There are cases in which people treat blogging and SEO like two different activities – on one side, there’s the creative aspect, in which bloggers share their ideas, thoughts, reviews, and opinions, and hope Internet users will find them somehow. On the other hand, there’s the fearsome technical term, search engine optimization, which encompasses everything related to fixing technical issues on your website, finding keywords, understanding search intent, and working with platforms such as web analytics and search consoles.
This split of concepts is indeed why so many blog projects fail. If you also keep the two separated in your mind, then you risk publishing tons of well-written articles and still end up with zero visitors and a failed project. On the other hand, you can spend days and months obsessing over SEO, optimizing each small detail, and publishing overly polished content that is not authentic, and still end up with a failed blog.
In order to achieve success with your blog, you should understand where the line is crossed between blogging and SEO and incorporate both into a single system that makes your website not only authentic but also optimized for search engines. The idea is to gain momentum by creating engaging content with search visibility in mind. If you manage to achieve this, every single one of your blog posts becomes an asset that contributes to more visibility, more visits, and eventually more conversions. Although it sounds like a daunting challenge, you can achieve such a goal gradually and confidently.
In this article, we share where the crossing line between blogging and SEO is and how you can achieve more by blending the two concepts within a single system for optimal online impact of your blog and brand.
Blogging Without SEO: Good Ideas Will Get Lost
There are a lot of businesses and individuals who publish content for the sole purpose of publishing content. In most cases, they push out articles because they know that this is one of the ways of promoting their brand, or, for example, have noticed that competitors are doing it, so they don’t want to miss out.
However, writing publications without prior research and an aim is doomed to fail. The Internet is flooded with good content, excellent content, low-quality content, and thin content. There are billions of publications already online, and millions more coming out each single day. To be able to compete in this heavily inflated field, you would need more than a sole desire to publish articles.
If you wish to grant your publications the chance to reach online readers and eventually turn them into returning visitors and clients, you would need to craft a strategic approach that encompasses each of your future publications.
In short, you need to understand what is SEO and how it works, so it boosts the popularity of your articles in search engine result pages. Otherwise, your great ideas, witty publications, and deep dives into a topic will simply get lost and will never generate satisfactory traffic.
In reality, most blogs fail for several SEO-wise reasons, regardless of how well-written they are:
No Keyword Research is Conducted
Before you start working on any article, you should conduct a comprehensive keyword research and find words and terms that are used by your audience to find information online. Then, you need to find out what the aim of these terms is – commercial, navigational, or informational. Then use these keywords within your content, so you merge searches with answers in the form of your website publications.
Read also:
How to Determine the Most Valuable Keywords to Target
Weak or Completely Missing Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are useful, as they can give more information about what the article is about in more detail, so a user knows what to expect if they open the link. This means that if you come up with a descriptive and persuasive phrase to include in your articles’ meta descriptions, you have the chance to attract more visitors to your website. The opposite is also true – if the meta description is not persuasive and detailed enough, or is simply missing, chances for organic traffic towards your pages are severely diminished.
Poor or Entirely Missing Internal Linking
Apart from technicality, a website can be seen as a library of pieces of content, distributed in different relevant categories. In terms of SEO, this categorization is very important and helps bots and readers to use your website better and find a specific piece of content quickly and easily. In this categorization concept, internal linking plays a crucial role, as it leads from one category or publication to another in a logical manner – should two publications relate to each other, then linking them seems a good idea.
Read: How to Add a Link to WordPress Content
Furthermore, internal linking is important for one more reason – it allows search engines to find more pages on your website and index them, to include them in more search results.
In short, internal linking is very important for your website, and under no condition should you underestimate its power to keep visitors engaged and help bots learn more about your website.
Poorly Performing Website
Users and bots are used to land on well-structured and flawlessly performing websites. Issues such as slow loading, technical errors, and an overall dissatisfactory technical structure guarantee a bad user experience and avoidance of your pages in the future. This is why it is crucial to enhance the performance of your website at any given time – optimize pages, make sure they perform good, provide fast loading speeds, and fix crashes and errors ASAP, so you retain your authority in the field of digital marketing and SEO.
If you are interested in all other aspects that contribute to your more pronounced online presence, then have a look at our comprehensive guide:
What is SEO and How Does it Work?
When you combine all of these elements, you greatly enhance the chance to generate more organic traffic and make sure that more and more people are reading your blog posts.
