Most websites have a dedicated blog section, but how many do blogging for SEO correctly? For most businesses, blogging can be a primary source of traffic. First people stumble upon a brand by a useful piece of content, a blog, and then they lend on the website. A blogging strategy designed rightly can not only bring traffic to a site but also helps establish a brand and increase revenue for a business.  

First of all, blogging makes your website RELEVANT so that you can rank for the relevant search queries. And secondly, blogging builds AUTHORITY of your website and that in turn helps to rank higher on search engines.

With every blog that you write, you get one more page indexed, give signals to Google and other search engines that your site is active and also get one more opportunity to rank higher on the search engine for a new set of search queries.

Moreover, every time you write a blog, you share it on your social media, reach new audiences and earn more traffic to your website. 

This article will discuss how you can use blogging to attract more traffic, build authority and grow your business revenue.

If you want to use blogging effectively and extract maximum value out of your hard work, here are my tips on how to effectively blog, so that you rank higher on search engines.

There are three significant factors that you should keep in mind when designing your blogging strategy.

• Build topical relevance across blog posts
• Optimize your blog for featured snippets
• Due diligence

Blogging for SEO tip 1. Topical Relevance

Building topical relevance means writing content around a topic instead of keywords or phrases and responding to users’ intent. You can build relevance by creating content addressing problems and questions around one topic and interlinking them to create a content cluster around the topic.

Here is how you would proceed step by step:

• Identify the topic
• Create a pillar page on this topic
• list the key phrases around the topic that you want to rank for
• prioritize the key phrases you want to rank for (you want to prioritize the higher intent key phrases over top of the funnel key phrases)
• List the possible questions around the topic using the key phrases that you have listed
• Create a blog post around each question
• Link each blog post back to the pillar page

Search engines have evolved a lot over the last couple of years and have shifted from keywords to more focused on user’s intent and natural language processing. How this happens will be evident in further paragraphs.

To create topic relevance, first, decide a topic that you want to build topic relevance around. For example, let’s take SEO as our topic. Then, you want to create blog posts answering as many questions as you can around the topic of SEO. Or think of questions from your users’ point of view, what questions they may have around SEO? Questions, such as what are search engines, how do search engines work, how to do on-page SEO, or how to do a website SEO audit and so on, right?

Make sure to internally link your blog posts to other relevant blog posts on the topic within the website.

Also, linking to another relevant website site will enhance your authority and bring more traffic to your site. 

First, create a pillar page on the topic; let’s use our previous example, SEO. Next, breakdown the topic of SEO into the list of questions. Write a blog post on each of the questions that you listed and prioritize the blog post based on search volume and intent. 

Link every one of the posts back to your pillar topic page to build that topic relevance and enhance the authority over the topic.
To make your blog posts link-worthy.

• Original charts 
• Original research data
• Quotes from industry experts
• Tables listing pros-and-cons
• Use images, infographics, and videos

Next, design an outreach strategy to get links to these posts. And keep a lookout on page one of Google 😉 in a couple of months.

Blogging For SEO Tip 2. Optimize for featured snippets

Featured snippets present a direct and concise answer to a search query in a box on SERP. These snippets are pulled by Google from the webpages to provide the answer to the user on the SERP without having to click through to a website.

Google has been launching many algorithmic updates over a period of time with one motive; to improve its user experience. The SERP has evolved towards a better user experience since Google’s early days. Featured snippets are one of Google’s many improvements to provide better user experience, wherein users get answers to their search query on the SERP itself without even clicking through to a website. 

Featured snippets result is called a zero position result, as it is positioned above the number one of the Google organic results. Google pulls featured snippets from one of the sites’ pages that are already ranking on page one.

Featured snippets are not necessarily pulled out from a number one ranking site. And hence featured snippet is an opportunity for the sites ranking on a lower part of the first page to put their website above the first result!

Featured snippets appear for searches starting with what, why, where, how, who, etc. Featured snippets often show up first for voice search. This is important because according to a prediction report voice search on mobile will account for 50% in 2020. 

So how do you rank for featured snippets? 

To optimize for a featured snippet, format your content for one. 

• If your blog post is about steps by step guide, list the numbered steps at the top of the blog post. 
• If the information is in paragraph format, make it to the point and concise and complete answer to the search query, in less than about 50 words.
• Make the use of headings like H2s and H3s

You could do that by optimizing your blog post that is already ranking on the first page of Google. 

Check Google search console and list down any of your blog posts ranking on the first page of Google. Open an incognito window and search for one of the ranking blog posts’ key phrases. See if Google is showing a featured snippet for that keyword. If you see a featured snippet, improve upon it in your blog post. Even if you don’t see a featured snippet for that keyword, it is still better to optimize your blog post for the snippet.

Google normally takes headers to form snippets, H2s for the title and H3s for the list items of snippets. 

Once you are done with the optimization, submit the URL to Google search console again.

Blogging For SEO Tip 3. Due Diligence

What is due diligence when it comes to blogging for SEO? As a webmaster, one needs to always be on a lookout for easy opportunities and exploit them as they are presented.

Over a period of time, posts start losing ranking. This may happen because the information in the blog post has become obsolete, lost relevance, the post has become old, or posts from another site on the same topic are better. 

For example, one of your posts which used to rank on page one is now ranking on page two or three. This is a low hanging fruit. This post has the potential to rank back on page one. 

Go back to such old posts and make changes and improve them. 

When editing an old post, aim for accuracy, freshness, and comprehensiveness on the topic. Remove the outdated information, add list items if relevant, improve on-page SEO and change the date to the current date. 

Thas it! Now promote this post as any other new post.

Conclusion

Blogging is hard work and a tedious job, but if done correctly, it will give high returns in terms of brand authority and organic traffic. You will need to be consistent and patient with this strategy. But this is a sure way to success. It will pay you back, in the long run, more than you invest, that is for sure.

If you are looking for SEO services send us an inquiry, we can form a personalized SEO strategy for your business and effectively implement it to meet your business goals. Digital Masters Hub offers digital Marketing Services to businesses with a mission to help them grow.