By now you’ve heard of blogs.  Perhaps you wonder if a blog is relevant or would be helpful fo your business.  A few common answers to why a blog is helpful for a business includes more traffic to a website, higher sales from greater traffic, and being recognized for expertise from writing regularly on a certain topic. These are right but I’ll add that another important thing to keep in mind is how a blog can impact your company’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Indexing Pages

SEO is about coming up on the first page and in the top results on a search engine when a user types in a phrase or topic your site wants to rank for.  SEO isn’t simply keyword stuffing your articles to maximize how well your site shows up in the search engines, nor is it hidden keywords on a page programmed by a developer.  In fact, this practice is penalized by all search engines (most importantly Google).

With every well-written blog post you publish, you’re building your “keyword footprint” for the search engine.  More articles, more posts, and more pages give Google (and other search engines) bots more material to scroll through and more relevant words from which to gather information for search, and thus more value coming from your website that can then result in your site ranking better in search engine results for key terms of importance.  Blogging makes your website a bigger, ever-growing, more SEO friendly structure on the web.  This can help you rank over the business that has little content and few new updates to their site content.

Backlinking

While backlinking is traditionally thought of as an inbound-only form of traffic (from other sites to yours), backlinking within your own website will help show how connected your content is from post to post.  For example, if your company is working on a campaign to drive traffic for a certain keyword, linking different blogs posts together in a tactful, subtle way shows search engine bots that the articles are relevant and related to one another.

Similar tactics can be used externally.  For example, be a thought leader by commenting on highly-trafficked blog posts from other websites.  Leave your comment (again, tactfully and strategically) along with the specific blog post you wish to drive traffic to (if the comments  allow it) and watch your own blog’s traffic increase all while giving the SEO bots some breadcrumbs linked to you.

Relevant Content to Searchers

Search engines are optimized to find the most appropriate content for their users.  High bounce rates, keyword stuffing, and lackluster backlinking will get you penalized by Google.  On the other hand, a blog with consistent information, which answers searchers questions and provokes thought can make a significant difference for your SEO.

By being the thought leader in your field and publishing relevant, useful content for people instead of merely publishing for Google, the search engine will reward you by elevating your site in search. By doing this, your site will see decreases in your website’s bounce rate and increases in the number of unique visitors and quality visits to your pages.

Lead Generation

Obviously, the most important connection between a quality blog and excellent SEO is lead generation and lead quality.  This requires you to think like your customer.  By establishing buyer personas of who your ideal customer is, understanding what type of information your buyers seek, and tailoring your content for your visitors you’ll dramatically improve traffic to your site and when combined with a lead capture strategy and tool, your lead generation and the quality of leads your website generates can increase exponentially.

Whether you want to make your blog posts more relevant or simply drive more traffic to your website, SEO and blogging go hand-in-hand. An informative blog without the necessary keyword focus, backlinking, and overall power of SEO will remain just good content hidden to those seeking the information it provides but a blog that offers content and focuses on key SEO items can be a way to really boost your business forward.  A blog is not only helpful and valuable to your SEO but an absolute necessity!