If you’re a business owner, you’ve likely been told you need to blog. And while there are the obvious reasons for a business to blog, like connecting with your audience and having a platform to communicate with your customers, there are also technical reasons, that typically top SEO companies know of, that can help. We get asked all the time how a blog helps business; how content helps sales, makes the phone ring, and how it helps a business get found online. While a blog does help do these things, and more, a search engine optimization strategy means you’re in it for the long game. Here are five reasons why top SEO companies suggest a blogging strategy, or what we call at our digital marketing agency, a strategy for creating consistent content.
1. Page Indexing
Google and other search engines respond to sites that are adding more pages to index. That signals the fact that the website is active and staying relevant in its industry, which the algorithm can now tell with the use of related synonyms in the post. It shows that the website is adding more digital content, so it will automatically earmark that page for better SEO ranking.
Your website likely has less than ten pages, depending on the services or products your brand offers. You can update these pages every so often to signal search engines that you are updating your site. You can add new pages if your business offers a new service or product. Maybe you add another bio to the About page when you hire someone new. But what is the best way to add new content for search engines to index: create consistent content, or blog.
2. Connecting with the Customer
Reaching your audience is the traditional reason for a blog but still holds true in 2019. When a company writes about their industry, whether that’s about new advancements or how to do something, it helps them connect with their customer. This, in turn, builds trust with the reader which will lead to a higher chance of them buying a product or service from that company.
Get to know your audience. Blogging about what they want to read will help engagement and shares on social media. A good way to find out what they want to learn is by reaching out to ask or by doing keyword research to see what people are searching for.
3. Content Marketing Strategy
A consistently updated blog is a building block for a content marketing strategy. As a business in 2019, you have to be active on social media, and consider email marketing as well. What does your business post on social media or send out in its email newsletters? Product updates? For sure. Brand announcements? Absolutely. But if you want to drive traffic back to your site while staying relevant in the industry and continue to build an audience, digital content in the form of a blog post is one of your best bets.
4. Search Engine Marketing
Another reason to update your blog is to help your SEO ranking. Creating new content will already help your SEO ranking, but if you’re strategic in what you write about, you can also answer users’ questions and help them learn more about your industry. By targeting long-tail inquiries in your SEO strategy (lower search volume with lower competition) you can become a resource for that particular term or phrase. Not only will this help your website traffic overall, but the search algorithms will note the organic traffic coming from your content and your SEO ranking will improve. Higher ranking gives your business a better chance of visibility when it comes to users searching for your product or service. It will, in turn, ignite visibility, which is a great strategy for small businesses.
5. Linking Strategy
A way for search engines to map out your site and connect it to other sites is by linking. Linking to pages within your site, whether they’re service pages, product pages, or even the contact page, will help connect your content to a user and signal search engines to categorize that content. Linking to reputable sources outside of your website will help search engines further organize your content with the rest of the web.
The best way to seamlessly produce a linking strategy on your website is to create consistent content through your blog.
Blog Disclaimer
A blog isn’t meant to sell your product. Linking from your blog to a product you want to sell is a better strategy. But know that the point of content creation isn’t to generate sales. In fact, you probably won’t see direct results for at least several months, and SEO ranking can take at least a year and more for a more complicated SEO strategy. Think of content creation as part of the foundation of a successful business strategy. Your blog is also not a place to necessarily talk about your own product. Relating your product or service to the topic, in general, is a more seamless approach.
Blog Research
According to a 2016 Demand Gen Report, 47% of buyers viewed three to five pieces of content before contacting a company. Creating consistent content can only help your business convert. Plus, those blogs will forever be indexed online, meaning, if done correctly they can always drive traffic when someone searches for the content topic. In fact, according to Hubspot, one in ten blog posts from their customers drives ongoing organic traffic, generating 38% of their all-time traffic. Content can live online forever and if you write valuable blog posts, they can drive traffic to your site for a long time, even longer if you re-publish and update over time. These are what we call compounding posts and they are a valuable piece of marketing.
Top SEO Companies | Savy Agency
We’ve established how important it is for a business to create content. If writing blog posts commands time you cannot afford to lose, that’s where an SEO agency comes in. As one of the top SEO companies in Oregon and California, with locations in Bend and Santa Barbara, Savy can help your business create consistent content. Reach out to learn about our SEO services that go hand in hand with web design, digital marketing, social media, and more. We can help your brand take the first, or the next, step, starting with your online presence.