This week I had the great pleasure of being interviewed on The Flourishing Pantry where I was asked a fantastic question on the Live interview: why is blogging important for SEO? I realised then and there that perhaps you’re persuaded that it’s generally a good idea but not quite convinced of the SEO benefits of blogging

So, today I decided to share with you just how it helps specifically as I think it might help spur you on into blogging more often….!

SEO is not stand alone.

The first thing to note is that SEO is not a stand-alone activity. It’s not as cut and dried as that task is SEO related, that task is marketing related, it’s ALL about driving traffic to your website. Once you have traffic on your website you then set up about converting that traffic into repeated traffic, and from there you have the opportunity to convert them into a sale.

Not every blog post is there to attract sales

People come to me all the time wondering why they didn’t get enquiries as soon as they published a blog post or an Instagram post. It doesn’t work like that. This is the second key point. Not every blog post is written with the goal of attracting sales and therefore the social media posts that promote the blog posts should not have the goal of attracting sales. It’s a rule of marketing (and therefore SEO) 101 that you can use the AIDA model: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. Most of the content you produce is there to create awareness and interest, in order to move onto the third and fourth stages of Desire and Action. I made a pink diagram to highlight this model 🙂

Create more content

The next thing to note is you are probably not creating enough content in order to get your audience to remember you and to buy from you. I get a lot of questions about blogging. People wanting to make sure they do it right. Guess what? Most of those people are using these questions as reasons not to blog more often. Create more content to get found by your audience. You need to constantly remind people that you exist. The easiest way to do that? Create more content.

But that doesn’t mean get lost in creating a beautiful aesthetic on Instagram. That means providing valuable information that answers key questions that your audience has. For example, like writing a blog post about why blogging is important for SEO (see what I did there? ;o) )

What do you do with the blog posts?

You need to create content that attracts attention, that increases awareness of who you are and what you offer the world. You need to point this attention to your website. This is why LINK IN BIO is on Instagram posts (or should be!) and this is why people try to figure out the best way to post links on Facebook status updates (remove the image, post the link in the comments, the options seem to be endless don’t they?)

On my last blog post, I talked about what I learned when I didn’t blog for 2.5 months as an SEO expert – talk about putting your money where your mouth is! This attracted a LOT of traffic. It piqued people’s interest. It sparked people’s motivation. It jolted people into action. It got people talking. The key thing was I tracked all this on my Google Analytics so I could see whether people were clicking through to my website.

How did I get this traffic?

I posted the link on my email newsletter, I shared the link on Facebook pages, personal Facebook profile, Instagram bio, tweeted it. I shared it via private message with a few people in my network. I can see from Google Analytics that people were sending it to each other too.

As a result, I watched my search engine rankings increase because more eyeballs were looking at my website.

But hang on I hear your question…if I have blog posts already on my site, can’t people just see them and that will work for me without me having to focus on that for a while?

The short answer is nope.

Remember what I said earlier – people want a reminder that you exist constantly. Therefore, search engines LOVE regularly updated websites. The easiest way to update a website? BLOGGING. This is because you’re much more likely to actually write these rather than updating your main website pages. You’re much more likely to attract traffic if you post a link to a new blog post on social media.

Every time you publish a piece of content online it creates a unique link. Search engines love websites full of juicy content with lots of pages and posts all linking to each other. Therefore, you need to create more unique links.

Don’t try to shortcut this.

Don’t get lost in creating hidden pages, black hat SEO techniques. Write more consistently on your blog. Publish the link to social media.

This is just the start.

Want a reminder that blogging is a good idea? Check out my 65 reasons you should start blogging here.

You want to dive in deeper and really learn about how blogging can help your business? Come and join us in Blogging for Gold, my 12 week group program where I lay it all out for you and show you what’s possible no matter your tech experience or level of knowledge.

So what are you waiting for? What will you blog about next? Come and tell me on Instagram

Talk soon,

Maddy

Photography is all by the marvellous Julia Gold

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