11 Ways Blogging Improves the SEO Rankings of Your Business Website
How Does Blogging Improve SEO Rankings?
Blogging improves SEO because it provides useful content that answers people’s questions when they perform an online search. Blogging provides many more ways for your website to rank in search engine results. Blogging drives traffic to your website and helps with many important SEO ranking factors.
Blogging and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can work together in powerful ways. Content is required for SEO. Your website needs to have Search Engine Optimization to improve its organic or free search rankings on search engines like Google. SEO helps your website to be found when customers search online.
Having a blog on your business website can help to improve your SEO rankings. Blog content with keywords relevant to your business helps your website to be found by target users who are searching online for products and services that you offer. This drives targeted traffic to your website.
Search engines like Google change their search algorithms frequently. SEO ranking factors are continually changing. Having an informational blog on your website and blogging regularly is one method that can help your website perform better in the search rankings.
Blogging and SEO Statistics
Here are some important statistics on blogging and SEO:
• 4 in 5 consumers conduct local searches on search engines. (Google, 2014)
• Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic. (Web Presence Solutions, 2017)
• On average, companies that blog receive 434% more indexed pages. (Source: HubSpot)
• The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words. (Backlinko, 2016)
• 55% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority. (HubSpot, 2018)
• One in ten blog posts are compounding, meaning organic search increases their traffic over time. (HubSpot, 2016)
• Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5 times more leads than companies that published zero to four monthly posts. (HubSpot, 2015)
11 Ways Blogging Can Improve Your Website SEO Rankings
Blogging is one of the most effective content marketing methods. Blogging is also a top inbound marketing method to attract potential customers to your website. Once they are on your website, you can use conversion optimization methods to convert your potential customers to leads and sales.
Here are some of the ways in which a Blog on your website can help your SEO rankings.
1. Blogging adds fresh website content regularly & builds trust and authority
Search engines like Google and Bing regularly index fresh content and add them to their search index. When people search online, the search engines like to present fresh content that is most relevant to the search.
Website content generally does not change much. By having a blog on your website, you can add blog posts to your website regularly. This helps you add fresh content to your website. The search engines will regularly visit your site to index these new posts and add them to the search index.
Adding useful blog content gives your website more chances to rank in the Search engine results (SERPs) when people search for information related to your blog posts. Your blog posts should address information that is relevant to your products and services.
Your blog content also gives you a chance to build trust and authority with your visitors. This keeps visitors returning to your site to learn more about your products and services.
You need to regularly add new posts to your blog either weekly or monthly. The more frequently you blog, the more chances you have for your blog posts to rank well in the search results and be found when customers search online. This helps to improve your SEO rankings,
Long content performs better in the search rankings. As shown in the statistics above, the average Google first page result is 1890 words (Backlinko, 2016). Longer, high-quality, blog posts tend to rank better on Google.
2. Blogging adds more web pages to rank for important keywords
Regularly adding blog posts to your website helps to increase the number of web pages that are available to rank in the search results. Your blog posts should target important keywords related to your business.
Every new blog page you add to your website gives you one more chance to rank in the search results when people search for information related to your blog.
50% of search queries are four words or longer. (Wordstream, 2016)
When writing blog posts, make sure you select keywords that are relevant to your business. Also, since most single keywords are highly competitive, use long-tail keywords in your blog posts. As shown above, 50% of online search queries are 4 words or longer.
For example, for a restaurant blog, instead of just using “restaurant” as the keyword for your blog post, which is a very competitive, use a long-tail keyword such as “best Italian restaurant Dallas TX”.
Remember not to stuff keywords in your blog post. Keyword-stuffing can result in a Google penalty. Use your target keywords and their synonyms naturally in your blog article.
3. Blog posts must be optimized with On-Page SEO optimization
When your website is optimized for SEO, it helps you rank in the organic search rankings on Google and other search engines. Organic search rankings are free rankings which can send targeted traffic to your website. While it takes time to rank in the top pages with SEO, organic search is free marketing and has long-term results.
