Blogging provides a unique opportunity to improve your website’s search engine rankings and can play a key role in an effective digital marketing strategy. However, there are a number of pitfalls to avoid, especially with the way search engine algorithms are constantly evolving.
According to Worldometers, there are around 200,000 blogs posted on the internet every hour, so in order to achieve great results, you need to be willing to put the time and effort in to make yours stand out. In this post, we look at ways to do just that and create a blog that genuinely boosts your search marketing.
1. Publish quality content
Any good SEO company will tell you that the secret to great blogging success is to make sure your blog posts are of a high quality. While it makes perfect sense to adopt some search marketing ‘best practices’, there is simply no shortcut or substitute for great content.
“The key is to focus on creating quality content that provides useful information to your audience,” says Daniel Faggella, a digital marketing expert writing for Search Engine Land. “If you want to rank number one for a keyword, then create content that deserves to be ranked number one.”
2.Think about your audience
When creating a new blog post, you need to think carefully about the audience you want to attract and what you hope they will get from reading it. Are you hoping it will be read by existing customers of your business, or new customers? Maybe you want it to be read by other business owners or customers in a different part of the world.
True search marketing success also involves thinking about what your target audience is using search engines for. Sites like Google hope people will use them to solve problems or find content that educates or entertains them. If you are looking to solve your audience’s problems, for instance, you need to find their ‘pain points’, and this can only be achieved by talking to the very people you are trying to appeal to.
3. Target keywords carefully
Blogging provides an ideal opportunity to target keywords, but updates to the Google search algorithms have meant that this is no longer as straightforward as putting a keyword in your blog title and repeating the word throughout your post. Instead, you need to make sure they make sense within the context of an article and have value.
Finding out what keywords your audience is using is key and search phrases will often indicate what type of content they are interested in. Therefore you should do your keyword research first and then come up with a blog topic that fits with them. Ideally, all of your keywords should share the same searcher intent. Put simply, this means that someone searching your first keyword should have roughly the same goal or intention as a person searching for your second keyword. However, avoid repeating your keywords too many times in the same post, as this is bad practice.
4.Try to offer unique value
Next, you need to think of ways to offer something that is truly unique to your readers, so that they keep coming back. Return visitors can be a huge boost to your search rankings, but offering unique value requires research. Look at what is being offered by other popular sites within your space and think of ways to differentiate yourself.
“Obviously, what you write is going to be different than what other people have written,” says Rand Fishkin, writing for Moz. “But how are you providing value that is different from what other people have provided?” This may be through offering unique information, or by presenting information in a unique way.
5. Get quality backlinks
Finally, achieving a good search engine ranking relies on links to your blog or website, but this is also not as simple as it once was. As with keywords, Google’s algorithm updates have tried to force search marketers to focus on quality, rather than quantity. Link building strategies can still pay off, but proceed with caution.
In addition, it pays to share content on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Increasingly, there is a view of digital marketing that social media sites should be treated as search engines in their own right because people use them to find content. Sharing to Facebook and Twitter can also greatly increase your brand visibility and have a positive effect on your rankings if your content is picked up by other sites or blogs.
Christelle Macri is the founder of Ebizpromotion, a leading SEO company in Berkshire, with a no-nonsense and ethical approach to digital marketing. She is also search engine consultant with over 17 years experience in the internet advertising industry. Having worked for a major search engine and pioneering pay for performance advertising networks, she is an expert at turning her clients’ websites into consistent revenue streams, using a variety of digital channels.
