SEO & Blogging = a Match Made in Heaven?

SEO and blogging form the backbone of content marketing, something that every serious business and marketer should be doing today to grow their online presence. Have you heard the term? Learn it well. Unless you are satisfied with your current cyber status.

Having a good-looking website is not enough. It’s hard to attract business with a few static web pages; those won’t bring you traffic, leads, and sales, or develop your brand.Blog writing and search engine optimization can, however. All you need is a content strategy.

Search engine traffic is valuable. People who click through to your site are targeted users who are probably interested in what you have to say and sell. A listing near the top of Google can deliver more traffic than banner ads, email, and print media combined!

How do you get your website to the top of SERPs? Content creation. You blog consistently. Every post you publish is another indexed page – another cue to search engines that your site is active and eager to be found. Many businesses blog solely for traffic.

If you optimize your pages correctly, your chances of ranking are even higher.

On-page and off-page search optimization complement business blogging really well. One might even say they are a match made in heaven.

Blog writing isn’t just about getting hits, though. It’s about building a readership and effectively engaging an audience. That is what keeps prospects coming back. It’s also about establishing thought leadership and developing authority in your industry.

Are you taking full advantage of these marketing practices? Can you afford not to?

Here’s a closer look at why you should be using SEO and blog content writing as a marketing strategy and how leveraging them can be beneficial.

Boost Web Traffic

Late last year, HubSpot surveyed over 7,000 businesses to determine the impact that certain inbound marketing activities have on website traffic generation, business blogging being one of them. The results are interesting, but not surprising.

Companies with 51+ website pages get 48% more traffic, and those that publish 15+ blog posts monthly get 5x more traffic than non-bloggers. B2C (business to consumer) companies see a 59% increase in traffic once they grow their blog repertoire from 100 articles to 200.

Inspiring, right? Now look at some SEO statistics to get the full picture. Looking at the stats, it is easy to see how search engine optimization and blog writing can work together to increase your visibility on the web and get visitors to your site, products, and services.

Improve Search Engine Rankings

Speaking of visibility, better overall website rankings is another major benefit of SEO and blogging. Content freshness is a key Google ranking factor. Sites that blog often, particularly on trending topics, tend to have a higher PageRank and appear in results pages often for queries.

The quality and quantity of links to and from (and within) a site are also an important ranking signal. A good link profile, which you can achieve through ‘white hat’ search engine optimization and web blogging, can give website rankings a nudge in the right direction.

Off-page optimization methods like blog commenting, review article writing, and link baiting are still effective for driving traffic, as long as you remember that you are link building and not “link scheming.” The trick is to focus on quality and relevance.

Generate Sales Leads

Coming back to the HubSpot marketing benchmarks study mentioned above, B2B and B2C companies with websites containing 100+ pages generate 2.5x more leads than those with 50 or less. Sites with 200+ blog articles get 5x more leads than those with 10 or less.

Businesses that make blogging part of their online marketing strategy get significantly more sales leads. Why? More indexed pages. More inbound links. More call-to-actions. More social media interaction. Useful weblog content also nurtures trust – this instils buying confidence.

How does search engine optimization generate leads? On-page optimization makes your pages easier to crawl, so the chances that they will show up in SERPs and draw traffic are higher. Off-page SEO drives traffic from other sources, which can also help you rank.

Establish Authority

Smart companies use their blogging section to answer frequently asked questions and solve problems. If you constantly create content that is genuinely helpful, you can establish authority. This can improve customer retention, land you sales, and attract referral clients.

Imagine instantly pointing a confused customer to an informative post on your website that answers all their questions in detail. What kind of effect could that have? Or what if a lead stumbled across a highly educational post that solved an untackled industry problem.

SEO can help build authority, too. Every high-quality guest post you write, press release you distribute, and forum thread you create conveys to prospects that you are an expert in your field. In addition, if your site appears in the SERPs often, there is the brand recall benefit.

Why Businesses Don’t Blog and SEO

The biggest challenges companies face when it comes to blogging and optimizing for the web are time and resources. Many cite not having enough time to create and distribute engaging content, and those that do do not have the skills. These barriers can be overcome, however.

Outsourcing is a good solution. It won’t take you very long to find a good blog writing service or SEO specialists, and the additional cost will be justified once you see the returns. Another option is hiring an in-house team to handle your online marketing, though this could be costly.

Whichever option you choose, know that the numbers do not lie and that increased web traffic, leads, and authority translate to more sales and profits. If you haven’t already, take your business to the next level with content marketing. Your competitors have.

Are you using blogging and SEO to your company’s benefit? What results have you seen since you started? Let us know in the comments.