5 Blogging SEO Benefits You Don’t Want to Overlook

Search engine optimization (SEO) increases your visibility, improves your branding, and, most importantly, drives traffic (aka visitors) to your website. But what is SEO blogging?

SEO blogging is blog content that is optimized for search engines.

Sure, writing from the heart and off the top of your head produces content that is usable. But, writing for humans AND optimizing for search engines improves your chances of the right people finding you online.

Most business owners today are able to recognize the importance of increasing online brand presence and visibility. A website without search optimization would be like a brick and mortar business without an address or a name on the door. There would be no way for customers to find you.

Think of your content as a lighthouse for the right people to find you, people who are looking for what you offer.

Blogging SEO benefits continually build your online presence and engage your audience with branded content. This makes both search engines and people happy because they are better able to find you online.

Blogging SEO Benefits – Five Reasons You Need to Start Writing

Blogs make up some of the most important content that you’ll put on your site. They’re more than just a vehicle for keywords. These are five of the best reasons why you should be blogging today, tomorrow, and for as long as you maintain an online presence.

1) Blogs Create Opportunities for Internal Linking

There’s no question that external links from trusted high ranking sites can improve your SEO, but did you know that internal linking is also important?

Internal linking helps your individual blog posts and other pages to rank better in SERPs. These internal links and relevant anchor text form a roadmap for Google, making it easy to understand the “full picture” of what you do, your services, and your offers.

Your home page is likely the page that receives the most traffic, and it is probably the best ranking in terms of targeted keywords. If you want to share some of that trust and authority with your other pages, then you’ll need a healthy collection of links between internal pages.

This doesn’t mean that you need to link to every page. You can create internal links for the important content or whenever a link would be relevant or valuable to your audience.

Internal linking doesn’t just improve SEO. It also helps to improve user experience by making your website easier to navigate. Use links in the body content of your blog to lead visitors to your other posts.  A footer is also a valuable place for linking to other blog posts or pages on your website.

2) Blogs Can Produce Social Media Shares and Backlinks

The blogging benefits from social media shares are becoming increasingly important in terms of SEO. Social media networks like Facebook are already competing with search engines in some markets.

You know that tweets appear in Google search, which is a benefit of Twitter for small business.  Facebook has improved indexing in recent years and is emerging as a competitive platform for local search. Social media is also used for business engagement, so it makes sense that generating shares on these platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn will increase your inbound traffic.

Publishing blogs and sharing them on your social media account will help you to reach a wider audience while also triggering search signals. It doesn’t end there!

Incorporating a social sharing plugin into your website design generates shares directly from users on your posts. This continually expands your reach by leveraging the networks of your own audience. (Be sure to always be promoting your content via social media to get more traffic to your site.)

High-quality, longer-form blog posts generate backlinks from traditional sources like other blogs, forums, and special interest sites. The more high-quality websites that link to your content, the more popular and important your content becomes to Google.

Link building is critical to increasing your site’s ranking. So, it makes sense that the blogging SEO benefits include more backlinking and better ranking in SERPs.

3) More Content Means More Indexing

The benefits of blogging for SEO can be observed in the way that search engines like Google and Bing crawl your web page as it grows. The more pages you have, the more chances there will be for those search engines to pick up on your targeted keywords and start indexing your site.

The quality of the content matters! Modern algorithms look for pages that are rich in content and easy to read. Search engines and social sharing prefer long-form content. Investing in good, evergreen, in-depth content that is longer than 2000 words results in greater impact for your business.

As you grow your site with blog posts, you naturally increase your search rankings by providing fresh content to Google. The more content you have that is categorized by topic and structured by individual blog posts, the easier it is for search engines to crawl.

In fact, websites with blogs have 434% indexed pages.  Search engines see sites with more content as more helpful and give these sites preference (aka higher ranking). Thus, blogging is one simple way to increase search visibility.

4) Blogging Allows You to Expand Your Targeted Keywords

Your core page content, such as your landing pages, About pages, and even product or service pages, can be limiting in terms of keyword density and variety.

Oversaturating your pages with keywords can be detrimental to your search ranking.  Blogging offers you an important way to increase the number of times you can use your main keywords.

Regular blogging also allows you to start targeting more of the secondary keywords that expand your audience reach through search presence.

This allows you a significant amount of creativity, which can help as you try to keep your content fresh and original. Not only will you be able to target the most competitive keywords in your niche but also write blogs on topics that are complementary to your core audience. This could mean engaging with niche target audiences that you may have otherwise missed.

5) Blogging Increases Engagement

High-quality blogs aren’t just about generating links, shares, and opportunities to rank for your keywords. SEO blogging helps bring traffic to your page, but it’s actual engagement and time spent on your web pages that generate leads and increase your brand’s position.

Average session duration, or the time that readers spend on your page, can have a positive impact on your SEO rating. This is why you’ll sometimes see relatively new sites with high search rankings. It’s all about engagement and how active your page is.

If you create quality content that attracts and retains site visitors, then you’ll be in a better position to climb in the search rankings and enjoy the benefits of increased traffic and brand exposure.

Blog for More Than Just an SEO Boost

Understanding the relationship between blogging and SEO benefits is just the first step.

The bottom line is that publishing blogs will always benefit your SEO, providing you are going about it in the right way. The trick is to not fall into the trap of only seeing blogs for their value in terms of search marketing. Blogs are a way to:

• directly engage your audience;
• create discussions and gain feedback through comments;
• launch products, competitions, or surveys;
• make your site more interactive;
• attract your ideal customer;
• boost your authority and influence.

Every blog should bring value to your audience, and you don’t always need to be selling something.

Sharing tips and strategies that serve the needs of your market can be a great way to build rapport and start cementing your authority within your niche. Product reviews, case studies, and even relevant news commentary are other ideas for blogs that will allow you to target a wide audience.

If you’re not blogging already, then you’re essentially stifling the growth of your own brand. Getting started is simple, and it helps if you have a passion for your industry and your work.

These blogging SEO benefits show that sharing your ideas and expertise pays off in the long run for both your business and for the people you’re trying to help. Blogging is one form of content marketing that provides many benefits, SEO and otherwise!

Before you start blogging, you may want to develop a few goals to determine your content. After you’ve been blogging for a while, don’t forget to measure your results to tweak your strategy as needed.

If you need help with your blogging, check out my blog writing services.