Another week, another installment in our SEO series!
Today’s topic is blogging. Before you stop reading, did you know that blogging is the easiest way to get the attention of Google’s algorithm? Neither did the people who reached out to our client success specialists with the following FAQs!
Q: Why is blogging important for SEO purposes?
A: Blogging is important for SEO because blog posts are essentially landing pages on your website which contain your anchor/transactional keywords. They also allow you to populate your website with pages that contain answers to specific longtail questions. Additionally, blogs are a good way to update your press releases, which signals to Google that your website has fresh content, and deserves a bump in its search rankings!
Q: Does blog content actually matter for SEO?
A: Absolutely, the bigger site will always be listed first in Google searches where other factors are consistent across the board.
Q: How does blogging help with SEO?
A: Aside from the benefits we’ve already mentioned, you can link other landing pages on your website in your blogs and this can make your website easier to navigate. From Google’s perspective, your website’s structure has been optimized, and this absolutely helps you to inch up in Google search results!
Q: How do I start blogging?
A: The first thing you need to do when you first start to blog for your website is to create a blogging calendar. Don’t simply write about topics that contain your transactional keywords. The easiest way to identify topics is to use those anchor/see keywords and insert them into Google search boxes to look for specific questions that have been asked in relation to those words. As long as you can provide a well-researched answer to those questions, Google will take notice and push your content!
Q: How do I optimize my blog for SEO?
A: You can optimize your blog content for SEO by hosting your blog on your own website. Also, you can optimize each blog post by having a keyword-heavy title tag and meta description tags. Of course, you should be using headers in the writing itself to make it easier to read for humans and for Google’s algorithm. And you can’t forget images, Google loves blogs that have at least one image in them. You can also cross-index your blog content, this means that one blog post should link to another, and vice versa! Lastly, at the home page level, link to your latest blog posts, as this will signal to Google that your website is being updated with fresh content!
Q: How should I format my blog content for SEO?
A: The best way to format your content for SEO is to have your content in a question-and-answer format. Why do you think we’ve been doing this? The reason for this is that Google has been going all out for voice search, meaning Google has been placing a lot of emphasis on its “Featured Snippet” section. This is the part at the top of Google searches where search results are listed for your questions in a numbered format. So if you format your blog content in a way that relates directly to questions being asked in your industry, then it’s only a matter of time before your content is picked up by Google!
