Whilst it might not be the most advanced nor even exciting element of your digital marketing strategy, the blog on your website can play a significant role in its overall success. One of the reasons for this is, that unlike many of the tools used within a digital marketing campaign, a blog provides multiple benefits.
Firstly, it is an excellent way of building trust and credibility with those who land on your blog and read the content there. With excellent content, it can give those considering your business the reassurance that you are professional and trustworthy and thus they will be more inclined to make the transition from prospect to a paying customer.
A blog also has a role to play in helping you rank your website higher on Google. Getting to the first page, and better still, the top positions for relevant search terms can increase the amount of organic traffic to your website exponentially. To achieve this, you must satisfy google that your website is relevant for those keywords and that it provides the people it sends there via searches a great experience, both of which can be achieved with great blog content.
One problem which can exist in the minds of business owners is that they know the benefits of having a blog, as just outlined, but are unsure as to how they make their blog tick all the boxes it needs to in terms of high-quality content. If you too are not 100% certain how you can create highly effective blog posts, here are seven simple tips which point the way.
Research Successful Blogs: Notice we said ‘research’ not ‘copy’, so never plagiarise. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be gained by discovering how top blogs in your niche operate such as subject matter, what media they include, and even how long each post is.
Research Your Target Keywords: Your research should also aim to discover what keywords are the most desirable in terms of generating traffic. Also look for synonyms and longtail keywords, which will have less competition.
Create Eye-Catching Blog Post Titles: No matter how good your posts are, if nobody reads them, then they are pointless. This is remedied by ensuring your titles make the reader keen to see what follows so make titles unique, and intriguing.
Ensure Every Blog Post Exudes Trust, Authority, And Expertise: Key goals of your blog content are to instil in the mind of readers that your business is an authority in its niche and that those who work there are trustworthy experts in their field.
Use Media In Your Blog Posts: The days of text-only blog posts are long gone. Use them sparingly, and in the main, each post should have at least one image, and where appropriate include other media such as infographics, video, or audio.
Ensure Your Blog Posts Are The Appropriate Length: Having variable lengths of blog posts is fine, but be careful not to make them too short or too long. Most should exceed 1,000 words, and to satisfy Google to the max, ideally over 2,000 words.
Always Link In From And Out To Other Pages In Your Website: Sticking with the theme of Google rankings, the best practice for SEO is to create links within each blog post to other pages on your website, and conversely also link to each post from other pages.