5 ways Blogging helps SEO & Rankings

Now that we've learned what SEO is, it's time to talk about how to improve your Google ranking.

First, let's consider what search engines like Google actually WANT. It's important to know what search engines want so that you can optimize your website for search.

These days, Google wants your website to answer a query. The more queries you can reliably answer, the higher you'll climb in the rankings.

So in order to rank highly on Google, you need to be answering questions that potential customers have. 

How do you do this? 
One word: blog.

How can blogging improve SEO & Google Rankings?

1. Blogging helps you target long-tail keywords.
Blogging helps you compete. Unless you have a monopoly over a product or service, you're going to have competition on search engines. Long-tail keywords are "keywords or keyphrases that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly used keywords." 50% of all searches have four keywords or more.

Think: "What time does Ed Sheeran start" or "romantic breaks for couples in West Cork".

Websites that have blogs answering these queries will appear higher in the search engine. 

2. Blogs increase users' time on your site.
You might be looking at your Google Analytics and seeing a high bounce rate teamed with a very low session duration (time spent on your site) and think...why? The reason could be that your content isn't very engaging or inspirational.

Great blogs increase the time users spend on the site and increase the time users spend on a site. And the longer users stay on your site, the higher chance they will purchase from you. 

3. Blogs are great for internal linking.
A really simple trick to improve SEO on your site is to use internal linking. This tells Google bots more about your site (which helps with your ranking) and they can lead your customer onto the next stage of the customer journey. You can let readers know what kind of services you offer or encourage them to contact you for a free consultation. (see what I did there) Internal links on a new page give you new opportunities for customers to get to know your business.

4. A blog helps you connect to your audience
When people love something, they share it.  For your website, this means more traffic, more repeat users and email sign-ups. Google will recognise this popularity and raise your 'authority level' in their algorithm (meaning they trust that you're giving sound information).

Blogging also keeps you on your toes and forces you to think creatively about your customers and what they want. Blogs are a great way to get to know your customer better and this in turn will hone your marketing strategy.

5. Blogging keeps your website up to date
Fresh information breeds trust. In an era of fast trends, it is imperative to keep your website (and social media for that matter) up to date. 
Google doesn't want to give its users old info. Fresh content tells Google that your website is alive and kicking. Check out this article on SEO Checkup  and read about how "the more frequently you update your website with articles, downloads, and new web pages, the more frequently a search engine will stop by to visit your website."

If you would like to learn more about what blogging can do for your website, book a free consultation with The Digital Beour today and get your website motorin' on up the ranks.

Want to learn more about SEO?

Read my blog on SEO