Don’t let anyone tell you blogs don’t matter in the age of social media. According to top marketing experts, blogs matter more than ever when it comes to making sure your website ranks high on search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact, blogs are the most efficient way to make sure your website is search engine optimized.
That said, blogging has changed since it first surfaced. Blogs were once ways for people to make their private thoughts public. But now, businesses use blogs to drive brand awareness, help their SEO strategies, build leads, and increase sales.
Lisa Toner, director of content at HubSpot, says, “You need to consistently create content that is more valuable than your competition’s content. You need to be an SEO expert to get your articles ranking on page one of Google, and you need a distribution strategy to promote your content across all the channels your audience likes to consume content on.”
Blogs are the easiest way to meet these goals. That’s why we at SEO Design Chicago update our blog regularly. It pushes our website to the top of SERP.
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Do Blogs Help SEO?
Yes. Google won’t reveal everything that influences where a webpage ranks in SERPs. Plus, they’re always changing their SEO recipe. But there will always be a couple of items that remain the same:
- Using meaningful keywords in titles
- Using keywords in headers and in the content on webpages
- Producing content about timely events
Google wants to give users web pages that are about “new” or “current” events or seasons. That means you constantly want to be adding timely content to your website. Blog posts are the easiest way to add content to your site about issues related to current times. For example, if you own a garden center, you’d want to regularly produce blog posts related to what gardeners should be doing during different seasons. If you sell clothes, you could produce content – which can be written, podcasts, graphics, or videos – about the best clothes for each season, or comment on big fashion events, like awards ceremonies. If you own a cannabis dispensary, a blog would be the perfect place to talk about new laws and recipes or show off new products. Regardless of your industry, there are dozens of ways businesses can use blogs to help their SEO.
Why You Shouldn’t Use AI to Write Blog Posts
Hopefully you see the value in adding a blog to your business website. You may be wondering how to create posts easily and fast. By now, you’ve probably heard that artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can write everything from song lyrics to homework assignments. You may be tempted to have ChatGPT write blog posts for you. But you shouldn’t.
ChatGPT doesn’t produce high-quality content, and Google’s algorithms are incredibly adept at recognizing AI-produced content. Google has the tools to detect AI writing, and they’ve publicly stated that AI-generated writing is against their guidelines. Websites that have AI writing on them are penalized in SERPs. Remember that AI content is still in its infancy, and the writing it produces doesn’t meet Google’s standards for E-E-A-T. This acronym stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Another reason not to use AI writing tools? You don’t own the content. The company that produces the software does. So any AI writing or AI-generated art that you put in your blog isn’t actually yours. The AI company can use it for whatever purpose they want. In other words, there’s a good chance your competitors may eventually copy and use your AI-produced content.
This all means that blog posts and images or videos on your site should contain content that is trustworthy and professional and is produced by a real human being. At SEO Design Chicago, we have over 30 writers on call to write compelling, human-first content. We make sure our writers don’t use any AI tools before sending content to you.
Businesses Can Use Blogs to Create Local Content
If your blog posts contain a lot of references to specific cities or neighborhoods, it will help that post rank high in SERP for people in those locations.
Google knows exactly where a user is searching from (unless the person specifically changes their preferences so Google doesn’t know their location). Google knows the city, state, and even neighborhood. So, they’ll include local results for almost every search. For example, open a window and use Google to search for the word “dentist.” Dentists located near you are likely featured above dentists in another state or country.
Some of those dentists pay for that spot. Those are the dentists under “sponsored.” But the organic links below those ads are likely websites for dentists located close to your location. They appear high on the SERP because those dentists have a lot of content on their websites that mention the word “dentist.” They also include a lot of references to your location.
You’ll Get Top Spots in SERP for Long Tail Keywords
There are two kinds of keywords – short-tail and long tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords (also known as heads) are very broad and short in length. A good example is the word “dentist.” Ranking high on SERPs for a short tail keyword like dentist is very hard because there are so many websites out there that are using that word.
You’ll have a better chance of getting your website to rank high for long tail keywords, which are more specific and longer in length. Because of this, long tail keywords tend to draw less search traffic to a website. However, the people who do visit the site tend to take action, known as a conversion, because they were looking for a company like yours when searching.
For example, try searching for the term “dentist that does cheap implants.” It’s a long tail keyword because it’s 5 words. But the results lead us to more small dental businesses. And if you were looking for inexpensive implants, you’d click on these sites and perhaps take an action, like clicking on the price page, filling out a contact form, calling the dentist or even booking an appointment.
Businesses with blogs do great in the long tail keyword game because they are regularly producing content for searches that look something like “[a specific service or part of your industry] + [your location].” That way, when people in your area need the service or product you offer, your website is more likely to appear. Make sure to use all kinds of variations of keywords in your blog post related to your industry and your location. For example, if you’re a cannabis dispensary on the Northwest Side of Chicago, use keyword variations like “sleep edibles northwest Chicago” or “indica edgebrook Chicago” or “sleepy marijuana 60646.”
Your Blog and Social Media Content Can Work Together to Drive Traffic
One reason people think blogs aren’t necessary is because of social media. They assume social media alone will drive people to their website. But it doesn’t work that way. Google doesn’t consider a company’s social media when it comes to SERPs very much. And while social media visitors may find their way to your website, they may also not.
That said, social media does still matter. Posts can be shoppable. Social media drives brand awareness. Social media can include links to your website. So in order to be most effective, you will need BOTH a blog and social media content.
We know what you’re thinking. “Great. Now I have to create even more content. That sounds like it will take a lot of time.” But the good news is that you can use the same content for both social media and your blog. For example, if you write a blog post, you can take a few sentences from it, and the accompanying image, and quickly post it to one or all of your social media accounts.
If you have a video for your social media, post it there, and post it on your blog. Just use the right keywords in the title of the blog post and write a sentence or two above the video using keywords. Doing so will increase the chances that Google will include that video in search results for those keywords.
You can also repurpose old blog content for social media posts or vice versa. For example, if you are in a seasonal business like something related to landscaping or gardening, you can look at your social media posts from last Spring. If you posted something about planting shrubs last Spring, before you had a blog, you can take that video, photo, or caption and turn it into a blog post. You’re done!
Get Help With Blogging From SEO Design Chicago
Businesses with blogs often use third-party digital marketing vendors, like us at SEO Design Chicago, to create content for their blogs or social media. We have over ten years of experience and dozens of satisfied customers. For example, one of our clients, a yoga business, was struggling to stand out online and in person. After all, there are many yoga studios in any city or town. We helped them come up with an SEO plan that included adding new pages to their website. We focused on keywords, especially long tail keywords that included references to their location. These were the results:
- A 650% increase in impressions in six months
- A 165% increase in enrollment at their studio
- A 143% increase in phone calls to the studio
The bottom line is that blogging works for businesses. Feel free to reach out to our experienced team if you’d like to learn more about how we can help your business!
Contact Us Today!