The main objective of any company website is to attract an audience and convert visitors to sales. The best way to achieve this is through search engine optimization (SEO). Successful SEO relies heavily on the presentation of valuable content. From social media posts to corporate blogging, companies can achieve favorable search engine results that generate quality leads and sales growth.
People search the internet for solutions to a problem. Google sees more than 2.2 million searches every day. Unfortunately, there are 1.74 billion websites across the world competing for users’ attention. A website’s ranking among those searches is critical to a business’s success. A company’s site’s objective is to use organic search results to draw website traffic that is high in not only quality but quantity as well. This is how SEO works.
SEO is all about comprehending the subjects and products people are researching online. It’s also about understanding the phrases they’re entering into their web browsers to locate that information. Then, it’s using that data to create content for your site that search engines will identify. When successful, your company will appear at the top of web searches, driving traffic, and increasing ROI.
Content Marketing and SEO
From relevant keywords to links from other websites, there are several ways to optimize your website for SEO success. One of the most critical elements of SEO success is content marketing. By creating relevant, useful information, you attract a high-quality audience who is interested in the products you offer. Corporate blogging is an effective element for your content marketing strategy.
Weblogs began as a platform for individuals to use in their personal life. Much like an online diary, they allowed people to share thoughts and opinions on various subjects. Eventually, companies realized these blogs had value for their business. Today, 52% of marketers claim that their most vital content marketing tactic is blogging.
Corporate blogs are informational posts online that present content about a subject for a specific industry. By sharing ideas and interests, blogs help search engines improve the quality of their search results. Search engines aim to provide users with websites that meet their needs and answer their questions. Websites and blogs that provide consistently, reliable information will rank higher in search engine results.
How Blogs Specifically Impact Search Results
Search engines can scan, assess, and process the content of your website. This is called search engine crawling. Once complete, the search engine will index your web pages. They’re categorized and ranked in order based on relevancy. Therefore, your blogs need to provide useful information with strategic keywords that people use to search for your services.
Blogs that most effectively meet the needs of their audience are considered a reliable resource for users. This leads to higher rankings in search engine results. By appearing at the forefront of online results, you reach a broader target audience, leading to increased traffic. Studies show that 66% of businesses that incorporate blogs into their SEO strategy generate more leads than those who don’t.
Blogs are all about providing useful information. They’re an excellent opportunity to offer custom content that attracts readers and yields positive search engine results.
Primary Benefits of Blogs for SEO
Content marketing plays a large role in search engine results. Blogs are an invaluable element of content marketing that can offer numerous benefits to your digital marketing strategy. Here are six ways blogs directly impact your SEO.
1. Allow You to Target Particular Keywords
A significant benefit to blogging is there is no limit to what you can post about. If you want to attract a particular subgroup of people or appear in searches for a specific topic, you can simply write a blog centered around that need. If you’re not sure what keywords you should target, do some research. There are resources available that can show you what keywords are trending or frequently used. Once you’ve identified these keywords, you can create content that incorporates those phrases.
Whether you create posts based on keywords your company wants to address or terms you’ve identified through research, blogs are an effective and easy way to develop custom, quality content. By targeting particular keywords, you’re able to increase your website’s chances of appearing in search results. This broadens your audience and boosts your opportunity for conversions.
2. Provide Greater Visibility
Blogs are rich in content, so they provide opportunities for a larger quantity of carefully placed keywords. This provides more material for search engines to pick up on when they’re crawling your site. As a result, you’re not only able to connect with a broader assortment of search queries. Your company website appears to a more diverse pool of users.
By casting a wider net, you bring your website to the attention of more prospects. This higher visibility helps drive traffic to your site and increases the chance for conversions. Studies show that companies that incorporate blogs into their digital marketing plan see 55% more visitors on their sites.
A typical website is limited in the amount of content it can provide. Sites that don’t include blogs hinder a company’s ability to reach a broader, higher quality target audience.
3. Support Link Outreach
Blogs are an easy way to connect and provide further useful information to your audience through external and internal sources. In fact, they bring companies 97% more links to their website.
An article written about a topic covered by someone else allows you to link back to that other article. Or, businesses who have already created backlinks to that article could offer links to their blog posts. By reaching out to these sources and sharing information, you not only strengthen your credibility. You expand your reach and broaden your audience. All of this leads to successful SEO.
You can also incorporate internal links in your posts, sending readers to other pages on your own website. You’ve most likely provided a variety of valuable information on your site. Keep readers on your website while providing more details on the topics that interest them. This helps readers continue to view you as a valuable resource, increases click-through rates, and boosts your conversions chance.
