Blog Article Writing Done With Google And Prospects In Mind
In the realm of digital marketing, blog article writing is crucial. The content that you create — especially the content that lives on your website — is the foundation on which all of your other marketing efforts will either fail or succeed. Businesses of all shapes and sizes have come to learn this, which is why so many of them have turned to the company blog to help achieve their goals.
If the blog is to act as an effective foundation for all further online marketing efforts, the articles that are published must be written with not just your prospects in mind, but Google’s search engine as well. This can be a considerable challenge when taking into account that Google is constantly updating its algorithm in order to improve the user experience of its search engine.
What Is A Blog?
Back in the day, a blog was essentially an online journal used by people to share their thoughts and feelings on a regular basis. These “journal entries” would be posted in reverse chronological order so that visitors could read the newest entry first. These days, a blog is still set up in the same manner (a single page on which content is posted in reverse chronological order); however, it’s now used by businesses and organizations of all sizes to publish articles relevant to their brand or industry.
Every article posted to a blog will cover a sub-topic of that blog. Because blogs can grow to be enormous in size (especially if new content is being published on a daily basis and the blog has been around for years), businesses will often allow visitors to filter through old blog posts using a variety of category filters, such as topic, author, and date. Some blog posts can be on the longer side as well and only show snippets of each post, requiring visitors to click on a link that takes them to a blog subpage that’s dedicated to that particular blog post.
The Importance Of Writing Blog Articles
While creating and maintaining a blog is no small task, it does tend to be one of the most effective forms of content marketing. A blog page on your website allows you to publish new content whenever you want with the aim of achieving your content marketing goals. Although maintaining a blog does require long-term effort, setting one up is relatively easy to do.
Many studies have indicated that blogging can have a huge impact in general. Just consider the following:
- More than 75 percent of online users read blogs on a regular basis.
- Marketers that prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to have a positive ROI (return on investment).
With that in mind, the following are some of the more specific goals that an organization can achieve by setting up a successful blog on their website:
Drive Web Traffic
When done properly, a blog helps to deliver useful information to a specific audience and can help to boost traffic to your website. This is because people who are searching for information on the web will often read through blogs in order to find it. By allowing content to live on your website and by regularly publishing new content, you put your website in a position to be found by more people. This is achieved in different ways:
Keyword Research
The use of high-quality keywords makes your blog content easy for Google to identify and rank for their SERP (search engine results page). Competitive, relevant keywords should be used in the blog post’s title, content, head tags, meta description, URL, and alt tags. To identify keywords that will be effective, keyword research is required.
Inbound Links
If your blog posts are of a high enough quality, then other websites will link to them. These websites are leaning on your content to support their own content. But they are also exposing your blog to their audience and encouraging them to visit your blog.
Social Sharing
People love to share good content, which is why blogs are so shareable. Not only can you share your own blog posts on social media, but you can let readers do the same. The more people share your blog content, the more exposure your blog gets and the more traffic is driven to your website.
Encourage Engagement
Increasing traffic will certainly help to attract more potential prospects; however, if you aren’t able to engage visitors, the chance of capturing new leads diminishes. The more engaged they are with your blog content, the more engaged they are with your brand, which means they’ll be more likely to come back to your website and engage further in the future. Besides the prerequisite of writing high-quality blog posts that are informative and relevant, you can increase engagement through social media and by encouraging discussions.
Social Engagement
Through share buttons, readers can easily share blog posts with their social media followers. Encourage further sharing by posting your blog content to your social channels.
Comment Sections
Setting up a comment section on your blog encourages readers to post their thoughts and feelings about the blog. This allows you to engage in a discussion directly as well as to encourage discussions among your readers.
Build Brand Identity
Increasing exposure to your organization is what will help to bring in more web traffic. This exposure will lead to more brand recognition, which is what you want. But you don’t want to just generate awareness of who you are, you want to control what people think about you. It’s about building an identity so that your audience will find it easier to trust your brand as well as to relate to it. Your blog can help you achieve these goals by helping you establish your authority and develop your personality.
Build Brand Authority
Regularly posting high-quality content to your blog will attract more and more readers and result in more inbound links from reputable websites within your industry. You will begin fostering a reputation as an authority within your field, which helps to build trust.
Build Brand Personality
The tone you use to write your blog will help to establish the personality of your brand. This allows readers to get a better sense of who you are and what your personality is like, allowing them to relate more to your organization on a personal level, which, in turn, helps to increase engagement.
Improve Ability To Nurture Leads
Good content that’s not overly promotional and that is useful to your readers will help to nurture your leads throughout the buyer’s journey by educating them about their challenges and the potential solutions to their challenges.
Blog Article Writing Best Practices
Maintaining a blog can have a significant impact on your ability to achieve your online marketing goals. However, the success of your blog relies heavily on the content you post to it. Because a lot of the impact a blog can have comes in the form of organic traffic from search engines like Google, many businesses attempt to create content based on the factors that Google’s algorithm uses to rank content. While it’s important to keep the algorithm in mind, Google is constantly updating it and nobody knows the exact factors that the algorithm uses to rank content.
