Some of the questions I hear most from small business owners when I speak to business groups are about blogging. Why is blogging important? What should I blog about? How often do I need to blog? With the Google algorithm updates of the past few years, and even months, focusing more on more on quality of content, many struggle to come up with content ideas. Google rewards your site for being authoritative in a topic area. More quality content around that topic area helps boost your ranking strength. This was a post I originally wrote years ago that mostly holds up and has been tweaked a bit for 2022. Below addresses how it can help you and gives you some ideas for coming up with new content.
Why Blog?
In the world of search engines, content is king. Google is in the business of supplying the best answer to user search queries, so creating answers is a great way to show up in Google. The world of search is based on pages on your site providing specific answers to queries. Even more in 2022 than ever for small businesses, traffic has moved away from the home page, and more to deeper pages that provide more specific answers to exact search queries.
Blogs are an easy way to add a page to your site that addresses a specific topic or question without having to adjust the site structure or navigation. Just add a blog post and you have a new page addressing that specific topic. This is a great way to address content or topics that may not have even existed when you first had the site built or target in a more pinpoint manner, specific products or services that you offer.
What Should I Blog About?
- Be Specific
- You may already have a general page about your product or service, but with the proper targeting, a blog post can target specific jobs in specific locations.
- If you are a local business and want to show up a little better for searches in the next town over, blog about a project you did there and aim it with title tags at that location and that specific service.
- For example, a contractor doing a deck in Anytown, USA, which may not be where their office is, and thus a little less exposure, can blog about a deck they built there, and target the post toward “Deck Contracting Projects in Anytown, USA” with their titles and just blog about what they did. Now you suddenly have a highly targeted, and very specific post (making Google happy) that can get you more exposure in search for projects that you already do and you can showcase something you have already done
- Organize Your Post Properly
- When you have created that content, aim your page at those core concepts as I alluded to before with your title tags.
- This is an example of how title tags look with the Yoast tool, but you can use other tools.
Create a 60 character or less title tag that tells Google exactly what that post is about and targets what you are trying to target, such as “Service Offering in Anytown, USA”. The character count is a bit controversial, but I aim for less than 60.
- This is an example of how title tags look with the Yoast tool, but you can use other tools.
- Make your content thorough (generally at least 400 words) and digestible (break it down with headers, bullets, and images) so users don’t run away.
- Users want all of the information available, but they want it very clear where the most important piece to them can be found. Often though they want a thorough article, they only want to actually read a couple of sentences. Make it easy for them to find those two sentences.
- Link within your blog post to the other pages on your site that represent the point you are discussing. If you are discussing a sub-category, link back to the main service page in your text when referring to it. Internal links help build site strength as well.
- When you have created that content, aim your page at those core concepts as I alluded to before with your title tags.
How Often Should I Blog?
I blog once or twice a week, but I think as long as you blog “regularly”, you will be ok. Imagine if you showed up on a blog site and they hadn’t added a post in a year. Would this lower your opinion of them? If you are going to have a blog, I believe you should blog at least once a month if not more. Not every post has to be specifically for SEO targeting. In fact, you should have other types of activity. You will find that when the posts start showing up in search, you will want to post more and more. That is how SEO builds on itself.
What if I Can’t Think of Anything to Blog About?
Some industries deal with change more than others. In my industry, Google seems to be changing things on a weekly basis, but even in my world, there are slow weeks for blog content. You should have varied types of posts anyway. Below are some ideas you can use for blog posts when you aren’t quite sure what to blog about and don’t have a specific target in mind per my suggestions above. I even linked to some examples I’ve used.
- Google “People Also Ask Questions”. You can download these for free with the SEO Minion Chrome extension and write posts that answer some of hte questions.
- Your take on a recent industry or local business trend
- A recent activity your company took part in
- new equipment
- new accreditations, etc.
- new membership in an organization or hosting an event
- Your thoughts about future trends in your industry
- Have fun with a pop culture news or event and put a little spin on it for your industry
- Include something about your personal life. You are often a part of your brand and it is often good to let people see the human side to you.
- If you have a new product or service that you are offering and people are looking for it, blog about it. You suddenly have a page about this new service without having to make major changes to your site structure.
- FAQ’s: The old FAQ page of ten years ago is back as specific blog posts. You probably hear questions every day from potential customers about how things work or your business process. Answer these questions with a blog post. In fact, you can create a regular monthly or weekly post that answers a specific question.
- Approach a topic from a different angle. Think of your users. They are all different. Explaining a topic to a different type of user can be a great new way to create content. Aim it at the beginner, or the more knowledgeable user at the other end with more advanced language. Aim it at a certain type of customer. Often our products or services are used for different reasons. Write a post about these specific uses.
- Repurpose offline content: If you have brochures or pamphlets that explain your business and it is not online, it should be. Take that content and turn it into a post or new page on the site.
- Explain videos or podcasts: If you have videos, you should definitely embed them and use them as a post. You can transcribe the video and also add extra context with text.
- Break down an old post into more specific segments: If you have old posts that cover a subject, go back and look to see if you can break down a piece of it into its own post. Most likely you can always be helpful by being more specific if you create good and helpful content.
- Look at your old posts that have lost organic traffic. Compare this year to last year and dive into your organic landing pages. The ones that had a big drop probably need to be freshened up. Update them with the latest and greatest news. In fact, that is what I am doing with this post from 2017. Though the core message is still true, things have changed a bit since then. I have updated with new information in 2022.
SEO Blogging Made Easy
Hopefully, this article will make having a blog a lot less intimidating. Sometimes people get so hung up on having to blog regularly that they don’t incorporate what can be a great tool for expanding your presence and building your business. Use this as a tool. Every post doesn’t have to be for SEO, but think about where you want to show up in search and aim at it with pinpoint accuracy and great content.
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