How Do Blogs Help SEO?

You’ve worked hard on your website. Your homepage and service pages are search engine optimized and provide high-quality content. So why isn’t your website bringing in enough visitors? It could be because you don’t have a blog. Do blogs help SEO? Research shows that 77% of people read blogs online, and 61% of online users in the United States have purchased something after reading a blog. This underscores the importance of knowing how to incorporate SEO into your blog posts.

Can Blogging Help SEO?

Yes! Blogging is an essential component of search engine optimization. Blogs help you connect with your audience and search engines alike by providing a free source of helpful information. The video below further connects the dots on blogs and SEO and gives you an overview of modern best practices for professional blogging. 

3 Ways Blogging Supports Your SEO Strategy

Modern search engine algorithms are better than ever at identifying content that is genuinely useful to human readers (and weeding out content that’s not). This is actually a good thing when you consider the following ways in which blogging simultaneously earns you credibility with your customers while helping you rank on the SERPs.

1. SEO Blogs Build Trust

To win the top spots on the SERPs, you must convince both Googlebot and human readers that you are an authority in your industry. To truly see an impact in your SEO from blogging, focus on Google’s E-E-A-T concept, which stands for “experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.” Ensure you are an expert on what you’re writing, double-check your facts and statistics to keep your page authoritative, and never make claims you can’t back up.

As you post more well-written content, you increase your chances of landing on the first page of Google. From there, the more people who click on your website in search engine results pages, the more relevant Google will consider your page about a topic. This is especially true if you create in-depth, interesting blog posts that readers find helpful in answering a specific question. Successful bloggers often have posts of more than 1,000 words, but shorter content can rank if it is well-written and gets right to the point of the topic.

2. SEO Blogs Keep Your Site Relevant

Consistent blogging helps SEO by keeping your site active, allowing you to easily address current events and trending questions in your industry. Google generally favors new and up-to-date content over older items. 

Posting new and original blog content on an ongoing basis also sets you apart from your competitors. When people regularly visit your website for the information they need, it builds brand awareness. It helps to do more than provide information about your products and services. If you want people to feel like they know and trust your brand, provide behind-the-scenes looks, such as how you come up with a certain product, what your employees do, and other unique content.

3. SEO Blogs Drive Engagement

When you have an interesting SEO blog, it drives engagement. People are more willing to comment, share your post on their social media, and engage on your website and social media pages. The more your content is shared on social media, the more likely you are to bring in new people who may become customers. Increased engagement with existing blogs helps create a compounding SEO effect. It increases your site’s authority in the eyes of Google, making it easier to win more top spots on the SERPs over time. 

What Are Google’s Ranking Factors for Blogs?

How can blogging help SEO if you’re not currently getting much traffic? When your blog employs effective SEO techniques, it increases your visibility by raising your ranking in Google’s search engine results pages. Of course, blogs only help SEO when they’re designed with ranking in mind. It is useful to understand what Google uses as ranking factors when creating your blog SEO plan. 

Indexing

Page indexing is a requirement for Google. It is how the search engine finds online content. Indexing allows your page to be retrieved when people search for keywords related to your content. Blogs that aren’t indexed will not help your SEO. 

Indexing can take time but should happen automatically as long as your blog is live and visible to the public. Creating well-formatted blogs that are technically sound helps ensure search engines crawl your website. Improve how often bots crawl your website and index it by adding fresh content to your pages on a regular basis. Creating a blog is an excellent way to do this naturally.

Internal Links

Linking your pages makes it easier for people viewing your website to find the information they’re looking for. Adding a blog provides a space that allows you to link to other pages on your website, such as other blogs you’ve written on the topic or products or services pages. Internal linking also makes it easier for website crawlers to have a clear path to your entire site and determine how information is related. 

Organic Click-Throughs

If you try to add too many keywords to your blogs, Google docks you for stuffing keywords. Instead, focus on one main keyword per blog post and only use it naturally. Keep in mind that related words and phrases, sometimes called semantic keywords, can be used in addition to the original keyword. 

Backlinks

Good SEO means you have other high-ranking pages linking to your website. A good way to create pages that people want to link to is to add a blog and provide relevant content on it. Well-written blog posts that provide education about specific topics are more likely to be linked to than your homepage or products and services pages.

What Is an SEO Strategy for a Blog?

An SEO strategy is the plan you make to give your content the best chance of ranking. Creating an SEO strategy for your blog is essential for improving organic search results. Useful components include making lists of useful keywords, optimizing your blog content, and performing research on your competitors. Search engines update their algorithms frequently, so it is important to receive ongoing education on current best SEO practices.

