Will blogging boost my SEO performance?

Blogging will boost your SEO. Fact or fiction? 

It’s not quite as clear as that. There’s no denying that there are significant SEO benefits to regular blogging and that when used correctly it can be a lynchpin in your SEO efforts. But that doesn’t mean rolling out one blog on its own will see you jumping to the first page of Google. 

It’s not all doom and gloom. Because there are a few things that you can do to make sure your blogs do boost your SEO performance. So strap in and get ready to change your approach to blogging.

Blogging and SEO, a complicated relationship

Google loves new content. It’s all shiny and new and like Magpies, Google can’t stay away. Blogs give your website shiny, new, fresh content. Every time you add a new blog to your website (and index it!) Google’s reminded that your website exists and that it’s still being updated.

Regular blogs combined with great SEO fundamentals are what provide your SEO boost. The misconception is that blogging alone will catapult your site up the rankings. Without SEO fundamentals you might see a slight increase in your ranking but your site isn’t going to become the lead machine it could be.

If you’re looking for the short answer - yes blogging can boost your SEO performance. But the longer answer is it’s a little more complicated.

Tips to help blogs give you an SEO boost

So what can you do to give your blogs that extra edge? When it comes to using blogs as an SEO tool a lot comes down to the nuts and bolts. The unsexy bits. Formatting, keywords, consistency. But thankfully for you, those are the bits that you can do something about.

Keywords are all around us

The starting point is to make sure your blog is about something your audience is talking about. To figure that our you need to do some research. Keyword research sounds daunting and complicated but it’s all about finding words or short phrases that relate to your services and that people are searching for. 

You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public or a paid SEO tool like UberSuggest to do the heavy lifting for you. 

What you’re looking for is a word or short phrase that has search volume but low difficulty. Then you can tailor your blog topic around that keyword or keyphrase.

EEAT

It’s not a typo. It’s the framework Google uses when talking about SEO. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trustworthy. 

In a nutshell it means that you need to show you know what you’re talking about by creating a source of knowledge for your audience. It’s not something that one blog can achieve on its own, but focusing your blogs around one or two topics, subject areas or pillars will help you over time.

Schedule it

Google loves regular content. It loves things being updated. It loves regular, quality blogs. One blog on its own doesn’t create regular content. A series of blogs published on a regular basis on the other hand, well that’s Google’s favourite kind.

When you start on your blogging journey don’t think about sporadic, ad hoc, when you have the time. Think regular, consistent, long-term. That means you need to devise a schedule for your blogs that you can stick to. That might be monthly, fortnightly, weekly, the frequency isn’t as important as the consistency.

Though the more you can stick to on a regular schedule the better.

Headline act

How many articles or search results have you glossed over because the headline didn’t appeal? 

Your headline needs to be clear, concise and, if it works, include your keyword or phrase. You want it be appealing, catchy but explicit about what you’re going to get from the article. Hey - no one said this was easy!

When it comes to headlines try a few different ones, play around with it, and if you really need help there are headline analyser tools out there to give you some inspiration.

Linky link

Your blogs shouldn’t exist in a silo. They need to become part of the fabric of your website. How do you do that? By linking. 

Internal links help your audience move from one topic to another, creating an intricate web of blogs to keep your audience engaged, and most importantly on your site. Think of it like Wikipedia - you go to it to find one thing, then you click on another topic, then another, then another, until you’re still there half an hour later with no idea how you got there.

But we don’t just want internal links. We also want external links to help build your authority. If you mention a stat, link to it. If you mention a resource, link to it. 

Don’t go crazy with the external links but use them to show you’ve done your homework and you’re trustworthy.

It’s all about the formatting

The words on the page aren’t the only thing that matters. The formatting of those words matters. So here are the few things that you need to remember when it comes to formatting your blogs.

Meta descriptions

This is the handy sentence or two that search engines display when looking for it. Keep it short - 155-160 characters and make sure you incorporate your keyword or phrase in a relevant way.

H1, H2, H3…

These need to be used in a hierarchical order starting with H1 for your headline then H2 for your main sections and H3s for any subheadings. 

Heading tags are for far more than just formatting. They help Google to understand what your article is about as well as breaking it into easy-to-read sections.

Alt tags

Make sure when you’re using images you fill out the alt tag. This little feature is to help those who are visually impaired understand what the image is about. That means actually describing the image and if appropriate using your keyword or phrase rather than stuffing it with irrelevant things.

But…

You can write the best blog packed with beautiful formatting but if the rest of your website isn't SEO optimised - if it’s slow to load, if it’s not user friendly, if it’s not relevant then you won’t see the SEO benefits. 

Remember, blogs are one part of your SEO efforts but everything else needs to work with your blogs for you to get that all-important SEO boost.