Blogs are everywhere on the Internet, and they discuss every topic imaginable. There are the stay-at-home moms that showcase fast and healthy recipes, social explorers who research what events are going on for free or low cost and spread the news among the community, and much, much more. The list goes on and on, but what about those blogs that are there to help boost a business? Your business.
Below, Virtual Market Advantage will go over the benefits of blogging for you and your business, as well as for your customers. Blogging can be a win-win for everyone, if it’s done right. The creation of new, interesting, and quality content is a key component of SEO and getting your business seen on the Internet.
At the most basic level, your website should provide some sort of expert knowledge about your subject matter. Not only does this help you make sure that your website meets Google's quality guidelines, it also helps the people who come across your website or blog trust you and what your business provides. If someone comes across your blog and engages with what you have to say, they’re more likely to click on the links provided in your blog, visit your website, and eventually make a purchase.
The blogs you put out there also allow you to gain Internet real estate on the search engine results pages. This will help you gain additional points with tools like Google, so users can discover your brand more easily. By creating new content relevant to your brand, you are expanding on your keywords. This is great, but you also want to make sure that you map out your keywords, so you know exactly what your blog needs to focus on.
Having a strong hold on certain keywords will do wonders for your visibility online. To improve your keyword usage, you can use such tools as LongTailPro, Keyword Tool, or Search Volume, which help you find those juicy long-tail keywords that people are searching for but companies haven’t taken advantage of yet. If you want more information on long-tail keywords, check out VMA’s blog here.
A good SEO campaign sets up what is known as a “conversion tunnel.” This is a journey that you lead your customers through until they reach you and purchase your product. As the customer enters your SEO tunnel, they may not even realize that they are doing it!
As you write blogs with relevant content and put them out there in the hopes of helping your search engine ranking results, you’re also starting the process of building trust with your customer. You can hook potential customers into your conversion tunnel in a couple of different ways. For example, a viewer might be researching a product and come across a blog you wrote featuring that product. Or they could be looking to solve a problem and you put out a blog that talks about that problem and how your product can help. Now that you’ve gotten their attention with content that’s relevant to their interests and gained some trust, they're more likely to use your company for their purchase than another one.
The basic strategy with blog posts and building your SEO campaign is simple. It’s there to educate and help the consumer right when they’re looking for it, while making sure your brand is front and center while you do that. All organic search campaigns have different impacts on the consumer based on factors such as when they interact with them, what kind of product or service is being offered, and the unique voice of your content creators.
Another way a blog can help your search engine rank is the possibility that your content will end up as a featured snippet and quick answer on Google (the block of text that appears at the top of some Google searches). This is a good thing, because even if your page is not ranking in the number one spot, this snippet can still appear above all other search results. A featured snippet is organically pulled from your on-page content. While it’s still unclear how Google picks these featured snippets, there are several studies that outline how you can improve the chances of your pages appearing and providing industry-specific tips.
You may be chosen as a featured snippet if your pages have a focus on a target query that viewers are searching. This means that your keyword research is important, along with making sure those keywords or phrases are sprinkled throughout your blog. This target query will be the keyword that the snippet will appear for when searched. To try and gain this featured snippet spot, you'll want to look at the Domain Authority of the website that currently holds the featured snippet spot to assess what kinds of keywords you are competing with.
Overall, it’s most important to have high quality, targeted content creation. Good content (particularly blogs) are critical if you want to expand your brand and its presence. Google regularly crawls and indexes sites for rankings, so if you want to build your website to rank better, a blog is a great way to build that presence while still keeping your main website clean and easy to navigate.
Building a blog presence might seem intimidating, but if you sit down and create a good list of blog topics with strong keywords, you can start building your SEO campaign with blogs by posting bi-weekly or even once a month. After you’re comfortable with that, you can start posting more frequently. If you’re still unsure of where to start, check out VMA’s post on getting started with blogging for your business. One major tip for creating post topics is to use a common question that your customers ask you on a daily basis and answer it with a few paragraphs. Easy, right?
Slowly building your online presence with blog posts can move you up the search engine lists and help you develop your brand and business in no time!