8 Ways Blogging Helps Boost Your SEO
We were presenting at a business event recently about SEO to Cambridge Network and we were asked how exactly blogging helps with your SEO, so I thought we’d write a blog about it 😊
Blogging has been established to be a key form of building your SEO rankings long term, but why exactly? What is it about frequent blogging which makes Google reward websites with increased rankings.
Here are 8 reasons:
1. Blogging keeps your website up to date and current
Google has a huge problem, its business model requires it to crawl the entire internet, index its content and in under a second, present the best possible search result to the user. If it fails to do this, other search engines will be favoured by the public and Google loses its market domination.
In the last 2 years alone 90% of the world’s information was created online, and this pace is accelerating exponentially.
In addition to this, it is estimated that 250,000 new websites are created every single day. With more and more simple website building platforms being created, this number will dramatically increase.
Google doesn’t have much content, it simply scours the internet for the best content to present to its user. Google only wants to send internet traffic to active businesses with genuine expertise, so it has to have a way of quickly identifying relevant content.
60% of businesses also fail within their first year. When a business fails, no one tells Google, and their domain will generally remain live until renewal date so Google needs a ways of ensuring that businesses are active and that they have genuine expertise in their niche.
One way to do this is to monitor certain signals, one such signal is that the website is being regularly updated. A simple way to do this is with blogging.
Google also doesn’t continually crawl and index the whole internet, that would be a mind-boggling task. No one truly knows how often Google does crawl and index the whole internet however what is well understood is that regular blogging encourages Google to index your site more often, meaning you can then begin to transition up the rankings for target keywords.
Most of your website will remain relatively static over the years, so blogging represents a fantastic way of keeping your content fresh and your website up to date.
2. Blogging Boosts your Social Signals
Another way Google ensures your business is active and relevant is monitoring your social signals. Google isn’t monitoring every like, follower and engagement, but it will scan to check your social channels are regularly updating.
Social signals reassure Google that your business is active and engaging its target market.
When you write a blog, not only can this be hosted on your website, but it can also be shared and promoted on all your social channels.
If your blog content is well researched and relevant to your target market, it should achieve attention and shares, signalling to Google your expertise and relevance.
3. Blogs improve your web metrics
Years back many used to cheat Google’s algorithm with various tactics such as keyword stuffing. This meant Google’s users were being driven to poor websites and didn’t have a great experience.
Google realised that there are various website metrics which can quickly identify the websites which are giving their visitors better user experiences.
Such metrics include (and are not limited to):
Click through rate – if more people are clicking position 9 than position 1 it’s a good bet that position 9 is more relevant to the searcher.
Bounce rate – if searchers are leaving Google only to bounce from the website they land on it’s a good sign they’re not getting what they want.
Site Speed – Google understands that modern internet users are impatient. If your website doesn’t load in under a few seconds on 4G, you’ll struggle with SEO.
Blogging can help your SEO by boosting the following metrics:
Average session duration – If you’re writing high quality blogs around subject matters of interest to your target market, when they land on your page and look around, they’re likely to read them. When this happens they’ll spend more time on your website, this pushes up the average session duration of each visitor, this sends a strong signal to Google that the user is getting what they want and that they are engaged.
Page views per session – This metric simply measures the average amount of pages a viewer looks at per visit. If a website visitor looks at many pages, it sends a strong signal to Google that they’re finding what they’re looking for and that your website is worthy of higher search rankings.
Having a good diverse range of blogs will encourage website visitors to look around and view several blogs in one visit.
4. Provides opportunity for internal link building
Internal linking is simply creating links within your website to other parts of your website. For example when a blog links to your services or contact page etc.
Internal links are an important ranking factor as they help Google rank your website better by helping it understand what various web pages are about.
By creating internal links with descriptive anchor text you assist Google not just understanding your web pages but you also increase user experience which has recently become an even more relevant SEO ranking factor.
Within your blogs you can easily create relevant and authentic links to other parts of your website. Do not simply spam each page with a variety of links as Google is sophisticated enough to tell you’re trying to cheat the system, when you create internal links, make sure they’re natural, they assist the user and they’re authentic.
5. Creates greater opportunity for External linking
External links are when another website links back to your website. These are like little votes of confidence from one website to another.
With external links they must be relevant and authentic, similar to internal links many people have tried to cheat Google by referencing many inauthentic links externally. Today this will result in a Google Penalty.
Blogs offer you the chance to reach out to external websites who may wish to host your content or link back to it if it’s relevant and of high value to their audience.
Preferably you want these links to be from websites with higher domain authority than you.
Imagine if you were going for a promotion and the department head was looking for recommendations, a recommendation from an individual senior to you would generally carry more weight than from someone junior to you. External links works on the same principle.
6. Helps you answer informational questions that people ask Google
Good SEO blogs are written to target questions people regularly ask Google. Google doesn’t own much content, it simply finds it on the internet and decides what’s best for the user.
Therefore a blog offers you the opportunity to present your expertise to potential clients and establish yourself as a credible expert which builds trust and increases the chances of future sales.
If Google decides to deliver you to page 1 for a question based search term, the credibility Google carries transfers to you, your target customer will subconsciously think ‘if Google delivers them they must be legitimate and at the top of their game’.
If you’re a Cambridge based extension builder you can bet your target market will ask area specific searches such as ‘how to get extension planning permission in Cambridge’ or ‘what types of extensions can I get in Ely town centre’ etc.
Writing blogs around this content will increase your chances of being presented on page one and engaging with your target customer. By adding a strong call to action or having some form of data capture such as “Register for Free Consultation” or “Get Your Instant Quote” you can capture your reader as a lead.
7. You can target a greater variety of keywords
In Lilac James’ Beginners Guide to Metadata (internal link… see what I did there 😊) we explained how you should create a wireframe to formulate your keyword strategy and ensure your web pages appropriately target relevant keywords.
Naturally your main website pages will only have the capacity to target a limited amount of keywords and the high value keywords should be prioritised (depending on competition levels but that’s for another blog).
Blogs give you the opportunity to broaden the keywords and long tail keywords you can target. You can continuously grow your website size and there is no limit to the traffic you can acquire with blogging.
Neil Patel is one of the biggest players in the SEO space and recently disclosed how he still to this day spends 4 hours per day creating content for his main websites.
8. Great way to demonstrate EAT
Finally, the acronym Google uses to describe how it selects websites for page 1 is EAT.
Expertise
Authority
Trust
It’s looking for websites to have credible expertise, command high authority in their field of expertise and be trustworthy.
Blogs are a great way of demonstrating this, and this is why Google rewards those who regularly produce them.
How to write optimised blogs for SEO?
This is a subject for another blog on another day however, if you would like the opportunity to speak to one of our SEO experts for advice and guidance on your own website, please reach out to me at jamie@lilacjames.com or visit our contact us page.