Blogs are one of the many platforms that both benefit from and increase search engine optimization. The benefits of improved SEO and the ability to use a blog to establish the company as an industry leader make the work that goes into maintaining a blog a good time investment. Companies and organizations can also establish themselves as an industry leader by providing good content about industry trends, their services, etc. For the purpose of this blog, we’re focusing on how having a corporate blog can improve SEO.
Many SEO opportunities
The goal of a company’s website is to draw attention to the company and to ultimately increase sales. A website can’t be as effective if it does not have good search engine optimization.
Blogs offer many different options to improve SEO.First, it is crucial to remember that understanding the content of a blog is not only important to the reader but also search engines. Blogs provide several key elements that optimize them for search engines including:
- Structured content such as bulleted lists and subheads, which are very tasty “spider food.”
- The ability to categorize posts by topic, making them easy for search engines to find a company’s website based on services or other keyworded categories
- A high number of linking opportunities, including linking to other company blogs and to the company’s website where people can find more information. Linking tells the search engines that the content being linked is important and should rank higher
- The ability to add content from many media types including photos, other images and video. These provide keyword opportunities that search engines will find meaningful.
Another benefit of a company having a blog is that both readers and search engines reward fresh content with repeat visits. This means that because the site has new content it is more likely to be viewed more frequently. When more readers view the blog the interaction increases, making a company’s blog and website rank higher in the search engines and creating a stronger impression in customers’ minds that the company is an authority in its industry.
Blogs help websites survive SEO changes
Recently, Google has made some changes to how it searches for websites. Google’s focus is to reward good content and in return, penalize sites that do not provide fresh, relevant content. The new algorithms focus heavily on what is called “semantic search” to make sure that keywords are being used in a way that actually makes sense and is not just a creative way to get a keyword inserted in the text.
The improvements have specifically been made to prevent keyword stuffing and link schemes. Key word stuffing refers to the overuse of a word or related words and phrases on a single page. This can lead to readability issues. In addition to keyword stuffing, Google is also focusing on link schemes. Link schemes refer to use of too many links on a page to boost a page’s rank.
What this means for a company blog is that A) it’s important to have good content for the website and blog to be picked up by search engines, but also, B) there’s a golden opportunity to increase SEO by providing interesting, fresh content on a regular basis.
Need Help?
The Belford Group is an experienced image-building marketing and website development agency, with more than a decade spent providing creative marketing and advertising solutions to fit any budget and any medium. We work closely with clients to provide excellent content on websites that are easily found by search engines.
We’d love to learn more about what you do, and find ways to help you do more of it.
Call us at 479-443-9945 to schedule a free consultation.