Having a blog on your website can help your chances of ranking high in search engine results. When properly optimized and utilized, a blog can boost your site’s SEO quality and position your website (an ultimately your company) as the go-to resource for your customers.
Does Blogging Help Search Engine Rankings?
Simply having a blog isn’t going to help your rankings. The blog itself isn’t a ranking factor, but a regularly updated blog that contains high-quality, relevant blog posts will help with several things that are important to rankings. So, yes. Having a blog can make a huge difference to how your website ranks. Here are a few ways having a blog can improve SEO and help your website’s search engine rankings.
Fresh & Current Content
Google is top dog when it comes to search engines because it’s built a reputation for delivering the best, most relevant results to its users. It doesn’t want to give its searchers outdated information. A regularly updated website signals fresh, current content and gives search engines a reason to crawl and index the site more often, giving it a better chance of being ranked for targeted keywords.
Fresh and current content isn’t only a signal to Google that your website is relevant, it’s a signal to the users as well. If they notice old or outdated information on your site, they may continue their search elsewhere and begin to lose trust in your company.
So rather than confusing regular visitors with a constantly changing homepage, adding a blog is a practical way to regularly update your website and add new content.
Longer Time Spent on Site
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave quickly after viewing only one page. This is a measurement search engines use to determine the relevance a particular site has for a search query. If everyone quickly bounces from your site without clicking through to other pages or spending any time on it only to return to the search results and try another link, Google and the other search engines will take this to mean that your site isn’t particularly helpful for those keywords. Overtime, your site may stop displaying for those search results.
However, if someone clicks on a result and stays on the website for a while, that is a signal that this website is helpful. So, to help with search engine rankings, you want to give visitors a reason to stick around on your website for a while. One way you can do that is with long, comprehensive blog posts that are helpful and relevant to your visitors. If they are interesting, well-written and helpful, the visitors will stick around to read them and they may even end up clicking around to read more.
Target Long-Tail Keywords
SEO is extremely competitive and PPC for generic, short keyword phrases can get expensive. The best way around this, unless you happen to be biggest and best-know company in your business category is to focus on more specific, longer keyword phrases. These are often the keywords searcher use when they are closer to making a purchase as well, since they’ve likely already done most of their research and now know more specifically what it is they are looking for.
These are referred to as long-tail keywords, search terms that make up four or more keywords. It can be difficult or awkward to cram long-tail keywords in the SEO for your homepage or product and services pages, but they can be the perfect kind of terms to use for a blog post. They don’t get as much search volume, but if you can optimize for some of these longer keyword phrases, you’re sure to get way more search volume than you would if you only target broader more popular terms.
Internal Link Building
An internal link is a link on a web page that points to another page on the same website. Failing to include internal links on your site is one of the simplest SEO mistakes you can make. Internal linking allows search engines (and users) to easily navigate a website and using strategic anchor text will help the search engines understand what the page is about and allow for better search engine rankings.
But you don’t want to over do the links. The most important thing is that in not interfere with the user experience. So, there’s a limited linking ability from your main pages, but once you begin regularly publishing relevant blog post, you will create natural opportunities for more link building.
External Link Building
Other websites linking back to your site is an important ranking factor that Google uses to determine if your site is trustworthy and authoritative. But building these links can be one of the hardest parts of SEO. There was a time when you could purchase links to your site, but that outdated SEO trick can get you in serious trouble these days.
One way you can increase the likelihood of having an external website link to yours is by providing high-quality blog content.
Connect with your Audience
Having a dedicated audience that really appreciates your business and the content you publish isn’t a direct ranking factor for search engines, but it great for your business and it can contribute to your site’s search engine rankings.
When you have a dedicated audience, they are more likely to share your blog posts and other information about your company, products, or services with their friends or via social media, ultimately driving more traffic to your site. A dedicated audience is also more likely to return to your site looking for more of that great content. They may even sign up to receive emails from you. Lots of traffic and repeat visitors is one more way you can show Google that your website is useful and increase its rankings. And relevant blog posts are a great way to build those connections and create a dedicated audience.
Improve Your Site’s SEO with a Blog
If you are looking to increase your website’s SEO with a blog but don’t have the time or resources to create your own content, contact Legit Click Media today. Our blog content writing services will help you increase exposure, build brand awareness, and establish your company as an industry leader. Give us a call at 414-465-2285 or contact us online today and ask about our SEO blog services.