How Do You Create a Blog SEO Strategy?

SEO strategies can get quite complicated when you consider all of the technical and stylistic aspects involved. Don’t let this stop you from utilizing the power of blogging. An SEO agency can help you create a powerful, in-depth strategy for your site. Alternatively, to get started on your own, follow these basic steps as you add a blog to your website.

Identify Your Target Audience

Blogs help SEO only if they are matched to the proper audience. Determine your target audience to ensure your blog speaks directly to the right people. To do this, consider buyer personas. A buyer persona focuses on customers’ psychographics, demographics, and buying behaviors. Generally, you can create a persona by determining trends in your contacts database, using forms to capture important information, or interviewing or surveying customers to find out what they like and what they would change about your products and services.

Perform Keyword Research

Using the right keywords in high-quality content is the only way your blog can help with SEO. Conduct research to ensure you’re using words and phrases that your customers are searching for. Remember to focus on long-tail keywords to begin with, as these tend to be much less competitive. You can work your way toward ranking for more competitive short-tail keywords over time. If your business depends on local customers, ensure your words and phrases include local SEO that uses city names.

Use Catchy Titles

The right title not only draws the reader in but also employs the keywords that search engine web crawlers use to categorize your website and determine where it should fall on the search engine results pages. The right title will provide an important piece of data, pique curiosity, or ask a question that your readers want the answer to. The title should include both uncommon and common words, provide something powerful, and evoke an emotion.

Ensure Mobile Responsiveness

Do blogs help SEO on mobile devices? More than half of search traffic from the U.S. comes from mobile searches. This means your blog needs to be optimized for mobile responsiveness. Use standard font sizes, include plenty of headings, and write in short paragraphs of roughly two to four sentences to keep things simple for easy mobile reading.

Add a Powerful Call to Action

While your blog should typically be more informational than a sales pitch, it’s still a good idea to add a powerful call to action at the end of each blog post that provides the reader with the next step to take. The right CTA should be relevant to the topic in the blog post and flow well with the rest of the content you write. A CTA should be clear and to the point while providing a hyperlink to a page on your site or a phone number to contact you. Some website owners use buttons or widgets, but these can be overwhelming for some readers, so consider whether they’ll truly add value to your blog.

Include Visual Elements

Readers and search engine crawlers alike prefer blogs that use visual content to help convey their messages. Images and videos are the most common elements used. When people search keywords, they’ll first see images and videos. If you want to be one of the top results, you must create image packs or video snippets that are informative, creative, and original. When writing your blog post, remember to add descriptive text about the visual components. This is important not only for keyword placement but to ensure screen readers for visually impaired people can create a positive experience.

Focus on the Experience of Your Readers

Your readers’ experience is the most important part of your blogging SEO tactics. Ensure your page loads quickly, is easy to read, and has proper formatting. Your content should be clear and comprehensive and provide information that points your readers to a solution to a problem. The organization should include headings and subheadings that allow your readers to scan the page quickly and find the information that is most important to them.

How Often Should You Blog for SEO?

If you want your blogs to help SEO, you must post consistently. Generally, the more blogs you post (within reason), the faster you can start to gain traction on Google. However, don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Posting an excellent blog once a week is preferable to filling your site with spammy, unoriginal, or inaccurate content every day. If it is manageable for you, posting three to four times a week is a great schedule for promoting robust growth.

At BKA content, we recommend posting two blogs each month for maintenance, four to nine blogs each month for growth, and twelve to sixteen blogs each month for aggressive growth. 

Do Blogs Help Local SEO?

Local businesses can also benefit from SEO blogging. The trick is to focus on keywords and topics highly relevant to your specific area. These could contain the name of your hometown or include a discussion of local events, conditions, etc. Geo-specific keywords tend to have a lower volume of searches on Google, but they are also less competitive and more relevant to people interested in your products and services.

Are Blogs Still Relevant for SEO?

Google continually updates its algorithm, leading some people to question if blogs are still helpful to a modern SEO strategy. Blogging is still one of the best tools available for businesses that want to bring in traffic organically. With the emergence of new tools, such as AI writing, it is more important than ever that your content be truly relevant to human readers. Whether you use these tools or not, be sure to create the content mindfully and edit your work. Focus less on getting a keyword into the content a certain number of times and more on keeping your topic focused on the search intent behind the keyword.

Can Blogs Help SEO for Your Website? 

Now that you understand how blogs help SEO, let us do the dirty work. BKA Content provides a wide range of SEO services, including managed writing services, white hat link-building services, and much more. Learn more about our affordable SEO services by getting in touch with us today.