Both your website and every blog post you publish must be fully optimized with On-Page SEO optimization to rank in the top pages of Google search.
When a user searches online and clicks on your blog post from the search engines, they are taken to your website. Because visitors are already interested in the information they are searching for, SEO helps to drive targeted traffic to your website.
To improve your blog posts SEO rankings with On-Page SEO,
• Perform keyword research and find long-tail keywords you want to use.
• Your website content and headings must be optimized with the top keywords that are relevant to your blog article.
• Your title tags and meta descriptions must have keywords and be engaging to get the user to click on your listings in the search results pages.
• Your website URLS must be user-friendly and optimized with keywords.
• Your image ALT tags must contain keywords.
• Your content should have internal and external links.
SEO rankings take time. It can take up to 6 months for your blog posts to begin to rank on Google. Once they begin to rank in organic search, they provide long-term results.
For more information on SEO, read our article on 11 Reasons Why You Need SEO or Search Engine Optimization
4. Enhance Blog posts with Images and Video
Images and video are important visual content that should be added to your blog post to illustrate the content.
Here are some interesting statistics:
• After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online. (Forbes, 2017)
• Studies show that people have the ability to recall 65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later. (HubSpot, 2017)
• Brand engagement rises by 28% when consumers are exposed to both professional content and user-generated product video. (Source: comScore)
Optimizing image alt tags helps with SEO. Write image descriptions in a clear way and include keywords. Image alt tags help to explain what the image is about to the search engines. Alt-tags are also read aloud by screen readers.
Your web page must load very fast even with all the images on the page. Page speed is an important SEO ranking factor. All images should be compressed and small in size so that they load fast. Most images should be less than 100K in size.
For image compression, you can use Photoshop, TinyPNG or an image compression plugin like Smush.
An additional advantage of using SEO-optimized images is that they can also rank in Google image search when people search for information. Google image search accounts for 27% of all search queries in the US. Google image search is one more way to improve your SEO rankings and be found when people search online.
5. Blogging Increases Website Traffic
Companies that blog have 55% more visitors (Source: HubSpot)
Blogging attracts target traffic to your website and increases your website traffic.
In order to be effective, a website needs to get enough traffic from its target customers. The more traffic you attract, the more potential conversions and sales.
Providing useful information in your blog posts increases your website traffic as visitors come to read your blog. This helps to increase return visitors as people return regularly to read new articles.
You can use your blog posts to provide informative content to your target audience and to answer user questions.
As visitors continue to engage with your website, your returning visitors may eventually convert to leads, customers and sales.
Visitor engagement time increases as people stay to read articles, and the bounce rate is reduced. These are important SEO ranking factors that are used by the search engines when they rank your blog posts on their search results pages. These ranking factors help to improve your SEO rankings.
6. Blogging increases conversions and leads
Blogging helps to increase conversions and leads. As your website traffic increases and people return to engage more with your site, they are more likely to convert to leads and customers.
While on your website, your visitors could take conversion actions such as sign-up for a newsletter, ask for a quote or make an online purchase. You can eventually convert your visitors and leads to customers.
Having a blog on your website, also encourages visitors to move to other parts of your site to read other articles or view other products and services that you offer. This is why, it’s important to have internal links to other related blog articles to keep visitors on your site longer.
7. Blogging increases backlinks to your website
Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (Source: HubSpot)
Having a number of inbound links or backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites is a SEO ranking factor.
Google and other search engines provide higher search rankings to websites that have a number of incoming links from other websites. Every inbound link you get from another website is considered a vote of confidence in the eyes of search engines.
Blogging helps you attract backlinks from other websites. When you post your blog posts on your website and share them on social media, other websites will link back to your blog articles if they like them. This helps to increase the number of backlinks to your site and improves your SEO rankings.
Remember that backlinks from other websites should be earned. Never buy links from other sites, or you could get a Google penalty which will negatively impact your search rankings.
