Before getting into why having a blog is important for SEO, let\u2019s see a few examples of how we used blogging to increase organic traffic<\/strong><\/a> for a number of websites in different industries.<\/p>\n What you see above is the Google Organic traffic report for one of our clients. It\u2019s a business website in the education niche.<\/p>\n With blogging, we managed to increase the Google traffic from 6,165 users per month to 12,742 users per month in just 6 months. That\u2019s a 106% increase!<\/p>\n This is another example from a business website in the travel industry, one of the most competitive niches online.<\/p>\n Organic traffic increased from 4,280 users per month to 15,960 users per month in only 5 months after we started blogging. If you like percentages, that\u2019s a 372% increase!<\/p>\n Important Note: The reason I don\u2019t disclosed the URL of the above websites, has to do with my NDA agreement with clients. Most clients don\u2019t want this kind of publicity because they don\u2019t want their competitors to know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now that you are convinced that blogging still works for SEO, let\u2019s see how does having a blog help with SEO.<\/p>\n Blogging gives you a great opportunity to target keywords that you cannot target with your landing pages.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s assume that you have a website selling online SEO Courses<\/strong><\/a> and digital marketing services<\/strong><\/a> (like this one).<\/p>\n You already have optimized landing pages for each of your services and an optimized homepage for your main keywords.<\/p>\n That\u2019s great, but your organic traffic will be low<\/strong>. Why?<\/strong> Because it is very likely that hundreds of websites (bigger and older than yours) are already targeting those keywords.<\/p>\n You can try and get some backlinks<\/strong><\/a> to improve your SEO and rankings but soon enough you\u2019ll realize it\u2019s too difficult to get other webmasters to link to your product pages organically.<\/p>\n What should you do?<\/strong> That\u2019s where blogging comes to the rescue.<\/p>\n You can start a blog, perform your keyword research<\/strong><\/a> to find out what other search terms<\/strong><\/a> people use that are related to your products and services, and start publishing content.<\/p>\n Depending on the SEO keywords<\/strong><\/a> you have chosen, you can use different techniques to get high rankings.<\/p>\n You can either choose to go after long-tail keywords<\/strong><\/a> that are more targeted and easier to rank for or go after more popular keywords by publishing long-form content and creating content silos.<\/p>\n For a website to rank high on Google<\/strong><\/a>, it needs high-quality backlinks. A great way to get those links and increase the authority of your domain<\/strong><\/a>, is through blogging.<\/p>\n Other bloggers are more likely to link to a good blog post rather than to a product or services page.<\/p>\n These links may not have a direct effect on your rankings, but they will make your domain stronger and this will benefit all pages on your website.<\/p>\n Statistics show<\/a><\/strong> that companies who blog get 97% more links to their websites.<\/p>\n Incoming links are not the only way to convince Google that your website deserves good treatment in search. One of the most neglected off-page SEO techniques<\/strong><\/a> is brand mentions.<\/p>\n Google loves brands and blogging can help you position your brand in front of more eyes and this can lead to social media engagement (likes, comments, tweets) and mentions of your brand in places that would be impossible without blogging.<\/p>\n One of the factors that Google is looking at while accessing the value<\/em> of a website is Expertise \u2013 Authority \u2013 Trustworthiness (EAT).<\/p>\n If you maintain an active blog, you have the opportunity to show to your visitors (and the World) that you are an expert (E) on your chosen topics.<\/p>\n If this is packed with incoming links and brand mentions then you also win the A part (Authority), which will gradually lead to Google Trust (Trustworthiness).<\/p>\n When you have secured all EAT factors, your SEO will be boosted and blogging is the most secure and efficient way to do this.<\/p>\n Blogging Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n Blogging can help SEO only if done correctly. If you create a blog and start publishing random blog posts, it will not be of any help.<\/p>\n One the biggest mistakes people make with blogging is to target the same keywords as their landing pages.<\/p>\n When you start blogging, you should do your keyword research and find keywords that are related to your main keywords but not the same.<\/p>\n For example, on this website I have a page selling SEO Services<\/a><\/strong>. In my blog, I don\u2019t target this keyword but other related keywords like \u201cHow much SEO Services Cost\u201d.<\/p>\n If you target the same keywords, you will confuse Google as to which page is more valuable for you and this is something you should avoid.<\/p>\n The beauty of having a blog is that you can use it to capture users at different stages of their buying cycle.<\/p>\n For example, if you have a website selling snorkeling cruises, you should not only blog about snorkeling but you can expand your reach and get people looking for things to do in the location of your business.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you are located in Florida, you can target in your blog posts keywords like \u201cFun activities to do in Florida\u201d and mention snorkeling, as one of the options.<\/p>\n If you follow this approach, you\u2019ll never run out of ideas and when you do this consistently you\u2019ll end up with a number of useful posts covering all related topics around your products or services.<\/p>\n This is the same approach that we have followed in the websites listed above and it helped us tremendously.<\/p>\n When writing your blog post titles, don\u2019t ask user\u2019s a question but give them the answer.<\/p>\n For example, consider the title of this blog post which is \u201cBlogging Helps SEO a lot and Here is the Proof\u201d.<\/p>\n The title answers the question \u201cDoes Blogging help SEO?\u201d but instead of having that in the title, I gave users a direct answer.<\/p>\n Now everyone clicking the title to read the blog post knows what to expect in terms of content and makes your titles stand out from the rest.<\/p>\n Doing this with your blog post titles, will make your titles more interesting and encouraging users to click when they see it in the SERPS or in social media.<\/p>\n Avoid publishing content without a purpose. Do some preparation work in advance and decide what you will blog about, which keywords to target, how to promote each post and how to measure the effectiveness of your blogging.<\/p>\n All of these items should be part of a well-defined SEO action plan<\/a><\/strong>. Having a clear strategy and step-by-step plan in advance makes the whole process a lot easier and more efficient.<\/p>\n After you write a blog post, don\u2019t hit the publish button if it\u2019s not optimized for SEO.<\/p>\n Learning how to write SEO friendly blog posts<\/a><\/strong> is not hard, all you have to do is follow some basic SEO rules to make your articles easy to understand by search engines.<\/p>\nGoogle Organic Traffic increased by 106% in 6 months with Blogging!<\/h2>\n
![\"Blogging](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/blogging-seo-case-study-1.jpg\")
Blogging helped us increase Organic traffic by 372% in just 5 months!<\/h2>\n
![\"Blogging](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/blogging-seo-case-study-2.jpg\")
Why having a blog is important for SEO?<\/h2>\n
You can target more keywords<\/h3>\n
You create more opportunities for natural link building<\/h3>\n
Great way to get more Brand mentions<\/h3>\n
A great method to demonstrate your Expertise (EAT).<\/h3>\n
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How to use blogging to improve your SEO<\/h2>\n
Don\u2019t target the same keywords as with other pages on your website<\/h3>\n
Capture users at all stages of the buying cycle<\/h3>\n
Don\u2019t ask questions in your titles but provide answers<\/h3>\n
Create an SEO action plan<\/h3>\n
SEO Optimize your blog posts before publishing<\/h3>\n