When trying to get found on Google, businesses might turn to blogging in order to improve their organic search ranking.
But is blogging the right direction? Yes… and no. The answer is dependent on how much time your business actually has to dedicate to producing high-quality, industry-relevant content.
While blogging isn’t a ranking factor in itself, it can be used to help your SEO. However, if you have a blog for the sake of it; you forget to update it or post content that isn’t relevant to your audience, this can negatively impact your ranking on SERPs.
If you’ve got the resources and the expertise to implement blogging into your business’ content marketing strategy then fantastic! Blogging has a whole host of benefits which will ultimately boost your ranking in search engines. In fact, Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, indicated that high-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search - frequent blogging will help you with both of these!
Fresh Content
You’ve probably heard the word on the street… Google loves fresh content. There are not many pages on your current website that you would update on a regular basis, which is why a blog is a great way to post new content that can be indexed by search engines.
Not only do blogs excite search engines, but they can also be used to excite your customers. On the other hand, if you neglect your blog, website visitors may question your credibility and trustworthiness based on outdated or irrelevant content. You’ve made a great choice by reading Thrive’s blog, however, it could be a different story if we didn’t put our heart and soul into creating great content that our readers want. For example, If you came across the blog post, ‘10 Reasons Why Google+ is the Best Social Media Platform’ on our website, we wouldn’t blame you for bouncing.
Why? Google shut down Google+ as of April 2019 - it can’t be the best social media platform if it doesn’t exist anymore!
Dwell Time
If a visitor likes your website and finds it helpful, they’re more likely to spend more time there, and ‘dwell’ on it. Dwell time is based on bounce rate and time-on-site metrics which search engines use to measure how long it takes for someone to return back to the results page after clicking on a website.
Ideally, the more content on your website, by introducing new and topical blogs, the higher the chance someone will click through from search results. By making sure each blog is informative and useful, visitors will click and stay for longer which Google will remember for future rankings.
Long-Tail Keywords
Did you know that 56% of buyers’ search queries use three or more words? Each business’ SEO strategy should be able to differentiate several important long-tail keywords that are relevant to their industry and that their audience will be actively searching for.
Although primarily used for PPC campaigns, Google’s Keywords Planner can be helpful for keyword research if you’re struggling to define long-tail keywords. Look into your search terms, taking into account their search volume and competition level. The higher the search volume and the lower the competition, the easier it’ll be for your business to rank for that term.
Optimising your blogs using long-tail keywords is a great way to improve your organic search engine ranking. Think about scattering keywords into your URL, meta description, headings and image alt text to boost your blog and increase page views.
Links
Producing a regular blog also gives you an opportunity for internal links. By creating more and more content for your website, the more likely you’ll be able to naturally link back to previous, relevant blogs. This will give Google a better idea of the type of content on each page which will strengthen their connection to the keywords you wish to rank for.
Your business will also be more likely to be considered for inbound links if your blog is recognised for its subject matter and insight. Other websites may wish to quote or reference your blog meaning other sites will link back to you. HubSpot has found that companies with a blog earn up to 97% more inbound links.
So now that you understand the importance of blogs for SEO, how can you actually optimise your content? Yoast is a WordPress SEO plugin that will help you focus on keyword optimisation so that search engines will love your blogs as much as your readers. You can even purchase Yoast SEO Premium to get ranking tips such as internal linking suggestions, content insights and much more.
Although blogging is great in terms of search engine ranking, you should primarily be writing for your audience, creating informative content that will engage and delight them. At the end of the day, people will buy from you, not search engines.
