Would you love to see your business listed first on Google?
Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is essentially the method search engines like Google use to rank results when you perform a search. SEO helps these search engines determine what should appear on the first page and what can be left towards the bottom.
Google wants to maintain their reputation for being helpful and reliable so they perform extensive quality control through their algorithms to assess what should be ranked highest, with the most valuable results appearing on the first page.
To be competitive and to meet Google’s criteria, SEO employs a range of measures to figure out which online content is the most popular and the most helpful, thereby offering the most value to searchers. The most valuable resources—according to Google—will appear at the top of the search results.
One of the best ways gain leverage with Google is to maintain an active business blog, which provides fresh, relevant, and valuable content that Google will use to rank your website as highly as possible in its search results.
We can’t stress it enough: Google loves frequent website updates, especially when they’re filled with key word strings.
If you’re spending money on SEO services or Google Ads but you aren’t maintaining an active blog, you’ll be missing out on organic reach. Maximize organic reach with a strategic business blog.
Here are some persuasive reasons why blogging and SEO go hand in hand:
Blog Posts Are Not Sales Pages
Let’s make one thing very clear:
Blog posts are not sales pages!
In fact, that’s one of the best things about blog posts! Your blog posts should always be tailored to relate to your business’ specific niche with the purpose of giving away value for free.
When you write a blog post for your business website, you’ll be appealing to your niche readers with content they want to read; that’s what makes blog posts more organic. Your blog posts should answer questions, provide insights, and provide useful content that people are searching for on the internet. Not only will people relate to your blog’s content and begin to feel like your business understands them but Google will also recognize the value that you’re offering. And remember: Google favours websites that publish new blog posts much more than static websites with few updates.
The best blog posts help your potential customers feel like you understand their problems and that you a) genuinely want to help them, and b) have the expertise to do so. Great content will win your customers’ trust and warm them up to purchase your goods or services.
Blog Posts are Great for Indexing
Did you know that every time you publish a new blog post on your business’ website you’re giving Google a new page to index?
Think of Google’s index as similar to a library’s index. In a library, the index lists information about all of the available books. But instead of books, Google’s index lists all of the web pages populating the internet.
So, if you want the content on your website to be included in the results of a custom search, then they need to be included in Google’s index. Google uses a web crawling bot known as Googlebot or “spider,” which crawls the internet to uncover new pages that need to be indexed. When Googlebot visits your site, it identifies new and updated pages and adds them to the Google index.
Google indexes over one trillion unique worldwide URLS every single year, and blog posts make up a massive part of that indexing. So every time you add a new blog post to your website, you’re working to improve your SEO results.
If you want to see which pages on your website are included in the Google index, simply perform a Google Web Search for “site:mywebsite.com”. (For us it would be site:barkersocial.com)
Fill Your Blog Posts with Relevant Keywords & Word Strings
A static website that’s rich in keywords isn’t terrible for your SEO but a consistently updated blog that’s rich in keywords is so much better!
Every time you write a blog post that’s related to your business, you populate your website with relevant industry keywords. Keywords are one of the keys to SEO since every individual keyword as well as long-tail keywords help your target market find your website when they are actively searching for that type of content.
Basically it means the people you’re targeting will have an easier time finding your business and they’ll be more likely to buy from you since that’s the kind of content they want to see.
Bonus Tip: If you’re looking to go that extra mile and it works for your brand, write a blog post about Google! Google loves it when you talk about them. Trust us, this blog post here was immediately included as a piece of Google News in their news alerts.
Blog Posts Help Build Relationships
Frequent updates not only build relationships with your target audience, but it also creates a relationship with Google.
Google loves frequent updates, so every time you post a new business blog, you’re gaining Google’s favour and you’ll be rewarded with better page rankings. The more your website is updated, the more Google recognizes that your business is active and you’ll begin to rank higher with their algorithms.
Bottom Line: Blogging Will Improve Your SEO
In a lot of ways, SEO is the most important investment you can do for your business, and blogging is a key component of SEO. An average of 33% of search traffic will visit the site ranked number one in their search results. But, by the time you get down to results ranked at number ten, only a paltry 2.4% bother to click on that website. What’s worse, nearly 95% of the traffic won’t even look at the results from page two.
So if you’re not making SEO—and business blogging—a priority then you’re kissing goodbye the majority of potential customers that will come your way via the web.
If you need help with your SEO or your content creation, don’t hesitate to reach out to Barker Social today. We even offer a FREE consultation and a no pressure discussion about your business.
