How to Use a Business Blog to Boost Your SEO

A blog helps your SEO, there’s no question. When I’m down the pub talking with strangers about Search Engine Optimisation, there’s heated debate about exactly what gets sites up the Google rankings. Some rave about the archaic art of cramming keywords into your content, some rattle off legends about social bookmarking and backlinks, others insist it’s all in the fundamental building blocks of your website. It might be a combination of all these things, but it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your SEO is, or how high up the rankings you are, it’s the content that people want to share. This is where an effective business blog comes in. It ticks all the boxes, each time its updated, and is a healthy addition to any site’s SEO efforts. Whatever else you do for your SEO, it’s the blog that makes it all worthwhile.

Content worth sharing

The content of your site needs to be worth reading, otherwise however many visitors you get none will stay. And none will return. If your content is worth reading, visitors will share it. If it’s really good, they might even submit it to social bookmarking sites for you – that’s all the massive sites that compile what’s most popular on the internet that day. Even if they share it on social media, like Facebook or Twitter, you’ll get some of those backlinks. A business blog provides benefits over a static site because visitors see your site is worth returning to for updates. Blogs are also easier to share than websites, because all you’ve got to do is click a button.

Easily optimised content

When you run a blog, there are plug ins available that give you simple boxes to fill in each time you make an update. These rearrange titles and URLs, and if you fill in the meta data correctly they ensure descriptions show up in searches. You can type in a keyword for your article and the plugins advise you on areas to improve, including simplicity of writing, how often your keyword appears and where it appears.

Regular updates

Search engines like websites that are consistently updated. A regular blog convinces the search engines your site is still alive. This same logic can be applied to your visitors, clients and customers – a blog keeps your site current, and your business in people’s minds.

Interaction

As with backlinks and social media sharing, a business blog can boost your SEO by providing content for visitors to discussion, and a location for them to discuss it in. Plug ins like Comment Luv let visitors can post links to their own blogs, and if anyone links to your post in another blog you’ll get pingbacks, all of which encourages incoming and outgoing traffic. It tells the world your site is a thoroughfare, a place that people come and go from, rather than a dead end where internet travellers crumble into fits of dusty coughs and give up their online journey.

A business blog as part of an SEO campaign

SEO is a many-faceted beast, and you can hire people to tackle each front separately, including backend design of your site, social media promotion and content updates. But when you combine these elements, it’s your business blog that makes the physically enticing component in your site’s design, it can give you extra details to promote through social media, and it provides a platform for you to place new content. Whatever else you work on for SEO, your blog should be the driving force for what you share.

Source by Phil Art Williams