Blog content can improve your search rankings on Google and Bing organically, which will increase the visibility of your site and get more people clicking through to your most important pages.
Blogging is one of the traditional pillars of content marketing. Since the dawn of digital marketing, blogs and the high-quality written content written within them have enabled companies to consistently generate online traffic and drive sales and revenue that can transform the fortunes of a business.
That’s why 89% of marketers made blogs a cornerstone of their content creation strategies last year, according to research by Content Marketing Institute. With marketing spend set to rise a further 14% in 2021, even more companies will be investing in blogs to make positive things happen. Can you afford to get left behind?
The impact of not publishing a blog
The benefits of blogging are brought into sharp focus when compared against a site that does not regularly publish fresh content. Without blogs, a company is giving up on a huge number of potential visitors. There will be less visibility in search, lower traffic levels, fewer indexed pages, a dearth of internal and external links and a general lack of relevance and authority.
Bill Gates famously noted that “content is king” for good reason. Without it, you will struggle to get the people that matter – new clients and existing customers – to click through to your website, where you can then convert their interest into a sale. Beyond the core sales journey, blogs can also boost interest in your brand and products, help you to differentiate yourself from competitors, and perhaps most importantly, provide insights and value for a target audience.
Outsourcing content creation is the industry norm
If you want to reap the benefits of a well-executed content marketing campaign but are unsure about the internal recruitment and departmental changes required to make it happen, there is a cost-effective solution for you. New research by Semrush shows that 81% of companies are now outsourcing writing to third parties.
You can join that growing number today. Working with a content marketing agency that will oversee all aspects of blog management, from creating targeted briefs to coming up with SEO-optimised copy for your blogs that will improve your search rankings, can eliminate the burden and stress of trying to implement a successful in-house strategy.
How blogs are integral to SEO
A major reason why blogs are a core focus for marketers is their ability to improve organic SEO. While you may think social media is now the main hub for generating interest and awareness online, data from BrightEdge shows traditional SEO leads to a greater than 1,000% uptick in traffic compared to organic social media.
Being on the first page of Google is the place to be. Around half of the searches on the world’s most widely-used search engine end with a user clicking on a result. By publishing blogs, you can put your site front and centre in search by including keywords and terms within them that your customers are using to find products or new information.
Content expert Jayson DeMers adds: “In the same way, as you add more content to your site, more pages from your domain become indexed in search engines. This improves organic search visibility and increases website traffic.”
As you begin to publish more SEO-optimised blogs, you will also build expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T), which is a term that features heavily in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Google wants to rank the best content in search and it uses its algorithm to achieve that aim. Optimising content based on the signals within that algorithm will give you the best chance of higher rankings. Blogs are invaluable for this reason.
Are backlinks important for SEO?
In addition to the immediate SEO benefits of blogging, giving yourself an outlet for informative, engaging content will also enable you to build authority over time. Backlinks play a role in visibility in search as they effectively act as a “vote of confidence” from other sites that your content is trustworthy.
When you earn backlinks from high authority sites, Google recognises that your content is valuable for users, which can lead it to be positioned more prominently in search results. SEOs view external links as a form of “ranking power” for this reason.
You should also include external links in your own blogs. Linking to relevant pages, which is a feature of outreach campaigns managed by agencies, will improve the reputation of your site as you will be including authoritative sources to support many of the claims made in your blogs.
What do I need to include in blogs to drive traffic?
Click-through-rate (CTR) is a metric that tells you how many people are clicking on your pages directly in search results. Higher CTRs are obviously better as you will be driving more traffic to your blog and other web pages. An agency can create your content specifically to increase CTRs. They do this by including optimised titles, tags and meta descriptions.
Acoustic CMO Norman Guadagno also recommends using blogs to explore a “timely event”, with relevant guidance and advice. Because blogs are a form of content marketing, you will need to focus on providing some sort of insight or information that a reader can take with them after reading your blog. While blogging will increase online visibility, you should consider how your content will solve customer’s issues and pain points for it to be relevant and useful.
Another great thing about blogs is that you can update them six months or a year down the line with new insights to maintain their relevance and to capture new readers. You can even spin off blogs into other forms of content, such as videos, and share them on social media. The possibilities are endless.
All of this will add up to better performance in search, which can lay the groundwork for both short-term and long-term success for your business. If you want to create a blog but are not sure where to start, contact us today and we will help.