One of the challenges is to make sure that you’re not solely focused on creating content that will rank at the top of Google’s search results. While you do want to rank well, it’s more important to focus on content that will actually address the needs of your prospects first and foremost. A blog post that ranks well enough to drive thousands of visitors to your site can’t be deemed successful if its conversion rate is poor.
The best solution is to create blog content that fits your target audience by following these best practices for blog article writing.l
Know Your Audience
One of the biggest blog writing mistakes you can make is to try and write a post that appeals to everyone. Blog writers often do this assuming that this is the best way to go viral; however, the general rule of thumb is that if you write content for everyone, you’re actually writing it for no one. When writing blog content, write it with a specific audience in mind. Not only do you need to know who your audience is, but you need to know what their needs are.
Develop Buyer Personas
By developing multiple buyer personas, you’ll get a better understanding of who your audience is. You’ll also make it easier to generate blog content that addresses the needs of each different segment of your audience.
Focus On Intent
Google uses an algorithm component called RankBrain to identify the most relevant results to its search queries. Knowing what your audience’s needs are and what they’re searching for will help you create content that will match their search intent.
Use Relevant Keywords
If you’re not using keywords that are relevant to your target audience’s intent, you’ll attract the wrong audience, which you’ll have a very difficult time converting. In addition to understanding your audience’s intent, you will also need to do thorough keyword research.
Avoid Black Hat SEO Keyword Practices
If there’s one way to earn the wrath of Google, it’s by trying to take shortcuts to attain high page rankings. Do not attempt to stuff your content with keywords or buy external links from link farms. These are considered black hat tactics that will hurt your rankings in the long run (and you will be penalized by Google if caught). Even if you manage to get away with it, they will diminish the quality of your blog.
Be Consistent
Consistency is important in every aspect of blog writing because it allows you to meet the expectations of your audience. If you are able to remain consistent, your audience will continue reading your blog and will become more and more likely to convert as time goes on. If your blog isn’t consistent, you’ll likely lose readers: the very prospects that you worked so hard to attract in the first place.
Use A Consistent Tone
A consistent tone is essential to building and maintaining your brand personality. If your tone fluctuates from one blog post to another, people will get confused about who you are, which can hurt their interest as well as their trust.
Post New Content Consistently
If you don’t consistently publish new content, not only will your readers forget about you, but your page ranking will take a hit since Google does take into account how “fresh” your blog content is.
Maintain A Consistent Publishing Schedule
Besides publishing blog content regularly, be sure the date and time that you publish your new content remains consistent. This way, readers will know when to expect new content and won’t miss it.
Write High-Quality Blog Content
It can’t be overstated how important it is to make sure every blog post you write is of high quality. It’s the only way to attract regular readers and build your brand authority. If your content is of poor quality, Google’s algorithm will eventually figure it out. It’s designed to take into consideration any number of signals that, when combined, help provide Google with an overall idea of your content’s quality. Here are a few important tips for writing high-quality blog content:
Focus On Relevant Subject Matter
Don’t write about something just because a topic is trending. If the topic has nothing to do with your industry or what your organization does, then it’s probably not relevant to the needs or interests of your target audience.
Long-Form Content Performs Better
Statistics show that content ranking in the top three results of SERPs tends to be on the longer side (at least 1,500 words). This is likely because longer content can go into more detail than shorter content and better engages readers’ interest.
Avoid Mistakes
Readers will be less likely to trust you if you can’t even be bothered to check for basic spelling and grammar mistakes.
Make Your Blog Easy To Read
According to HubSpot, 43 percent of people skim blog posts, making it easy to scan is important. This can be done by separating content using H2 and H3 tags (which is also helpful for SEO purposes) and by using bullet points or numbers where appropriate.
Write Effective CTAs
Always end a blog post with a CTA that’s relevant to the post’s content. A good CTA can encourage readers to take the next step (such as filling out a form or contacting you directly). Without CTAs, you limit your ability to actually capture your leads.
Write Effective Meta Descriptions
Your meta descriptions should use appropriate keywords to effectively summarize your blog post. A good meta description will help convince users to visit your blog when it shows up on their SERP.
Test Your Blog Posts
Optimize every aspect of your blog posts by using A/B testing. Doing so can help you improve your blog’s layout, the use of colors, the titles, the position of your CTAs, and much more. You may also need to do content upgrades for existing content.
Write Guest Blogs
Writing guest posts on other blogs can help build your brand authority and awareness, while also generating even more traffic from the website you’re posting on.
Analyze The Performance Of Your Blog
Monitor how your blog posts are performing by using a variety of metrics, such as traffic, social sharing, returning visitors, conversion rates, and more. Doing so will allow you to identify types of content that do well or poorly so that you can adjust your blogging strategy as needed.
Your Blog Should Be A Vital Component Of Your Content Marketing Strategy
If your content marketing strategy can be considered the foundation from which all other marketing efforts succeed or fail, then it’s not a stretch to say that the blog is the foundation of your content marketing strategy. A good blog can help to increase awareness, build brand authority and trust, generate leads, and nurture prospects. For your blog to be capable of achieving these goals, keep both your target audience and Google’s algorithm in mind as you create and publish blog content. Maintaining a blog is a long-term strategy and is worth putting the time and effort into to ensure that it’s effective.