Why Do People Blog?
Why Blog? Well for some people it may well be a status thing to be seen online. To others it is a great way to boost a websites SEO. Either way it is important to make sure you get the most out of it and have fun along the way.
For this article “Why Blog”, I will not be focusing on the status building (although this is important for people such as authors promoting something like a book). Rather I will be looking at the SEO benefits of blogging.
News or Blog
I should also say at this point that many people refer to news and blog as the same thing. Indeed on many sites it is (and no problem in that at all). Strictly speaking however a blog is an informative article that is written in a conversational style. This means it will come over as just that, a conversation (albeit a one sided one). A news item is slightly different in that it conveys information. It is only a subtle difference but an important one. Most people call this section on their site one or the other name. However, to include both styles of writing, which is just fine. Bigger sites can often tend to split the two and use them both as they are ideally intended. This article could indeed be called “Why Write News Articles” instead of “Why Blog”
For the ease of writing this article, I will refer to a blog in this piece but it can equally apply to news.
Fresh Content
One aim everyone has for their website is for it to flourish. What better way to do it than to add regular new content to the site. Blogs and news items are the idea way to do this. As well as the SEO benefit, it is great for website visitors to get new content fed to them.
These blogs can also be an ideal opportunity to add new keywords to the site. At the same time you are leaving the main pages to carry on ranking for their own existing keywords. The more new content that search engines see, the better they will rank your site as active. This in turn will move you up the rankings accordingly.
Why Blog and What to Blog About
The first step when considering “why blog”, is to think about what to blog, i.e. what you want to write about, or more strictly, what your website’s visitors want to read. Once you have decided on the topic, think about the keyword(s) and what you want to get found for in online searches. Keyword research is often overlooked but is a very important part of writing a blog.
A blog is a great opportunity to pass information on to your websites visitors and topics can include the following:
News about your business
Product news and information
Industry news
Staff news
Sales promotions
Above all else, make sure the content offers the reader something perceived as valuable i.e. hints and tips, or a service you offer that can help them in their business. Think about “whats in it for me” from the readers point of view. Why would they want to read the article and what can they gain from it?
Onsite SEO
We use (and very strongly recommend) Yoast’s SEO plugin as it offers so much help in writing a blog article. The basic plugin is free but the premium version is well worth the money in the extra help it offers to you.
How Yoast works is that after you’ve written your article, you need to make sure your content is optimised for the search engines. Once you have uploaded the text onto your website, you will see red and orange bullets which will indicate if you copy is SEO friendly or not. Additionally you will be given hints and tips about what to do too improve optimisation of the page.
One important point I must stress when considering “Why Blog” is that you should always remember that no matter how good your article is, if the search engines do not rank it well, you will fall down the rankings and no one will find it and therefore no-one gets to read it!
Comments On or Off?
Comments are a topic that I am frequently asked about and yes, it is another thing to do on your site thats takes time. additionally is can be daunting to allow the world to comment on your writing!
However seach engines does notice when comments are left and just as importantly, when you answer any questions. Sharing of your post is also great for SEO as it gets you site external links which the likes of Google sees as a very positive thing.
I suggest to people that instead of thinking of these comments as exactly that, a comment or someone else opinion on the subject, think of it as a discussion. Interaction with your audience is great and can build your authority on the subject matter. This has a double effect as it is in both the readers eyes and also that of the search engines.
This article was about “Why Blog” but I intent to speak a bit more about blogging itself in the future. Hopefully the information above will help you feel a bit more comfortable about writing a blog or news article.