Why a blog is important for SEO

Here at Digital Developments we always encourage our clients to include a blog in their new website. There’s a good reason for this, and most clients end up getting one built into their site, however a lot of the time they fail to use it to its capacity. A blog can be a very handy tool in increasing your search engine rankings, and understanding why a blog is important for SEO helps you use it properly.

Hang on… a blog?

A blog (or web log) is basically just a group of articles or news within a website. Each blog article can contain anything from general text to different types of media such as images and video. Once you understand why a blog is important for SEO, it’s easier to see why so many businesses invest the time.

What do I ‘blog’ about?

It depends on the business you’re in, but the general idea of a blog is to create interest in your website and develop a following of users who like to read and share your content. You have complete freedom in what you put in your articles, but generally you want to publish unique content that customers find interesting, useful, and would more than likely share with friends. Some examples of the type of things you can write about are hints and tips about a particular subject relating to your business, news relating to your industry, or internal news relating to your business.

Do you actually want a blog?

There’s no denying the importance of a blog, but the answer to whether you should have one depends entirely on your commitment and your requirements. Blogging is a great way to reach out to your customers, establish your industry expertise, and it’s great for SEO too.

How do you get people to read your blog? Write regularly, write shareable and interesting content, and let people know about it through social media. Keep in mind, you’ll only be able to write useful, interesting content if you enjoy the process of blog writing, or alternatively you can hire a writer who can do it for you.

If you can commit to writing regularly, or have someone do it for you, go for it. An empty blog that hasn’t been updated for months does not look good. In fact, it may seem to your visitors that you’ve gone out of business.

Start small

If you’re not sure, take small steps. Begin by writing a blog post once a month, and take it from there. You could then publish once every fortnight, until you can perhaps publish one blog post every week or more. Every time search engine spiders search for fresh content and find something relevant, they’re going to like it, Google and other search engines love fresh content, and want to deliver the most relevant and latest content to users. When you churn out content regularly around your niche, your website will soon become a relevant resource in that niche.

Be prepared for the long haul

You need to commit yourself for the long term. Slow, steady progress will over time build up and lead to a website rich with useful, interesting and relevant content. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it’s well worth the effort.

How is a blog good for SEO?

There are a number of ways a blog benefits your search engine rankings, but the main reasons are as follows.

Freshness.

This is one of the clearest reasons why a blog is important for SEO, search engines love websites that are constantly changing. Search engines love websites that are constantly changing and developing, since their job is to show the listings that will best benefit the user based on what they search for. A blog allows you to constantly add new and relevant information to your website. A website that never changes will most likely have old, out-of-date content.

A few important notes: your articles must be unique, you can’t just copy text from another website into your articles to keep your site fresh, you will actually get penalised for this. It’s best to make your articles relevant to the industry you’re in, there isn’t much point writing about footy on a website about computers. And one of the most important things is to write articles for the benefit of users, not purely for SEO, don’t write articles just for the sake of writing articles, search engines are smart and know if you’re trying to deceive them.

Social media.

Adding new articles regularly allows for stronger integration with social media. This matters because search engines increasingly use social sharing as a form of crowd validation that content is popular and relevant to users. This also lets you promote your business in a less intrusive manner, most people don’t like the hard sell on social media, and are more likely to click on an article with genuinely handy information than something with a “buy our products now” approach.

Keeping users on your site.

Search engines can track how long users stay on your website and use this data in their rankings. If users don’t stay on a website long, it generally means they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Adding interesting articles, particularly with embedded videos, is a great way to keep users on your website for longer, and a related articles section within each post helps keep them engaged with your blog.Keeping users on your site. Search engines can track how long users stay on your website and use this data in their rankings. If users don’t stay on a website long, it generally means they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Adding interesting articles, particularly with embedded videos, is a great way to keep users on your website for longer, and a related articles section within each post helps keep them engaged with your blog.

A few writing tips worth knowing

Keyword research.

Identify the search terms people use to find the products or services you offer. Create a list of keywords and track how often you use them in your content, and where you stand in the search results for each keyword you target.

Use keywords wisely.

Simply scattering keywords throughout your article can do more harm than good. Use your keyword in the title, in at least one subheading, and in the first 300 words of the article. Any further iterations should be a natural variation of the keyword rather than exact repetition.

Write useful content.

Don’t produce content just for the sake of it. You’re not just writing for Google, you’re writing for people. Seek to deliver genuine value to your readers, is there something you can tell them that no one else has? What insight can you share that isn’t available anywhere else? At the very least, share useful information about your own business. Look at your list of keywords to find topics worth writing about, or consider interviewing experts in your industry for a post.

Don’t ignore the length of your text.

Aim for at least 400 words of content. If you can reach 800 to 1,000 words, even better. In-depth posts of 2,000 words and above tend to get more traction with search engines, the longer the content, generally the more value you’re able to provide to readers, provided it’s genuinely useful throughout rather than padded.

Edit your posts.

Once you’ve finished writing, invest time to edit it properly. Correct typos and spelling errors, steer clear of overly long paragraphs and winding sentences, and if possible, have someone else look over your piece before you publish it.

Structuring your posts

Each post should have a clear structure: an introduction where you introduce the topic, a body that contains your primary message, and a conclusion that summarises the most important points or draws a conclusion.

Headings are great not just for readability but for SEO too. They help search engines understand the main topic of a longer blog post, and help your visitors navigate your articles, use subheadings to lead them, help them glean the page, and understand the structure of your content. Be sure to use keywords in some of your subheadings, but avoid using them in every one, or it makes your text unnatural and difficult to read.

An SEO plugin can help

If you’re on WordPress, a plugin like Yoast SEO is a great choice. It’s free, easy to use, and helps you write SEO-friendly text. Choose your focus keyword, the search phrase you want to be found for, and the plugin checks your text to ensure you’ve used it in the right places. It also helps you create a meta description, analyses your content’s readability, checks for the presence of images and links, and checks your word count and keyword density.

On links: what still works, and what doesn’t

[Updated] Link building used to revolve around swapping links with other site owners or submitting articles to directories purely to gain backlinks. This is now considered a link scheme by Google and can actively harm your rankings rather than help them. What still works is earning links naturally, through genuinely useful content that other relevant, reputable sites want to link to on their own.

When you do get links pointing to your site, avoid making them too generic. If you’re optimising for “web designer,” a link using “web designer Berwick” is more effective than a generic one. Not all of your links need to point to your homepage either, deeper links that point to specific pages on your site, ones that might not be obvious to find through your main navigation, are valuable too. Google favours this kind of natural, varied link profile.

In conclusion

Unfortunately there isn’t a magic button that will shoot you to the top of the Google rankings overnight, it takes hard work and dedication to get onto the first page. This is usually why businesses employ SEO companies, but a blog is a great way to boost your rankings, and best of all, you can do it yourself. 

Hopefully this makes clear why a blog is important for SEO, and why it’s worth the ongoing effort. If this has inspired you to take up business blogging, or you’d like help getting started, get in touch with Digital Developments today.