One of the most important parts of search engine optimization, or SEO, is that a site should be updated regularly.
One of the most important aspects of a blog is that it is (theoretically) updated regularly.
It’s simple addition: if your site has a regularly updated blog, your site can benefit from it through SEO. But that’s not the only reason a blog can help Google or Yahoo find your site.
Like we mentioned before, a business blog can be a powerful tool for establishing a good reputation among both customers and business peers alike, but that same blog can also raise your profile for search engine rankings because of the content and potential audience your blog can bring to your site.
Here are the three basic reasons for it, and how you can take advantage:
- Frequent updates: A good way to use your blog is for information that might not warrant a press release (like a sale or new product). Those little news nuggets might happen as frequently as once a day or once a week, but you should make sure you post them on a timely basis. If you don’t have an announcement or something like that over a given time, find something. You might find a news article that deals with your industry, or maybe a customer question gave you an idea for a How-To piece (hey, kind of like this post!) to educate people on self-help tips (which might lead to them coming to your company for extra help). The simple trick, though, is to update your blog regularly. Don’t let it sit too long, or you’ll lose out on good SEO.
- Keywords galore: If you keep your business blog focused on your business, meaning your posts are consistently related to one topic, you’ll probably find yourself filling it with vocabulary and terms related to your business. That’s exactly what you want for search engine optimization. Search engines love key phrases in fresh content. For example, in this post I’m discussing search engine optimization and blogs, so good words for me to include are “search engines”, “seo”, and “blog.” If you’ve made it this far in the post, you’ve probably read those words a few times. If you’re writing a blog about your own industry - let’s say it’s one that focuses on antique toys - you’ll be loading your blog with keywords and phrases like “victorian era toys” or “toy truck” or whatever other terms related to what you sell or do. While those words are naturally in your body copy, don’t forget about your titles, tags and categories. It’s just as important to target words for those areas as it is to include them in your copy.
- Linkbacks got your back: If you’re writing a good blog, you’re already linking to other websites, blogs or news articles that are related to or illustrate your point. For example, SEO for Google has an article on how blogging frequency can improve your Google page rank. And this article talks about what a linkback is, and how it helps blogs. They’re both articles where I did research for this post, so it’s only fair that I reference them, especially if I quote them verbatim. The added benefit is that search engines reward sites that link to relevant content. And if you link to another blog, they might link back to you, sending not only more readers, but further rewarding you with SEO improvements.
Everything I mentioned above is something you can definitely do for your own business, but if you’re like many business owners, you might not have time to keep up on point number 1: frequent posting. That’s where (plug alert!) companies like 360 PSG come in. We offer blogging as a service, written by our staff of copywriters, focused on your business. So if you’re strapped for time, or maybe need a little bit of writing help, give us a call.
