Nathan Yerian
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important web strategy that increases your website's search engine rankings for specific search terms. SEO allows targeted groups of people (potential customers) to organically find your website, giving you the ability to generate new leads.
In addition to the search engine optimization strategy, and implementation that your web designer SHOULD have incorporated into your website strategy (shame on you web designers that don't), there are actions that everyday business owners can do that will increase their website's search rankings.
Search engines use complex algorithms that take a ton of different variables into account when assigning a rank to a specific webpage. A few of them include, the size of the website, keyword usage, frequency of content updates, & the number of inbound links.
Fortunately, you have the power to positively effect each element in the list above by simply maintaining an active blog on your website. Let's look at how a blog effects each variable.
1. Website size
The search engines assume that the larger a website is, the more useful information (for the searcher) it must contain. Therefore, websites with more pages are generally favored by search engines.
Because your company blog is simply an extension of your site, every time you create a new blog post, you are adding to the footprint of your site. As your website grows in size, so does the potential to increase your ranking.
2. Keyword usage
Since you will be creating blog posts on your company's site, I would assume that you are writing about topics relevant to your industry.
In doing so, you are naturally using keywords that potential customers may use to find your products, or services, which in turn can increase your rankings for those terms.
3. Frequency of content updates
Search engines love to see fresh content. It lets them know that your website provides the most current and up-to-date information available for visitors.
If you are actively maintaining your blog, the search engines will take this into account when assigning your placement in search results.
4. Number of inbound links
Inbound links hold an amazing amount of weight with the search engines. The more inbound links your website has, the easier it will be to climb to the first page of search results for your targeted keywords.
Creating engaging, and useful blog content is arguably the best way to encourage other websites to link to your content (which amounts to a digital vote of trust to the search engines). The more inbound links you have, the higher your rank will be.
Search engine optimization is a very complex, and detailed process. You don't have to know every detail about SEO to increase the likelihood of your potential customers finding you online. Maintaining a blog is a great start to a well optimized website.
Are you ready to implement a blog on your website?