4. Provide More Material for Indexing
Search engines aim to deliver reliable and credible results to their users. To do this, they measure a website’s validity before offering it as an option to viewers. While there are several factors to determine whether a website measures up, sites that offer several pages of valuable content are typically identified as a more credible source for answers and solutions. One way to include more pages of meaningful material on your site is through blogs.
By posting blogs on your site, you offer search engines more content to crawl. Certain information, like whether a website is current or what keywords are used, is logged in the search index. To give you an idea, Google has indexed hundreds of billions of webpages. These pages are included in entries for all of the keywords they use. Therefore, the more indexed pages you have, the higher you can rank in online search results.
5. Help You to Remain Current
An inactive website has multiple negative effects. First, your company loses credibility. People lose trust in your services and wonder whether you’re even still in business. Second, it signifies to search engines that you aren’t providing meaningful information to users, and therefore shouldn’t be included in search engine results.
To be considered a valuable resource, your website must be current and active. Search engines won’t promote a business whose site is outdated. Continual updates indicate that your website is providing relevant information. This gives search engines reason to index your pages and continue to include your website in their findings.
General website pages don’t always offer opportunities to add new information continually. Blogs, on the other hand, are an ongoing source of fresh and current content. They maintain your stance as an authority in your field, and they help in SEO.
6. Promote User Engagement
User experience is essential when it comes to SEO. Search engines want to provide readers with results that engage and entice them. If your site can provide a unique experience, you’re more likely to appear higher in search result placement.
Blogs allow for a range of creativity in content development. You’re not limited to simple text articles. You can create eye-catching infographics that provide valuable information at a glance. You can also include images that enhance the message of your post. In fact, more than half of the world’s bloggers use more than one image in their posts. Images can help break up large amounts of text and make information easier to digest.
Whether it’s dynamic information or visual interest, it isn’t difficult to develop engaging content. Anything you can do to make your blog more appealing to your audience will only help boost your SEO results.
7. Enable You to Maintain Expertise, Authority, and Trust
To promote quality sources to its readers, Google uses an algorithm focusing on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust (E-A-T). This enables them to determine the content relevancy for every page they index. Offline, someone manually analyzes a website to judge its quality. This person employs E-A-T guidelines to assess whether high-quality websites have been awarded high search rankings.
For a website to receive a high online ranking, both the site and the content author must be high-quality per the three categories of E-A-T:
- Expertise: provide suitable credentials, like industry awards or a college degree.
- Authority: how outside sources rate the website/content quality (Is it factually accurate? Can experts support it?); citations and the sites on which content appears give writers authority.
- Trust: website provides valid information and credible links; sources can be cited.
Since blogs are purely content, they’re a perfect vehicle for Google’s E-A-T guidelines. You’re able to maintain a level of expertise in your field. Your business can present itself as an authority on a variety of topics. Even more importantly, you can build trust among your audience that can lead to brand loyalty and sales growth. Blogs following E-A-T guidelines can help increase the likelihood that your website will achieve high search rankings.
8. Keep People On Your Site
Search engines aim to provide viewers with valuable information so they’ll continue to use that service. If a reader clicks on a top-ranked website, deems it useless, and abandons the page, the search engine learns it hasn’t done its job properly. But if a user chooses a result and remains on the site, the search engine identifies the site as useful and will continue to rank it at the top of its results.
Blogs are a great way to keep people on your site. Statistics show that the ideal length for a blog article is 1,600 words. That’s seven minutes of reading time – meaning seven minutes that a visitor is on your page and learning about your services. The more frequently you can encourage users to stay on your page for longer amounts of time, the better your SEO will be.
9. Build a Connection with Your Audience
When you create blog posts with valuable information that resonates with your audience, people are more inclined to share the information with their own contacts. This helps build a community of like-minded people with shared interests. Such a community helps to strengthen brand loyalty and, ultimately, lead to conversions.
Through blog sharing, your audience helps you expand your reach, drive new traffic to your site, and keep people returning to your page for more helpful content. The more traffic and recurring visitors you have, the more search engines will recognize your website as a valuable resource. This increases your credibility and boosts SEO.
Boost your Blogging Strategy with DeltaV Digital
When seeking to improve SEO, marketing managers should consider investing in content, and especially in corporate blogging. DeltaV Digital aims to help businesses who view digital marketing as a growth driver. We understand that SEO is complex, and success requires a well-defined strategy. Our knowledge of web platforms and search engine algorithms can help you develop a corporate blogging strategy that can help deliver SEO goals.
Contact us today to transform your digital efforts from good to great.
