Why blog? An SEO perspective

Are you missing out by not having a company blog or keeping it up to date on a regular basis?

For companies that strive to keep up with their competition and take the reins within their industry, getting behind the idea of blogging is something that can be incredibly beneficial in the long run. This blog will talk you through why blogging is a great tactic for businesses and websites of all sizes, that will deliver towards your SEO objectives overall.

Understanding the purpose of your blog

Businesses today use their blog or content hub to deliver ongoing content, whether that be through news, how to guides, informational or entertaining write ups. The beauty of your blog is that the content can vary depending on its purpose and content pillars that make up your overall blog strategy.

However, now with more brands jumping on board the blog-wagon, it’s now more important than ever to understand your objectives of each and every post in order to start moving the dial on your SEO efforts. Blog posts are ultimately there to assist discovery – i.e. raise the awareness of your brand in a non-commerical way in order to draw the customer in, whether new or returning. Understanding a clear strategy for your blog is paramount and writing to your audience’s search needs and pain points in order to position yourself as an industry leader within the field and keep your audience coming back for more information is key. 

Why blog?

Before we move on to the SEO benefits of blogging, it is first important to look at what it can generally do to your website, your business and your brand name. The main three benefits of having a blog section on your company’s site is that:

• You position yourself as an industry expert
• You give readers a reason to return to your site
• You get a chance to give your company more of a voice

Positioning Yourself as an Industry Expert: If you have a blog, you have the opportunity to keep your customers and readers up to date with the latest industry knowledge. By doing this, you prove that you are up to date with all the knowledge within your chosen industry, proving that you are experts in this field. Naturally, customers will have more trust in experts and they will head to your site in future if they have any questions they need to answer.

Give Your Readers a Reason to Return to Your Site: Blogs can be about anything, literally. So whether or not you are covering news, additional information about your products, answering various questions and “how to” articles, these are all ways to engage your reader and draw them back in. If you can make an entertaining blog, then there is another reason for people to visit your site, on top of the services your website provides.

Give Your Company a Voice: Regularly posting blogs allows you to create a voice. If your main website already has a tone of voice, this is an opportunity to expand on that, giving your readers an understanding of your company, companies culture and your personality.

Blogging for SEO

Optimising your website for search engines has become one of the most important aspects of running a website in recent years. To put it simply, if you don’t get found, you don’t make it big. So getting noticed by ranking higher in the SERPs is incredibly important. The main benefits of blog posting for your SEO are the following :

• Regular Fresh Content
• Creates Backlinks
• Drives Traffic to Your Site
• Uses More Keywords

Regular Fresh Content: The more your website is updated and the more content on your site, the more Google considers your site a valuable source of information. Ranking factors can be influenced by the amount of information you post and how relevant it is to your audience, so blog posts are a great way to continue producing fresh content that is relevant to your site.

Creates Backlinks: This is an incredibly important aspect of getting your website to rank higher and blog posts often prove the best way to gain backlinks. Backlinks indicate to Google that you are the authority on a given topic, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it; if others mention you every time a topic comes up, you must be important within that field. Blog posts that are engaging and useful naturally attract others to link to you, making your site a more credible source.

Driving Traffic to Your Site: Simply put, if you start to gain an audience through your blog posts, your traffic will grow! The more visitors you get, the more important your site must be therefore the higher up the search results you’ll climb. Of course, it takes some hard work and good writing to gain an audience for your blog post but if you do, your website will flourish.

Using More Keywords: If you have started to do even a small amount of research around SEO, you will know the importance of keywords. Keywords indicate relevancy and the topic of your page, as well as targeting the way in which people search for your website. Having a blog post allows you to add more keywords to your site and even expand on these.

To conclude, if you don’t already have a blog section on your website… add one! If you don’t post regularly on your blog pages… start to! The benefits are noticeable and it can have an incredibly positive impact on the long term success of your website. Over time blogs can help to make a genuine relationship with your customers and build their trust. Not only will this have a positive impact on your SEO but this will convert to more traffic, conversions and ultimately, business!

If you’re in need of some assistance in writing your company blog, then do get in touch where our content experts would be happy to chat through your requirements.