We often find people asking “why is it important to blog on my website?” That question is understandable: for many people, the word “blog” brings up visions of hokey-looking Web 1.0 journaling sites that seem wholly irrelevant today. But is blogging relevant in 2021? For your business, it absolutely can be, because blogging helps with search engine optimization (SEO) on your website. Here are the basics on why blogging can help your business website’s SEO and can improve your Google search ranking.
Blogging helps keep your website fresh–naturally
Google’s algorithm is built to best serve it’s users, who are people visiting it as a search engine. This statement sounds obvious, but it’s key to understanding how SEO works and how blogging can help. Google users trust up-to-date information and websites that they know are accurate, which means Google’s algorithm tends to favor sites that are kept up-to-date. Because you may not have a natural reason to be consistently updating your homepage, a weekly or monthly blog post allows you to keep your homepage stable while still updating your website with new content that Google can index to see that your business is still active. This helps Google view your website as high-quality content that its users will want to see, potentially helping your search ranking.
New blog posts give your site more opportunities to show up in searches
By default, Google will index every unique page on your website (unless you tell it not to). That means that each page has the opportunity to show up in Google searches. A high-quality blog post full of relevant keywords, timely content, and useful information (more on all these below) will just be another avenue for Google users to find your website in their searches. This is especially important seeing as each individual URL on your site is another opportunity for an organic search result, which over 70% of Google users trust and prioritize over paid search results.
Blog posts let you integrate specific and targeted keywords
Keywords are hugely important for helping connect Google search users with websites that are relevant to their queries. While it’s relatively easy for a website to include common, basic search terms in their copy, more targeted, specific keywords/search terms (“long-tail” keywords) can be harder to integrate. For example, a Mexican restaurant may include the keyword “Mexican food” in their website copy without even trying, but that search term will likely be too broad for them to ever rank highly. They may find it more effective to try and rank for the search term “best burritos al pastor in Minneapolis,” but this bulky search term can be more difficult to integrate into a home page without seeming unnatural. But a blog post about “what makes a great burrito al pastor” gives this restaurant the chance to get that tricky long-tail keyword onto their website while still offering up copy and content their visitors want to read.
Blogging helps create links between websites
One of the ways Google’s algorithm determines the quality of a website is by tracking links between that site and others. A page that links to established, high-quality, relevant sites can be seen as more relevant itself, increasing its search ranking. Blogging gives a website owner a great opportunity to link to outside sites–whatever the topic, it’s likely that a writer can find news, studies, expert opinions, and other reputable sources that support whatever point the blog is trying to make, and these links can then make the blog page appear more relevant in searches. (Be careful to make sure everything included is naturally relevant and high-quality, though–Google has plenty of smart tools to weed out link farms, link networks, and other low-quality ways people try to game the algorithm.) As a slight tangent, blogs also allow you to link to other pages on your website–a well-connected website with pages that link back to each other is incredibly useful for your visitors and can itself help increase your search rankings.
Show your authoritative knowledge with your blog posts
Even better than linking to outside websites is when other reputable websites link back to your page–if Google sees that a trusted website (or better, websites) considers your site itself to be a trusted source, your reputation (and your search rankings) can skyrocket. It’s the Google equivalent of having a company insider giving you a strong reference when you apply for a job!
To do this, you need to showcase your site or company as an authoritative source of information, and blog posts give you the perfect opportunity to share useful, accurate, and important information that builds your credibility in the eyes of search users and others in your industry. Of course, this type of content marketing helps with more than just back-linking–strong content that pulls users in and leaves them satisfied is a great way of increasing your lead generation, which is good for business in and of itself but also further signals to Google how high-quality your site is.
As you can see, blogging is far from irrelevant, at least for businesses looking to improve their SEO and search rankings–and this isn’t even an exhaustive list! Blogging may take a bit of time investment, but it can be a great way of increasing your website’s reach so long as you’re willing to commit to regularly uploading high-quality blog posts. If that sounds like more than you’re able to do, we’re here to help. Skol Marketing can handle all your digital business marketing needs, including making sure your website includes consistent, useful, and relevant blog posts. If you’d prefer one-on-one guidance or would like to discuss how our assistance can help you improve your search rankings, please don’t hesitate to contact the local SEO experts at Skol Marketing.
