Does Blogging Help SEO? Absolutely!

A question or skepticism that comes time and time again is “How does blogging help better my website’s SEO?” Unfortunately the answer isn’t as simple as “more traffic = more leads/conversions” as much as we would like that to be the case. In reality there are two big reasons that blogging plays such a major role in SEO performance of a website; Indirect ranking improvements and brand awareness.

Blogging Helps SEO Indirectly

When we use the term “indirect ranking improvement” what we mean is essentially using the blog pages to help elevate the rankings of other pages on the website (typically the category and product/services pages). 

How Do Blogs Help Boost Page Values?

Well, Google and other search engines don’t just look at a webpage and give it a thumbs up or down. Let’s be realistic, the internet just isn’t the same as it was in the early 2000’s.

While search engines do take a look at the individual on-page elements, some other big indicators include the linking strategy on the website (site architecture) and the authority that the website/business has in the industry. Both of which are elevated through a proper blogging strategy.

Internal Linking Strategy is Important for Successful SEO

So linking from one page to another boosts the destination page? Once again, yes but also no.

Linking PROPERLY from one page to another helps boost ranking…

What determines proper linking? Intent matching, anchor text, and number of on page links. (There are others but we’ll focus on those as the most important for now.)

Blogging works into this strategy by giving more locations for proper links, but also allowing us to work the links naturally into the content so they can match the intent and anchor text that we desire to boost the destination page of the link for. 

Without blogs, many of the pages on potential clients sites would just be a conglomeration of “Read More”, “Learn More”, and “Click Here” links that no one wants to rank for.

Blogging Boosts Industry Authority

The other important factor that blogging helps to boost is industry authority. No matter what the search term is, Google is only going to show a website in search results if it is absolutely sure that it serves the answer to the query, and a big part of that is authority in the industry.

Blogging helps to boost this by providing a significant amount of content surrounding the website’s industry. 

Let’s put it this way, if you need your car repaired are you going to visit the nearest person that says they also drive every now and again, or are you going to find a certified-mechanic that can provide you with detailed information about the different sounds you might be hearing, their location, and the causes of each before even bringing your car in? Probably the latter. Google looks for the same sort of reputation that is built up through indicating a wealth of knowledge around a certain industry.

Brand Awareness From Answering Common Questions in Blogs

Now that we’ve covered how blogging indirectly affects a website’s search visibility, how does blogging directly affect search visibility? By creating new keyword rankings that boost brand awareness.

A conversion funnel is a funny thing, not all customers are ready to make a purchase right on the spot. Some are doing research, some are comparing different items or services, and some aren’t even aware of the needs they have yet.

Blogging helps raise this brand awareness by targeting these areas of the conversion funnel, driving awareness of certain issues that someone might have and how it ties in with the offerings, answering questions of comparison and leveraging why the website’s offerings may be better than other variations, and in general providing helpful information for new visitors.

While visitors may not make a purchase or convert that day, creating the content that helps them in their path helps to generate more brand awareness and visibility and increases the likelihood that when they do need the offering the visitors will likely remember the website that helped them along the way.