Blogging: How does blogging help your SEO?

To put it simply, yes, blogging helps improve your search engine optimisation. SEO is very important because it helps increase website visibility without costing the business anything. This means that their target audience can find their website quickly if the business has optimised their website correctly. One of the ways businesses can improve their SEO is the act of blogging. Below are the ways in which blogging improves SEO.

Blogging gives your audience the information they’re looking for.

First of all, blogging helps you connect with your target audience by providing them with the information they are looking for. When your audience reads a post that is relevant to them, they’re more likely to share it on social media, which will drive more traffic to your website, and therefore, improve your SEO. Also, when people enjoy a piece of content, they are more likely to return to your website and read more of your blogs, increasing your traffic and again, improving your SEO.

However, this will only work if you ensure that you’re writing interesting and informative content that is going to teach, entertain or inform. For example, if your target audience is a builder but you’re writing an article about working from home, your audience is not going to be interested. But, if you write an article about “how to keep warm when you're working outside in January", this may catch their attention. The point is, make sure you know the wants and needs of your target audience before you start writing.

Blogging keeps your website fresh and up-to-date

Google's aim is to keep getting people to use their search engine to find out information. In order to do this, they need to ensure they’re giving people the best possible results.

Therefore, they want to give people the most relevant, fresh, and up-to-date content. This means that websites that update and add relevant content to their website on a regular basis will be favoured over those that don’t update their content for years.

Now, unless you develop new services constantly or change what products you provide, there is no reason people need to update their pages all the time. Having a blog or news page on your website is an easy way to ensure your updating/adding content to your website on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.

Blogging helps target long-tail keywords

When people start out they want to aim to target the most relevant keywords. For example, a gym wear business will want to show up on the first page of Google for the term ‘Active Wear’. However, unless you are one of the most popular businesses in your industry, it is unlikely you are going to appear on the first page for these popular short keywords.

It will be easier for most companies to target long-tail keywords that are more specific. Trying to fit long-tail keywords in your home page and services page can be tricky. Blogging can help you do this.

Blogging improves visitors time on page

Google's goal is to provide people with the information that they’re looking for. When users are spending a small amount of time on a website, Google will assume that the website is not providing information that is worth seeing. Therefore, they are less likely to show your website to users who are searching for the information you’re providing.

Blogging can increase your visitor's time on your website. Blogs usually take longer to read than the other pages on a website (as long as your blogs are worth reading!). This means that Google will start to see your page as something that is worth reading and therefore, you’re more likely to show up on the first few pages of Google.

Blogging provides more opportunities for internal linking

A bit part of SEO is links, and the easiest links you can get are internal links (since you create them yourself), especially if you’re just starting out. You may be able to use internal linking on the other pages of your website, but blogging can create a lot more opportunities for it.

For example, a hair salon may create a blog called ‘The best hair care products to use’.

During this blog, they can link to their ‘products’ page every time they mention a product that they sell. They also may create another blog called ‘the best hair care routine’. During this blog, they may want to link the first blog that they wrote about hair care products, as it will help their readers further.

Blogging can improve your SEO significantly. If your business isn’t already blogging on a regular basis, you may be missing out on all the SEO benefits listed above. However, it is important that you are writing content that is going to inform, help, entertain or relate to your target audience. Once you build those relationships, you will build a bigger audience and eventually get more sales.