How to Get on the First Page of Google Tip #2
Have you noticed how it seems like everyone has a blog these days? There are a number of reasons blogging has become so prominent in our culture, but probably the biggest reason is the fact that having a blog on your website is good for SEO (search engine optimization) and driving quality traffic to your website. “Content Marketing” is sort of a fancy term for blogging. Content marketing is the future of marketing, and an essential for your online strategy.
Why You Need To Blog
There are many types of blogs. Blogs can provide helpful information for your readers or customers, they can simply be up-to-date news type articles, inspirational or funny personal stories. The list goes on. If adding a blog to your website is going to help your SEO, the best type of blog would be one that has topics that your customers care about and that include a lot of keywords that prospective customers will be searching for on Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Let’s take our example from the first part of this series “How to Get on the First Page of Google” Let’s say you have a website that sells handmade aprons. It’s possible that having a blog about your 5 cats may be something your readers care about (I’m guessing not), but even if it were interesting information for your customers, you’re not selling cats or cat products on your website, so that isn’t going to help your SEO.
A better use of your blog might be to discuss sewing and fabric tips, share recipes and maybe to discuss where to buy other handmade items that your customers might like. Identify what type of person is your ideal customer and their “persona”. Then develop content that would appeal to them. In every article and article headline, it is important to include as many keywords as possible (see previous SEO article for more information on keywords).
The more interesting or helpful your blog, the higher likelihood that people will actually come back to read fresh articles. If you actually develop a following where people are commenting on, sharing and linking to your posts, you will vastly boost your search engine ranking. The more often people go to your website, the more important Google robots thinks it is. The longer someone stays on your website (like to read an entire article), the more important Google thinks your website is.
Adding a blog to your website is likely to do the following:
- Increase your traffic
- Increase the average time spent on your site
- Decrease your “bounce rate”
- Show prospective clients that you are an expert in your field
- Help you beat your competitors in Google ranking
What If No One Reads My Blog?
Here is the good news: If you are writing helpful, quality content and answering questions people have about your industry, you will see results, and people will start finding your blog in search result pages. If you don’t ever develop a huge “following” that’s OK. Plus, the search engine robots are always reading, and it will still greatly help your SEO to be adding fresh content once a week or once a month (or even more frequently). And the best news is that the Googlebots don’t judge or write snarky comments about your posts.
Other Content
If writing a blog isn’t your style, then adding any other type of fresh content to your website is still helpful for your SEO. Keep your website up to date and fresh. That could include changing up the photos or information on the home page, adding new products, adding more pages, adding a type of glossary of industry terms, etc. Any type of new content will alert the search engine robots that they should rescan your website in case there is something new and important, and that helps your Google ranking.