Best practices for SEO are constantly changing, as Google and other search engines modify their algorithms on a regular basis. Once you think you have a firm understanding of what is considered the most important for rankings, things get switched up. However, despite frequent changes, there’s one thing that doesn’t: Content.
Content will always be the cornerstone of search engine optimization. Adding a blog to your website is one of the easiest and most effective ways to boost your SEO rankings. Not only does it allow you to share your story, build brand awareness, and establish trust, but it also offers several other benefits.
Here’s a look at the top six reasons why adding a blog to your website is so important for SEO.
It Shows Search Engines Your Business is Alive and Well
If you were to walk past a store every day and the lights were always off, you’d probably assume that it was no longer open for business. The same idea can be applied to your website.
If search engines never find any fresh content on your site, they are probably going to assume that it isn’t open for business. Google and other search engines, like Bing and Yahoo, want to provide their users with the most accurate, relevant, and high-quality search results possible. If you aren’t adding new content on a regular basis, you have a much better chance of increasing your search engine results. Blogging is one of the best ways to update your content on a consistent basis.
It Makes Your Site More Relevant
The relevancy of your website’s domain is one of the most vital criteria for gaining the trust of search engines. When your site has more inbound links from high-quality domains, the better your chances of receiving a high ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) will be. Why? – Because the search engines will view you as being a relevant resource. Acquiring inbound links can be tricky, though – unless you have a blog.
A blog that is updated on a regular basis gives you the chance to add pages to your domain that are filled with relevant, useful information that has the potential to earn backlinks. By incorporating a mixture of both current and evergreen content to your blog that is highly relevant to the industry you are in, you’ll be able to establish the reputation of your domain.
It Attracts Content from Users
When your blog posts contain perceptive, useful content that your readers can relate to, you’ll attract organic traffic to your domain. You’ll also increase the chances of your readers adding their own comments to your posts. Comments made by users can significantly enhance your content and lets search engines know that your site is highly relevant and useful, thus increasing your search engine ranking.
How can you encourage users to comment on your blog posts? Write your own comments on blogs that are related to your industry and include links to your posts within your comments. Do be aware, however, that can require a serious time investment, as you want to make sure that you are interacting with comments on both your blog and others. A professional SEO agency can assist with this task.
It Provides Social Media Promotion
Social media plays a big part in SEO. Search engines crawl social media profiles and actually return them in their search results. By connecting your blog to your social media channels, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you will give search engines something else to find when users are searching for content related to your business. Use relevant search terms in your titles and meta descriptions to enhance your search engine ranking. An SEO agency that specializes in blogging and social media can successfully build the long-term search rankings of your site.
It’s a Great Way to Highlight Relevant Words
Search engines use bots to crawl websites, which allows them to find out what type of information sites contain. If these bots find that your site contains an ample amount of words that are related to users search queries – women’s fashion, for example – the search engines are going to equate your site to women’s fashion and attire. When users enter terms related to those words in their queries, there’s a much better chance that your website will be shown in the top results.
A blog is the portion of a website that contains the most content. Therefore, the more posts you have that contain words about the key products or services you offer, the greater the likelihood will be that your site will rank in the search results.
It Boosts Your Popularity
SEO can be a popularity contest. Think of it like high school: the more attention someone gets and the more someone is talked about, the more popular he or she is. The same idea holds true for SEO. Search engines will increase your ranking on their results pages if they see that your blog posts are clicked on a lot and frequently shared.
How can you make sure you’re at the top of this popularity contest? Publish high-quality content that will pique the interest of your audience and make them want to click, read, and share. You can also encourage others to share your blog posts by sharing them yourself and by encouraging others to share them, too!
Attaching a blog to your website and making sure that it is updated frequently with high-quality content is one of the most effective ways to increase your rankings on search engines. If you haven’t started a blog on your website yet or you need help getting one started and maintaining it, give us a call! We’ll be happy to get you started!
