Will adding blog posts help to improve our businesses SEO?
Introduction
As a business owner, you’ve probably already heard a thousand different things that you can do in order to improve your businesses SEO.
And there’s a pretty good reason for that, that’s because there are now in excess of over 200 ranking signals that you can optimise.
So, your probably now thinking, if there are over 200 ranking signals, why concentrate on writing just blog posts?
Well, the simple answer is blog posts shouldn’t be the only form of seo that you do. Yet, most digital marketing agencies will state that content marketing is an essential part of the seo process.
So without further ado, let’s explain how blog posts can help to improve your businesses seo.
What does content marketing mean?
Content marketing can come in the form of written blog posts, infographics, video or just simply an article that has a mix of all of these.
Content marketing can be placed on a business’s website, and written in such a way that it doesn’t need to be changed often. This type of content marketing, which doesn’t change all that often, we in the seo industry refer to as being “ever green”.
Then you have content marketing which is more current, this is often added to the blog section of a website. This section of the website, “the blog section”, may get updated say once a month, once a week, or for some companies even once a day.
In a nutshell therefore, content marketing can be used to promote a business. If created correctly by your agency, it can also help to improve the businesses seo.
Websites that are updated with quality information do get rewarded
Now we know what you’re thinking, that is, if content marketing can help to improve a businesses SEO, well the more work that is added to the website, the better- right?
Well, in matter of fact no, is the answer to that question!
The reason being is this, whenever your creating content marketing you have to keep one word in your mind, and that word is “quality”.
The reason being is if your content marketing efforts are half-baked, and the content marketing doesn’t offer what us SEO’s refer to as “valuable” information, well this form of SEO that may just damage your websites rankings.
Meaning rubbish seo can actually result in the websites rankings going down, and not up.
Don’t expect results overnight
You may have just written a really long blog post, and now you want to see if all that hard work will now pay off, and your business will improve in terms of where it ranks.
Yet, we would say this, don’t be so hasty!
The reason being is that rarely will a website’s rankings improve from just one good blog post.
As any respected seo agency should tell you, it takes a lot of work, and a considerable number of high-quality blog posts in order to improve where a website ranks.
How many blog posts should we write?
So, we know what your thinking, your thinking how many blog posts are needed to get a business onto the first page?
Well, in a nutshell there is no exact answer to this question. The only thing that is for sure is this, its that in order to overtake the competition, your website must have stronger ranking signals.
This means your businesses website must have good blog posts, but these are only one part of the equation. You must also have good quality backlinks, onsite and offsite seo, etc, etc.
So, to summarise, adding blog posts should only be one part of an overall seo marketing strategy.
How many words should the blog posts be?
It used to be the case that a lot of seo companies once thought that blog posts should be 500 words in length.
However, many digital marketing agencies, including ours, now believe that longer blog posts can rank better.
With that said, you shouldn’t be writing your businesses blog posts just to meet a set word count.
If you do this, well you may just be creating a rather dull and boring read, and the reader may leave your website, which will result in a higher bounce rate.
We therefore think that blog posts should be written with a longer word count, but also be written so that they are interesting.
If you want more advice on how writing longer blog posts can help your businesses SEO, then why not have a read of this article.
Must be relevant
There’s simply no point in droning on about things that are not relevant to your business. Some businesses, and even some seo companies think that its important to publish a blog post to a set routine, that’s even if you have nothing useful to say.
Well, we think that this form of seo simply doesn’t work. It is far better to publish an article that will really help someone answer their question.
Whether that question is which winter boots to purchase, or how to find a respected local builder.
The advice must be useful, therefore if you’re just writing 500 words for the sake of it, well this isn’t likely going to help your businesses seo.
Must be white hat
Whether your writing a new blog post for your business, or creating new backlinks, all work must be white hat.
Why you should partner with a quality focused SEO agency
Google’s algorithm changes regularly, this means in order to implement quality white hat work, you should think about partnering with a white hat seo company.
Bounce rates
When writing blog posts for your business, its important to ensure that work is interesting to your readers.
You must also ensure that your businesses website is a source of good quality information.
So, this means if you were to focus too much on the seo, and neglect answering the question, then your website is likely to have a sky-high bounce rate.
If your unsure what the term bounce rate means, let us explain, it simply means when a visitor lands on your website, then decides to more or less leave straightaway, this will increase your bounce rate.
So, for example, let’s say you’re a high-flying divorce lawyer, and you start to write blog posts writing helpful tips and advice regarding the divorce process.
Yet, you decide not to pay a rather fancy seo company to do the work for you, instead you write the blog posts yourself. It’s just now they are rather complicated, and full of words describing the divorce process that the average person wouldn’t have a clue about.
Well, you guessed, if the reader does lose interest, the websites bounce rate is likely to be sky-high.
Remember when writing blog posts that often people skim-read to get the part they want to find an answer to.
And also remember that sometimes, if the blog post isn’t written correctly, its likely to lose the reader’s attention.
Onsite SEO
It’s important to remember to add a bit of onsite seo, that’s when writing blog posts. This means you should add alt tags, meta descriptions, meta titles and also internal backlinks for example
Whenever you write a blog post for your website, you should monitor its performance. So, for example, you may want to see how many visitors it gets, what’s the bounce rate like, and how long the average visitor spends reading your blog post.
Google’s Algorithm
Google’s algorithm receives loads of regular changes, this means that whatever seo you are implementing, you need to stay on top of all these changes.
This is often why so many businesses outsource their seo to seo businesses like us.
Google Panda
There are loads of algorithm changes that you should be aware of before implementing seo, however, when it comes to writing blog posts for your business, there is one in particular, that is the Google Panda update.
