You would think a blog isn’t important for all businesses, like a plumber or a title agency. Who wants to read about the day to day menial tasks of these industries? Well, there’s probably someone out there who does. You can also play off current events or the time of the year and tie it back to your business. Like our blog post from last Fall “Halloween Costumes Related To Online Marketing“. Even if you’re having a hard time brainstorming blog topic for a business, it’s important to push out quality content. Here are five reasons why a blog is important for SEO.
It offers a steady stream of fresh content
Whether you update your blog every week or every day, you’re contributing fresh content that Google likes. Your service and about pages on your website may not change much, if at all. A blog will help your website stay relevant and rank higher. Search engines like to show the newest and most relevant content. Those keyword rich blog posts will show up and, in turn, will drive traffic to your website.
It’s a good way to implement long-tail keywords
Your blog likely won’t receive much traffic for those competitive keywords you’re trying to rank out for. Blog posts on your website are a great way to use long-tail keywords that maybe your competitors haven’t even thought of. For example, a local hotel in Chicago might be trying to rank for the keyword “Chicago hotels” but is also targeting the long-tail keyword “Chicago hotels near Navy Pier.” They could write up a blog post titled “How To Spend Date Night At Navy Pier” and tie it back to their hotel using their chosen long-tail keyword.
More blogs, more pages
The more pages you have on your website that are relevant to your business, the more likely you’ll rank for search terms related to your business. This is why it’s important to implement keywords into your blog posts that you’re targeting. Each blog page is one more opportunity to rank higher on search.
Backlinking
A link for a link. Seek out relevant and quality companies to link to in your blog posts and they may provide a link to your website on theirs. This could help generate more traffic to your website, and you’re helping someone else out too. Building these relationships with relevant companies are key, and relevance is important. Websites that link to your site that have nothing to do with your industry will look fishy to Google and hurt your rankings.
Blog Posts Are Sharable
People love to share blog posts on their social media pages. More people are going to share a relevant blog post over a company’s service page. Think about your target audience and write about things they care about in a way that makes sense to them. The more social media shares a blog post gets, the more people will click, re-share, and explore other pages on your website. Blog posts are great content for sharing on your company’s social media pages too. While Google likes to show the most relevant content first, they also like to show popular and frequently shared content too.
If you don’t have a blog on your website yet, what are you waiting for? Your customers will love hearing what you have to say and Google will love that your website is updated and relevant.