Making sure that your company website is optimized for search engines is important, which is why having a significant amount of content that makes your page a worthwhile visit for readers is an absolute must. Creating content on an ongoing basis may seem like a fundamental task when it comes to SEO, but you would be amazed how many sites neglect this aspect of digital marketing. You can supercharge your rankings for long-tail phrases and support your main keywords by regularly uploading fresh content to your blog. Here’s how blogging supports your SEO initiatives.
With all the competition out there, companies managing websites have to consistently update content just to stay relevant. A fun, informative, well-written blog post does a whole lot more than just helping you to rank for pertinent keywords. One – it keeps your readers on the website longer, and if the content is constantly up to date, they’ll keep coming back. If the content is well-researched and useful, they may begin to see the website as an authority in your niche and come back in the future. As a result, you can increase brand awareness with your target audience and reinforce brand loyalty with returning visitors. If the content is relevant, it’ll be shared through visitor’s social media accounts, attracting fresh visitors who can, in turn, become clients, and help foster a sense of community among users of your brand. Another very important factor to consider is that frequent blog posts give search engines fresh content to index, which can result in ranking for new keywords that may lead to increased web traffic and business.
The more competitive and highly searched the keyword is, the harder it is to rank highly in well-used search engines. A solution that’s much easier to accomplish in the short term is by using long tail keywords. According to Host Gator, over half of all searches are for specific terms that are more than four words long, and that’s where long-tail keyword phrases come in. Integrating these into your blog posts can supply a steady stream of organic traffic. Amazon is known to target long tail keywords; with it estimated that the result is a full 57% of their sales.
The proper research is a necessity. Tools like Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner can be a good start, but don’t stop there. Get creative. Be specific. If you’re an accountant, don’t just choose the keyword accountant. Include your specialization, location, and even the demographic you’re targeting with your post. For instance, “Montreal Tax accountant for young professionals.” If you run a pest control service, a keyword like “bugs” won’t be enough, but a specific, long-tail keyword phrase like “bed bug prevention Montreal,” is much more targeted to your specific clientele. Make sure your long tail keyword is relevant and in context to your blog post. If the client is happy and engaged with what they read, you’re more likely to convert them to repeat visitors and customers.
Blog posts provide an excellent opportunity for you to interlink to other pages on your site, which allows you to use the anchor text to give an indication to search engines what the page you’re linking to is about. Interlinking is a tried and true SEO tactic that helps you boost the page authority of your money pages. Additionally, citing relevant and authoritative sources can help enrich your content, making it more valuable in the eyes of search engines. Google, Bing, and all of the other search engines that crawl websites are seeking to rank pages that provide the most valuable information for any given keyword, which is why citing external sources can have an impact on a blog post’s ability to rank. The more valuable information you have, the more likely content creators are to cite your blog, giving your site more credibility, potential backlinks, and an increased presence around the web as an authority.
This credibility or authority is especially important when it comes to Answer Engine Optimization. Google’s algorithm can answer specific questions and queries, pointing them towards pages that have content that has the pertinent information. A blog allows you to craft content that specifically answers some of the more frequently asked questions relating to the service you provide, which in turn establishes your credibility, and allows you to rank higher than the competition when a query is answered. This is specifically tovant with the rise of voice query activated services like Google Home, Siri, Cortana, etc.
Need help with building out your blog or ranking well for competitive terms? Give us a call at 1-800-915-7990 to speak with one of our SEO experts and learn how to get more traffic.