When prospective customers think about signing up for one of our ongoing plans involving SEO, we almost always recommend adding blogging into that digital strategy. With different levels of blogging (based on research, time to write, etc.), costs, and frequencies, it’s understandable that it can be a bit confusing, and we understand if you’re thinking: “Why should my business spend the extra dollars there? What level of blogging do I need? How will blogging benefit my business?” We’re here to clear that up.

Type of Content

The purpose of a good blog is generally to provide helpful, educational, or interesting information to a target audience. There can be a blend of topics or topic areas, but you should try to showcase your knowledge and credibility. If you’re really researching your target audience and speaking to them, the results can be overwhelming (in a good way). When you publish a post and Google recognizes that users are responding positively (e.g. by commenting or sharing on social media, staying on the page and exploring, etc.) you appear more in search, and more people visit your website. You may even end up earning some links along the way that will help you rank for other relevant searches in the future.

A while back, folks used to just blog with a particular few keywords in mind and essentially create posts that saturated areas of the internet. These posts were repetitive and not that informative. For example: a plumber writing about drain cleaning over and over again, barely giving details, and then offering their services. Because of these situations, Google updated their algorithm to encourage quality content and avoid duplicate or similar content. They essentially are saying “Write great content that is actually helpful to users visiting your website, and we’ll reward you with rankings.” Other SEO-related practices amplify this.

An example of a great blog? Moz.com. Moz is an authority in the SEO industry, and it’s evident. Their blog is focused on SEOs and helping them grow in their profession. They have a regular post every Friday, guest posts from industry influencers, helpful case studies, and more. They are consistent, and almost all of the content they supply resonates with users. They’ve established themselves as an authority, and have become a resource to SEOs. The result of this? Great rankings, regular engagement with their audience, Google basically knowing that they provide quality content and consistently placing them well in search results, and most importantly, selling software to SEOs and getting them to visit conferences. I even tested Moz’ SEO software for the company, and I plan on going to a conference in the future.

Frequency

How frequently you should post blogs depends completely on your industry. For example, a website that discusses cooking could have a blog that supplies recipes and blogs daily. There will probably be competition out there, but if you have a great recipe it can help get you into the mix (and eventually on that first page). On the other hand, an electrician wouldn’t have as much to discuss. They could perhaps touch on common problems or questions they encounter, seasonal issues to be prepared for, or how to maintain your homes electrical system. These could be spaced out monthly.

Regardless of your business, content opportunities are always popping up.

Let’s say you encounter a new problem, and to solve it you look to a search engine. When you search, everything you click isn’t helping you answer the question, or there is nothing relevant related to your search. If you feel like others are having the same problem, you can put out a piece of content that addresses the issue and likely rank for it quite easily (if the content is decent). An example of this was an issue I encountered the other day with a website. There was no good solution for my issue. Once I resolved the issue myself, I documented what I did in the blog post, and now webfeatcomplete.com is ranking for various search phrases related to that blog post.

On the other hand when there are good pieces of content already available and you want to attack a search phrase, you’ll need to take some steps to be successful. For example: reviewing top ranking articles, making sure your article provides all of the reviewed articles (useful) information in some way, and then some additional stuff that might be missing. The goal should be to provide the users that will be reading your article with all of the information they need.

Blogs Can Go A Long Way

Aside from ranking in search engines, blogs can generate a lot of additional exposure through:

• Expanding your SERP real estate through Google Posts
• Indexing more pages
• Earning links
• Sharing on social media
• Appearing in image searches (if you create an associated infographic or visual)
• Appearing in YouTube or video search results (if you include a video with your post)

Use Your Blog to Make Your Business More Money

If you were debating the need for blogs initially, I hope this cleared things up and made the decision an easy one that you can be confident in. A high-quality blog can cost upwards of $300, but it can help you rank for a specific search phrases (and variants of it), earn you links to assist with ranking in the future, and maybe even get your article circulating the web with an infographic (creating citations and additional exposure). That $300 can turn into a ton of exposure that often gets you a meeting or call with a prospective client, or it could even get you a sale.

While you can do blogging yourself, we’ve found that businesses have a tendency to drop the ball on it, unless they hire an in-house writer. It requires a lot of time. We know what it takes to create good content that ranks well, and we’re happy to help if you want to add the blogging boost to your SEO plan.

Related blog posts:

How a Blog Can Benefit Your Website

Engaging Digital Strategies: Blogging Best Practices (Pt 1)

Engaging Digital Strategies: Blogging Best Practices (Pt 2)
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