The word "Blog", is a shortened version of the original word, weblog. Weblogs, originally popularised by Jorn Barger, then later become a noun, "to blog", and is now what we know as blogging. Blogs were beginning to gain popularity in the 1990's, and have since grown into anyone and everyone's way to share their knowledge or insights, thoughts and feelings into any topic of their choosing.
Blogging and It's Uses
It is certainly rather meta to be writing a blog on our website as to why blogging on a website can help you and your SEO. Blogs just to happen to be a very useful and easily digestible way of getting that information across to a reader.
Within the rest of this blog, we will break down exactly why blogging is good for your website and business as a whole and how to write a blog in the best way for a reader to take in all the information and opinions you are throwing at them.
Blogs Help User Retention and Decrease Bounce Rate
Having useful and informative blog posts on your website can keep an audience captivated for longer and help keep your statistics up in the process. As long as the content within your blogs are actually useful and well written, your blogs can keep someone captivated for longer than just the contents of the main parts of your website.
Obviously, what and how you write a blog is a major factor in how good the retention of your audience is. Making sure you have subjects related to the main focus of your website is a must and blog subjects surrounding that or answering questions people might have about what you do or how something works is a sure fire way to keep users reading and engaged.
If your website has a low bounce rate, then Google will more often than not recommend your blogs and content over other peoples. A bounce rate, is defined as how long it takes for someone to click onto your website and immediately leave that site ,or more specifically, that certain webpage. The longer someone spends on a particular page, you can judge that page to be more engaging and thus, more of a success on your website than if someone spends 10 or less seconds on a page and immediately leaves. Having a blog for someone to read and stay on that page for longer due to your well crafted content, can be an especially great judgement of what parts of your website you need to change. It's also an indication more specifically of what blog posts topics do and don't do so well by measuring how long a group of people spend on what blog posts.
Appearing On the Front Page of Google
This isn't a guaranteed thing to happen for your blog by any means. By blogging for a long time and consistently adding more and more content to your website, you can give the Google algorithm many more reasons to add your website to it's front page.
As an example, just by searching "How best to decorate a Christmas tree", after the paid Ads is a blog right at the top of the search best outlining how to decorate your tree.
Factors that are involved with getting your blogs featured on the front page of Google are as follows:
• How many blogs you have
• The quality of the content
• The subjects you choose to write about
• How long the blog is/how well structured it is
• How frequently you post blogs
In regards to how many blogs you have, it should not be your priority to write out as many blog pieces as you can as quick as possible. This won't get you anywhere. Instead, you should focus on posting on a schedule, every week if possible, but even every other week or once a month is going to do wonders for your website. Quality over quantity in this regard is much more likely to get you noticed by Google than if you write a blog of 200 words of so everyday. By making sure to add content in controlled and structured amounts, making sure to not waffle as you do, Google will have to index these new pages on your website. This means your site will be refreshed in a sense and have a slightly higher chance of appearing on Google's front page.
When deciding what what topics to write about, make sure to do your research. the research stage is just as important if not even more important than the writing stage of creating a fully fledged blog post. In order to captivate your audience and make them just as enthused in your topic of choice as you are, you want to try and make that passion you have come through in your writing. It especially helps to know and enjoy what you are writing about so that you can give an unbiased and enlightening stance on your chosen subject.
Even if you enjoy something, someone reading your blog might only be encountering it for the first time. Give your readers the guidance they need to form their opinion on your chosen topic before you tell them your stance of your own. Not only is it terrible writing to give your opinion first, but giving your reader the time to come to their own conclusion on the matter before bringing your own bias into the equation is just a much better way to write any piece of literature, especially a blog post.
When you eventually get lots of well written pieces on your website, Google will start to see them more often, since you have a lot to look through, and begin to share the best ones with people searching for questions or topics related to what you wrote about. This can then lead more and more people to your blog and in turn your website.
What are the Actual Good Qualities of a Blog Post?
How you structure you blog with depend on what subject matter who are writing about and to what capacity you are writing about it. That being said, there are several characteristic of a good blog post that should be taken as a guideline.
Writing around 1400 words or more is the optimal amount that we have found, but Hubspot have done some recent research on this subject. Through their data, they suggest a blog of 2500 words is what you should aim for, just based on where the most lead generation was created for their own blogs.
Having links in your blog is also a good thing to do. Not only can you link to sources of other people to show off specific points with more credibility, but it can also get you a link back from someone you linked to if they are generous enough. We wouldn't suggest linking to just anyone and everyone as much as you can in your blog posts. It also wouldn't be wise to expect someone to link back to your blog or website just because you linked to them, but having a good blog will certainly help tempt someone to link to you for one of their future articles if you have already written about a related topic.
Another thing to note, linking to your own articles that you have touched upon a topic in a similar vein to what you write about in a newer blog is more than acceptable. Of course, it has to relate, just putting in links to all your other blogs within your blog post won't help your readers find what they are looking for and will more than likely make them switch off and leave your website.
Using Blogs to Figure Out Better Keywords
Yes it's true, you can even use the content you write about to figure out better keywords to try and rank for. This is done by writing all the content you want over the span around 3 months or so (you might want to wait longer if you only post one blog a month.) You can use the data you collect on each blog about what types of things people are searching for or wanting to know about the most.
You can then use this collated data to find out if there are particular words or phrases people are going to your site to find out. Then just change your keywords around as necessary. Changing your keywords around every so often isn't a bad idea. You can look at our other blog about The Importance of SEO to learn more about keywords and SEO as a whole.
In conclusion, you should make yourself a schedule and stick with it. After you have enough good quality content blogs on your website, you should start to see an increase in the amount of visitors your website has and how long they spend on your website. Eventually you might even make it to the front page of Google for your efforts. Don't be discouraged if you don't see big results for a while. Keep making stunning content and your audience will come.
If you are looking for an even more in depth view into the world of blogging and would like some extra help getting your blogs and website noticed, Responsive Web Design is always here to help you out.
Call us on - 01782 497244