Blogging is an excellent SEO tactic, for several reasons. In my naivety I thought that the practice of blogging and guest blogging was reserved for stay-at-home mums who spent large parts of their time discussing new recipes and yoga exercises. Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nowadays, a standard Google search, particularly a query, will not only retrieve relevant websites but will also link you to a host of blog websites where discussions are happening and advice is given out like there’s no tomorrow. So why all the buzz about blogs? The benefits for users are clear; but what are the benefits for the bloggers themselves? That’s actually a very good question.
New content is food for search engine crawlers
Regular blogging is a great way to create new and fresh content for your website. But why does content need to be fresh? Well, moldy old content that’s out of date or talks about something out of date isn’t appealing – to people or to search engines. People are looking for new and relevant information all the time on the internet, and very few, if any posts on the internet are evergreen. Search engines know this and favor websites with fresh content. New content creates opportunities for better interaction with people and, at the same time, helps promote health search engine visibility.
Backlinks
Another dynamic that blogging brings to the table is that it naturally provides opportunities to generate backlinks. Having a number of backlinks with the right quality plays a major part in ranking well in search engine results. Oh, by the way, here’s an article I wrote earlier about the on-page SEO techniques you can use to optimise your blog. See what I did there?
Keywords!
Consistent blogging will give you a platform to rank for certain keywords. The more you blog about and discuss certain topics, such as your town’s marathon, the more visible your website will be to whoever is searching for that particular marathon. The are absolutely no limits to the way you choose to utilise this; just do it the right way.
Blog About Stuff Related to Your Business
Admittedly, it is difficult to combine the the art of blogging about stuff relating to your business, with a local SEO strategy. But it can be done, you just have to get creative. Try and write in a way that’s relevant to your target areas.
Local Events
Local events and places provide great material to blog about. A lot of people might question how this helps you get business, but in reality it has everything to do with getting you business, at least when you’re a local company and gunning for the local consumers. It’s a well known fact that people appreciate businesses that are involved in the community – why do you think big companies like Sainsbury’s are always advertising special charity runs they’re involved in? It’s also a good way to get your brand name out to local people who are looking at reviews.
Plus, when you blog about other local companies, those companies are often very appreciative and great relationships between the two business can be forged as a results. Local businesses that you write about will even mention you in their blog, putting you directly into their audience stream.
So, to summarise, there are several ways of using the internet to get more business from local searches, but blogging for local SEO remains an extremely effective way to do so.
