Blogs.

They’ve been around for quite a while now and have changed quite a bit as they evolved in the content marketing world. You may associate blogs with quirky, homegrown stories and a mother-made recipe, the answer to your shower quandaries, or a quick how-to for your latest project - but that’s not their only superpower. 

Businesses have been using blogs as a part of their marketing strategy since their earliest conception. Their role in the marketing world is vast but two of the key advantages to having a blog on your website are to boost your website SEO (search engine optimization) and overall business visibility (with an effective content strategy). In fact, blogs are used by 86% of content marketers as a part of their overall marketing strategy. (SemRush, 2019) 

Keyword search

SEO implies that we focus on how a computer finds your content within the confines of their coded algorithm but that’s not the full story. Don’t forget that Google searches for your content based upon the input of another human AND that, once the results are displayed, that same human needs to select your content over all of the other options delivered by the computer. What this means is that the search engine that we are hoping to optimize your keywords for includes humans and bots, alike! 

Keywords are vocabulary commonly searched for and selected by people around the world using the internet. When you choose and implement a good keyword then your content is more likely to be searched for by a person, displayed by an internet search site (Google, etc.) and selected by the searching human. Your keyword search should include statistics from algorithm-friendly software as well as emotionally intelligent and intuitive human connection. These words can then be placed strategically throughout your blog and in the coding tags to optimize the chances of your content being selected for consumption.

Update your website

Boosting your SEO rankings for search engines (human and bot alike) is about relevancy as much as it’s about searchability. What this means is that the more people go to your website, to read your blog or otherwise, the more likely others will do the same. Search engines see the engagement and boost your ranking. (more about driving traffic later)

No one - not even Google - wants to visit an old, out-of-date website that hasn’t been updated for way too long. 

If you ignore your website, so will everyone else. 

Give it some love.

Updating your website is like waving a big neon flag at google, telling them that your still there, spreading value, and ready to serve - but how many times can you rewrite your about page? This is where blogs come in. Every time you post a new blog to your website it functions in the same way as a full update. You are active and relevant in the eyes of search engines. 

Content Strategy

As noted above, you can use blogs as a part of your SEO with regard to relevancy and engagement by driving traffic to your website using a solid content strategy. A whopping 97% of bloggers use social media to promote their blog posts. (Statista, 2020) Blogs give an extremely valuable resource of materials for sharing to social media through content repurposing and the content strategy that supports SEO doesn’t end there.

Once your audience has arrived at your website and begun perusing your content there, you can optimize your website further by creating a content web within and between your blog posts. By linking topics thematically and allowing visitors to travel to the content they desire, you have begun creating a web of materials that establishes you as the authority in your field. You can track the most visited posts and stimulate discussions in a comments section to track the analytics of your content and learn more about your ideal client. This encourages those patrons to use your business name in their search queries which contributes to the SEO of not only your website but your brand as a whole. 

Your business visibility can be expanded exponentially through the use of an established blog that you contribute to on a consistent basis. Your blog can be extended and refined to drive traffic to your website with a solid content strategy; you can better understand the needs of your ideal client through analytics and market research; nevermind the SEO success as you strategize your word choices so as to appeal to search engines of all kinds thereby keeping you top of mind on the world wide web. It’s no wonder that blogs are such an efficient and desirable marketing tool for businesses around the world.