Does Blogging Really Help SEO?

How often do you “Google it” when you need to know the answer to a question? The majority of the world does this daily. As a business offering solutions for those inquiries, you want users to find you instead of your competitor. For you to appear in relevant searches, your company website must rank highly on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). And of course, that is easier said than done. The answer is yes, blogging really does improve your site’s SEO and rankability.. if done correctly. Posting blogs to your website is one of many pieces for a content marketing strategy that can help boost you to a higher spot on SERPs. But it’s not enough for your blog to exist. There are a variety of factors that contribute to how well those pages rank on Google. Let’s talk about the main ways to search engine optimize your blog posts.

5 Ways to Optimize Blog Posts for Search Engines

Use Targeted Keywords

Keywords are the terms and phrases for which your target audience is searching. Doing research can help you determine what these keywords are for your business. You’ll need to understand who your audience is, what information they seek, why they want it, and which keywords the majority of them use to search for it. Once you know this information, you can begin to use the associated keywords and phrases in your blog. However, you’ll want to avoid going keyword-crazy. Overusing keywords, aka “keyword stuffing,” will actually hurt your SEO. Utilize keywords in a way that still results in a readable and informative blog post.

Extend Site Visit Duration

When someone clicks a link from the search results page, they expect to quickly and easily find the information they seek. If the webpage they land on isn’t helpful, they’ll leave immediately, aka “bounce,” and continue their search elsewhere. This action tells Google that the page wasn’t as relevant as expected. However, when someone clicks on a webpage and stays to read the information or watch a video, Google deems that webpage as helpful. A good blog post is a great way to reel in those users! When your blog post contains interesting, relevant content, readers will likely stay a few minutes longer, and that makes Google happy. And when Google is happy, everybody is happy, right?

Use Internal Linking Opportunities

Another way to increase site visit duration is by using internal links. Linking to internal pages throughout your blog copy will guide users to other pages of your site, and more extended site visits aren’t the only benefit. A good portion of SEO surrounds links, and internal links are an incredibly easy way to create them yourself. Having inbound links to other pages on your website helps search engines validate the relevancy of the content. When you write about topics that directly pertain to an area of your business, you will naturally find places to insert links to the related pages. These links could point to a blog post on a related topic, a website page, or even an ebook. Doing so can help those linked pages increase authority and relevancy to search engines as well.

Give Readers a Visual

In a study completed by Skyward, articles published with a relevant infographic or photograph saw total views increase by 94 percent compared to articles in the same category that contained no image. Understandably so, since the human brain is naturally going to notice and respond to images. Using an infographic or photo can help you better explain your point and allow the audience to understand the topic on a deeper level. When incorporating visual elements, it is important to use alt text. Alternative (alt) text attributes a word or phrase to an image, which helps search engines understand the nature and relevance of the image. So, if you own a flower shop, and you write a blog about roses, it is worth your time to change the image name from “IMG1002” to something more like “dozen-roses-in-vase.”

Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly

Considering most searches are conducted from mobile phones, every aspect of your website must be mobile-friendly, including your blog. When a search is made from a mobile device, mobile-friendly data will be displayed first. So, having what we call a “responsive design” on your website could be the thing that allows visitors to find your blog over your competitor’s.

Ready to Get Your Blogs Back on Top?

Our team at The Evoke Group is ready and willing to answer your burning blog questions. We can help you create a content marketing strategy for posting timely and relevant blogs to drive more traffic to your website and money into your pocket!

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