Is a Blog Good For Improving SEO?
Search engine optimisation or SEO can be a difficult concept for businesses to get the hang of. For a start, it’s one of those things where the rules have a habit of changing suddenly. Getting the right balance, however, is important.
One of the time-honoured ways of delivering concrete SEO results is to create a blog. It’s a separate entity outside your main site content and gives you more scope to attract new visitors and, done properly, can help you build a stronger connection with your audience.
A Brief History of SEO
Head back about 10 years and SEO was pretty simple. The more keywords you could put on your page, the more likely you were to get to the top of the search engine rankings. Unfortunately, this led to some fairly unsavoury practices by unscrupulous (and even scrupulous) marketing companies.
Look online nowadays and you’ll still find some pages that have been so stuffed with ‘relevant’ keywords that they are practically non-sensical.
More recently, with developing technology and complex algorithms, ranking factors have put a greater focus on quality content that is designed to inform rather than just attract visitors onto a site through the use of keywords.
The Benefit of New Content and Keyword Choice
Regular blog posting remains the easiest way to add relevant keywords to your website and improve you ranking for them. Current best practice is to choose one keyword or keyword combination for each article, include it in the headline and repeat a few times in the main text.
Google also likes new content so if you blog regularly it can certainly increase your visibility. While focusing on keywords is fine, you should still be looking to create quality content that actually has real value to your audience.
How to Use Your Blog and What to Include
Blogging takes time and effort. That’s why it’s essential to have a content strategy and a good idea of the type of post that your visitors are likely to want to read.
1. Sharing Your Vision
A blog is a great place to expand on your vision and tell potential customers why they should do business with you. This could be about illustrating shared values and goals. For example, if you want to be seen as a sustainable, eco-friendly business, this is the perfect way to highlight your credentials.
2. Providing Useful Information
A blog can also be used to provide extra information. If you have a tech product, you might like to do a tutorial series so that users can get the best out of it. If you run a restaurant, you may want to include recipes so that people can cook at home or provide them with information about how you only source local produce.
3. Building Your Reputation
Your blog is a great tool for showing your audience that you know what you are talking about. Reputation is key in any business so you might want to detail any awards you have received or how you get involved in the local community. Running opinion pieces about new developments are also a good idea.
4. Linking to Social Media
While SEO is important and can have great benefits, you can also use your blog to link on social media and create engagement that way. Build your following on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and have sharing links on your posts so that you are able to reach a wider audience.
5. Make it Entertaining
Finally, while a blog may have a number of technical applications such as improving SEO, it still needs to entertain your audience and be relevant to them. Avoid producing content just for the sake of it and really try to fulfil the needs of your visitors with meaningful and engaging posts.