Why Blog Content is King
You may think no one is paying attention to your blog posts, but you always have one audience member and they are your most important one: Google. Understanding the importance of your blog is crucial to ensuring your content is consistent and high-quality. Like the roots of a great tree, your blog is one of the best avenues available to you for creating a strong and outreaching web presence.
Why Blog Posts are Important
If you're reading this post, odds are you have at least heard of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is the process by which websites work to closely align with search engines and ensure they rank highly in search results. One of the key factors to ensuring your website ranks highly is your domain authority, or how reputable your website is to Google. One of the main ways to increase your reputation and thereby your search rankings, is by having a high volume of content. Google is preferential to larger, more informative sites. This is why blogs have exploded in popularity in the past decade.
You should think of your blog not only as a method of outreach, but a demonstration of your knowledge and authority. If your website is a tree, your blog posts are its roots. The deeper and broader your roots grow, the healthier your tree will be. It's easy to look at low engagement numbers or a lack of leads as evidence your blog isn't working, but this isn't the purpose of the blog, its the side-effect. Take solace in the fact that every blog post is increasing your reputation with Google and strengthening the roots of your website.
For example, a real estate website with a page on "Energy Efficient Homes" may rank higher than a real estate website without such a page, as Google could recognize the first as 'more knowledgeable and reputable'. The "Energy Efficient Homes" page might not ever receive a single click, but because Google is aware your website contains it, it takes that into consideration when comparing your domain to others.
How Often Should I Blog?
Whenever Google scans your website to add to its search engine, it also checks how much content has been updated or changed. Search engines give preference to websites with active presence and consistent updates, as well as preference to recent content. Blogging at least once a month ensures search engines will recognize you as a growing and reputable source.
It's important to bear in mind that content additions can take months to bear fruit in the form of search rankings, so be prepared when starting your blog initiative to provide content for at least 6 months before expecting any outcomes.
Getting Ideas for Blogs
Its easy to get discouraged after the tenth, or even fifth, blog post. Coming up with new ideas without feeling like you're repeating yourself can be difficult. The most important thing to remember when writing blogs is: it's okay to repeat yourself. In fact, it's can be a powerful tool for you. Obviously complete overlap in subject matter will make your blogs redundant, but having slight overlaps between blog posts is a great opportunity for interlinking. Using these overlaps, you can link between blog posts, creating a web of content that is strongly interconnected.
When trying to decide what content to write next, it's often best to survey what you have, find places you could expound upon, and create entire blogs expanding upon the content from a single paragraph in another blog, and then link the two together. Another method for finding content is via Google's 'related searches' option. Google the topics of your recent blog posts and look for articles that may be related but missing from your website. This is a great way to ensure what you're writing is immediately relevant to Google and searchers.
Don't Have Time to Blog?
Blogging can be time consuming and mentally draining, finding the schedule to sit down and write content on a regular basis can be difficult. Finding a content creator or marketing partner can alleviate this dilemma and ensure your blog content is top quality. At Abstract, we provide high quality, search-engine-optimized content on a flexible basis, working with you to find a schedule and strategy that is best for your organization and budget.