One of the best practices for businesses that want to boost their website visibility is to blog once a week. As an SEO agency, we recommended this for every client and work to implement it on all of their websites. The clients that have allowed us to create a blog on their site all see improvements, noticing traffic to their site increase within 6 months.
But why do blogs have such a positive effect on websites?
Fresh Content for Search Engine Crawlers
Search engines value fresh content that provides their users with answers to questions. This is why search engines exist. When you create fresh and relevant content and useful blog posts that solve problems, search engines invariably reward that site and gives them a proverbial “thumbs up”; thus displaying the post in a search result.
More Opportunity to Rank for Keyword Phrases
If you’re creating blog posts about relevant content (content should always be relevant!) then fundamentally you’re giving yourself more chances to to boost your SEO rankings for a variety of keyword phrases – the ones you’re including in the post anyway. With targeted blog posts, you can start ranking for keywords which you never thought were possible.
More Credibility
Consistent blogging improves the chances that you and your readers will see you as a credible brand they can always trust. It’s good to be recognised as a trust worthy enough to provide guidance on industry related issues. If a company is sporadic at blogging, then this, for some people, will indefinitely reflect on the company. If you’re blogging everyday, every two days or at least every week, it creates the impression that you’re here to stay.
Holds You Accountable
Getting on a regular schedule makes it much less likely that your previous blog posts will fall by the wayside. Plan and schedule your blog posts like you would your shopping list. You’re much more likely to get everything you need it one trip if you do so, and similarly you’re more likely to make a meal when your ingredients are planned out ahead. It’s much more likely that you’ll actually write a post when you have the topic, keywords and publishing day figured out in advance
More Trust
We’re in an age of transparency, where the savvy customers aren’t as foolish as they once were. Blogs allow you to educate potential customers and not just sell to them. Forbes reported that 32% of online customers said that they would trust a stranger’s opinion on a blog more than they would trust a branded advertisement. A long-term blog plan results in a library of useful resources to educate customers and gain their trust – this will ultimately position you with authority within the industry.
Google Authorship
Google constantly changes its algorithms to refine the way it finds quality and relevant quality related to the search terms people enter. Consistently posting original blog posts on your website and Google+ page makes you more credible and will increase your “AuthorRank”. The higher your rank, the biggerthe chance of your blogs appearing on Google’s first page. Ultimately, this could be the first step toward a new sale if that person clicks the links, reads the quality content and likes what they see.
In addition to this, a good “AuthorRank” will improve authority with people too. Search engines like blogs when the content is linked to a picture of the actual author.
