the longer phrases specific to your business that people search for, rather than the most relevant.
Most searches are over four words long, but using long phrases can be a little tricky to insert into your homepage or product and services descriptions. Blogs are a great way to include these and attract traffic from, yes, a smaller audience, but from people that are definitely interested in what your business has to offer them.
An example of the difference between highly relevant keywords and long-tail keywords could be for an insulated water bottle company. Sure, you sell ‘water bottles’ and ‘insulated bottles,’ but so does Chilly’s, Ocean Bottle and even Amazon. Expecting to rank anywhere near these giants of the industry would be madness! Instead, embedding phrases such as ‘the best way to keep your water cool’ or ‘colourful metal insulated water bottles’ in your blog posts would probably increase your chances of your website ranking highly when people search for those extra specific phrases.
One Link, Two Link, Three Link… More!
Google loves a good link. If it sees your website has lots of trustworthy links, the search engine will want to get your website ranking higher. Blogging is a fantastic way to create internal links; this means linking one page of your website to another. In fact, this is one of the easiest ways to boost your SEO, but bizarrely it’s often overlooked.
Using the example of an insulated water bottle company again, you could publish a blog post about sustainability. Within that blog, there’s a multitude of opportunities to create internal links. You could link to your ‘About Us’ page, you’ll probably have an ‘Environment’ page, and you can even link to certain products or previous blog posts. All of these internal links will help you to improve your SEO and get you ranking higher on Google, but are tricky to create without having a frequently updated blog.
From You to Me
We’ve discussed internal links, but how about external links? These are just as, if not even more important! The way to get Google to trust your website is to have backlinks to your website from reliable sources – nothing dodgy please! Having a blog makes it a lot easier to start seeing these backlinks build up.
With that said, you need to make sure your blog posts are informative and valuable as well as interesting to read. This makes it more likely for other websites to choose to link back to your page. It’s not impossible to create backlinks without a blog, but research shows that you could earn up to 97% more external links to your website through blogging! People would rather end up on your blog than on your homepage, but you need to make them want to go there in the first place. It might take a little while to write the perfect post, but it will be worth it.
Share the Love
Getting people to engage with, revisit and share your website is a key step when it comes to SEO. It also shows Google that people want to visit your website, which will start to increase your ranking. Forming connections with potential customers through blog posts is so important when it comes to SEO and building up that trust with Google. Plus you’ll start seeing organic growth in website visitors through their shares with friends and family which could lead to sales without that top spot on Google!
Having a good blog with regular posts that are interesting, enriching and easy to read will make people want more. They’ll be back in no time to read your next post, and they might even decide to share it if it’s really good. Then their pal might decide to read it after clicking the link shared on Facebook and choose to sign up to your newsletter so they can be notified the next time you post.
Now It’s Your Turn
We’ve covered just about everything you need to know when it comes to the relationship between blogging and SEO, and hopefully, you can see how crucial those frequent posts are. Take your time when it comes to writing posts, and try to include those internal links where you can. Let your website visitors know when you make a post so they can share it, and start to see your place on the first page of Google enter your reach.
Need a Hand?
We know that writing up lots of blogs can be time consuming, and ensuring they’re rich with your keywords is tricky. Our team have lots of experience with writing successful blog posts, and we offer services to help you out. Simply get in touch to find out more, and follow our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to be the first to know about our future blogs, and for any marketing tips and tricks we might post!
