A blog is great content and SEO tactics that allow websites to build their brand, traffic and reputation. When you regularly update a blog, you have an excellent platform for producing fresh, high-value content.
As of May 2019, approximately 47 billion web pages were indexed on Google. For companies looking to leverage the Internet to find customers, that number can be daunting.
Digital marketing, especially for longer sales cycles, revolves around building engagement. You want to develop a relationship with your page visitors so that they see you as the industry authority and have confidence in what you have to say. Search engines monitor this type of engagement.
A blog is great content and SEO tactics that allow websites to build their brand, traffic and reputation. When you regularly update a blog, you have an excellent platform for producing fresh, high-value content. This will keep visitors on the page, increasing engagement and therefore ranking.
Here’s why the blog is so essential to a content strategy.
1. Fresh Content
Search engines want to provide an optimal user experience for these search queries. To this end, they are looking for fresh, up-to-date content and websites. In algorithmic terms, this is known as Query Deserves Freshness or QDF, where more weight is given to recent content on trendy or cutting edge topics. Typically, search engines interpret recent updates to mean that the page is more relevant and current than a website that hasn’t been updated in months or more and would be a better user experience for its customers.
2. Keyword Targeting and Coverage
Keywords are the core product of search engines. However, these simple words and phrases can be one of the most used SEO tactics. In the past, some companies have excessively placed keywords in content to stay ahead of their competitors. Underdeveloped content can deactivate readers and therefore search engines.
The keywords used correctly will have the following characteristics:
- They will likely be a phrase of several words, enabling the business to focus more precisely on the vocabulary their customers are most likely to use
- They will likely be used only a handful of times throughout the content
- They will only be used with a natural voice
In an era of secure and “not supplied” research, blogs offer you the ideal platform to target various keywords and create appropriate content and context around them. Blogging about your industry and answering questions will allow you to naturally incorporate these words into your content. Blogs also allow you to create pages dedicated to particular keywords and this allows you to develop a page reporting strategy. Search engine traffic to this page probably uses queries related to the keyword around which the blog post was written. This way you can start to understand the queries and keywords even if they are not provided.
3. Increased Pages and a Larger Site
Matt Cutts of Google came out and said that larger sites with more indexed pages do not automatically rank higher in search results. This does not mean, however, that having a larger site has no value. Instead, the value comes from the increased opportunity offered by the pages.
When you run a blog on your site, you will greatly increase the number of pages on your site. With each new page, you will add a new ranking opportunity for a keyword, get PageRank and engage visitors. You will naturally have more links to move people from one page to another around your website, thus improving engagement. You also have more pages of information that other websites can link to, establishing your authority via backlinks. Each page of your website that meets these criteria will increase your ranking in search engines. Think of each page as a new opportunity to try to get higher rankings.
4. Increase Your Backlinks
When you create valuable and reliable content, you can also actively promote links. Readers who appreciate the blog and the range of content it provides will refer to and link to blog articles. Find the resource pages where your site would fit the target audience and consider requesting it. When you have valuable information on a blog, you have several pages that can serve as links for different topics.
In past years, during the heyday of black SEO, it was common for companies to get involved in disreputable backlinking programs. Techniques such as purchasing backlinks and spam forums to post links were common. Google quickly realized that this was hurting its end users and adjusted its algorithms to eliminate these sites. Now bad backlinks are hurting websites, which makes many companies nervous about pursuing them.
Despite the fear, backlinks are still incredibly valuable. Google still regards backlinks as a wonderful demonstration of the authority of a website, believing that a website with many backlinks is highly valued in its field. The change is that he wants to see quality backlinks rather than just quantity. Search engines want to see relevant and useful backlinks. Blogs allow businesses to regularly produce valuable content that answers user questions. This will help you establish your authority in your industry, enticing people to link to your content.
8 Steps to a Successful Blog
Maintaining a steady blog cadence does require resources, budget, and regular management attention. The blog should probably be managed within corporate marketing or content marketing and needs to be coordinated with the PR team and agency. Here are eight tactics to keep in mind.
- Identify valuable keywords with solid query volume
- Define an editorial calendar at least two months ahead
- Create a small pool of writers and editors
- Optimize the blog pages for SEO
- Internally link and cross-reference the blogs
- Provide social sharing links for users
- Cross-promote related blog posts
- Promote blog posts through email and social channels
Blogs provide you with great tools for creating valuable content that search engines and page visitors appreciate. These additional pages not only make your website more complete, they boost SEO and engage your visitors, and help your page better serve your customers.
If developing a regularly updated blog isn’t part of your content marketing strategy for 2015, it’s time to seriously consider getting involved.
Leave A Comment