8. Blog Posts should be shared on Social Media
When you publish blog posts, you should share them on all your social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others that are relevant to your business.
As people re-share the links to your blog posts, and like them, it helps improve your SEO rankings. Social signals are considered to be a SEO ranking factor.
Sharing your blog posts on social media also helps to drive additional traffic to your website and earn backlinks.
9. Blog Posts can be shared through Email Marketing
In addition to social media, you can also share your blog posts in email and your newsletter lists. This encourages people to re-share them and helps you earn backlinks to your site.
Including new blog posts in your newsletter helps you reach out to clients with fresh and useful information on a regular basis.
10. Your Website Must be Mobile-friendly and Responsive
A mobile-friendly website is an important SEO ranking factor. Google switched to a mobile-friendly search index in 2018.
The majority of online users today are using mobile devices to make search queries and access websites. A mobile-friendly and responsive website is essential for a business to reach mobile users and increase leads and conversions.
Your website must be mobile-friendly and easy to use by mobile users. Google started rolling out a mobile-friendly search index in March 2018. With Mobile-first indexing, Google’s systems will crawl, index and rank the Mobile version of a website. The mobile version of a website is considered the primary version of the website.
In addition to being mobile friendly, your website must also have Responsive Web Design. With responsive web design, your website content is easy to read and use on devices of all sizes from desktops to laptops to mobile devices.
Having a mobile-friendly and responsive website will increase your SEO rankings. It will also help to increase traffic and engagement rates and reduce the bounce rate.
For more information on mobile-friendly websites, read our article on Mobile-Friendly Websites: How to Reach Mobile Users and Increase Conversions
11. Your Website Must Load Fast
Web page speed is an important SEO ranking factor.
Your website must load fast on mobile devices. Most websites today lose more than 50% of their visitors because they take too long to load. That’s a significant number of lost traffic, potential customers and sales.
Having a fast loading web site increases customer retention and reduces the bounce rate.
According to Google:
53% of mobile site visitors will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
The recommended values by Google for page speed and page size are:
• Average page speed should be 3 seconds or less.
• Web page size should be 500KB or less.
Large images are one of the main reasons why websites take too long to load. To ensure that your website loads fast, keep all your image file sizes small and optimized.
For more information, read our article on Speed Matters: 4 Reasons Why Page Speed Impacts Website SEO Rankings & Conversions
Conclusion
Blogging and SEO work together to improve search rankings. Blogging is an effective way to improve your SEO rankings. Improved SEO rankings help your website to be found in the top search engine results pages when people search online for your products and services.
A blog can help your business reach new customers; build trust and authority; increase traffic; increase leads and conversions; and attract more inbound links from other websites.
For improved SEO rankings, your website must also be mobile-friendly, responsive and fast. These are important SEO ranking factors.
Why wait? Adding a blog to your website is good for SEO and helps to attract more traffic, leads and customers to your business.
We hope you found this article informative. If you need help with SEO or your website, please contact us at https://goldmangodesign.com
References
• HubSpot, The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2018
• HubSpot, Study Shows Business Blogging Leads to 55% More Visitors
• Yahoo Small Business, Top Blogging Statistics: 45 Reasons to Blog
Related Articles
For additional information on Search Engine Optimization and Blogging, here are some related articles.
1. Gold Mango Design, Plano, 11 Reasons Why You Need SEO or Search Engine Optimization
2. Gold Mango Design, Prepare for Google’s Mobile-First Indexing Change: Website and SEO Impacts
3. Gold Mango Design, 10 Local SEO Tips to Boost Local Search Rankings
4. Gold Mango Design, What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization and Why is it Important?
5. Gold Mango Design, How to Create Posts on Your WordPress Blog
Gold Mango Design LLC. helps small and medium businesses build a strong online brand with professional websites and digital marketing services. Our digital marketing services include Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Web Design, WordPress Website Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google Ads Marketing. We are located in Plano, TX right outside Dallas. Contact us at https://goldmangodesign.com