SEO without Blogging: An Effort that Falls Flat
On the contrary, focusing exclusively on SEO will not do the trick. If you are heavily optimizing your website content, craft your articles in such a way that they look perfect to search engines, and do not grant real value to readers, it will still result in low ranks and eventually, low organic traffic.
This is because today’s Internet users can easily distinguish authentic from inauthentic content and can easily detect which publication aims at granting them value and which is published solely to drive traffic and funds to a website without actually giving something in return.
In short, overly polished and SEO-wise perfect articles can still fail in delivering traffic and converting users.
This is where blogging comes into play. Along with other website activities, publishing blog articles can greatly improve your website’s ranking and overall topical authority, should it be done adequately. When this is achieved, you have the chance to:
- Get more pages on your website to rank. Each post is published via a new page, and therefore, you improve your chances of appearing in more and various search results.
- More topics to match more keywords. Each of your blog posts should revolve around a single keyword and the topic it represents. When this is achieved, you can have numerous articles that are being ranked in different search results – similar to the pages, more topics mean a greater chance for ranks and visits.
- Versatility in topics. Using different keywords allows you to create a diverse network of articles, all revolving around the content pillars of your website. This can help your audience remain engaged and always rely on your website when in need of information – deliver it, and you will establish trust among Internet users.
- More opportunities for social media sharing. The more articles you have, the better the chance of social interaction becomes. In fact, you can use your blog posts within your social media strategy to drive traffic and convert more people into paying customers. Remember that the more topics you have to talk about and use in social media, the more interesting it can become for users to engage with your content and eventually land on your website.
- More internal linking possibilities. As mentioned, internal linking is important and helps keep your website’s sections interconnected. The more detailed content map and interconnected articles you have, the better the SEO score becomes.
The Crossing Line Between Blogging and SEO
The synergy between blogging and SEO is based on the adoption of these three elements: search intent, structure, and visibility. Understanding and adopting all three has the chance of greatly optimizing your blog’s overall quality and visibility in search results. Something more, by using all three, you have the chance to transform your articles into tools that drive traffic towards your page and contribute to improved trust in your brand. Here’s how to leverage each of the 3 elements.
Match Search Intent to Your Blog Content
When researching keywords, have a closer look at the intent with which each phrase is being used – some Internet users use specific words to search for answers and additional info, others browse and compare prices and quality in products and services they consider purchasing, and yet others use various terms to find a place to make their purchase right away. Understanding these intents can help you satisfy the needs of your visitors and, therefore, build a network of clients that remain happy with your website content. To get the most out of a keyword’s search intent, consider the following:
- Research questions and needs your clients are having. The better you understand your audience, the more adequate pieces of content you can present to them.
- Align blog topics with these needs and make sure that each publication answers a given question, satisfies a need, or directly makes the choice and purchase process easier for your audience.
Should you manage to achieve these two goals, then Google (and other search engines) will become more prone to ranking your website higher in various search results. This is due to the fact that the initial goal of search engines is to provide their users with adequate information based on their search queries.
Crete Blog Posts that Appeal to Both Users and Search Engines
Although easier said than done, you should focus on satisfying both the requirements of search engines and the needs of your potential readers with each of your publications. This means that you should follow various SEO rules and yet remain true to your authenticity and to the notion of delivering fresh and useful content to each reader. To achieve this, we suggest the following:
- Incorporate a relevant keyword in headings
- Write informative meta descriptions revolving around your main keyword for the publication.
- Link your blog post with other publications in the same category. Also, make sure to link to other relevant articles in your new publication.
- Include and optimize images to boost your SEO score even more.
Maximize Visibility after Publication
Although you can create a great blog post that is well-structured, informative, and to-the-point, along with being well optimized, you still have work after the initial publication. Although search engines can find and rank the article naturally, you can speed up the process and improve the results by taking things into your hands. Here are a few steps you can follow to maximize visibility after publication:
- Submit your blog post in the Search Console, so you prompt the search engine to crawl and index it faster.
- Share the publication on Social Media, and even include it in your social media campaign for enhanced popularity and a boosted number of visits.
- Update older posts and make sure that the relevant ones link to the new blog article, to benefit from the link juice that is being produced.
- Monitor the article’s performance via analytics and make changes if necessary to retain and even boost the publication’s attractiveness towards users.
The Crossing Line – Blogging and SEO
When blogging and SEO begin being a part of the same system, then you have real chances of drastically improving your organic traffic and turning site visitors into paying customers. Just remember that none of neither needs to be forced – today’s Internet audiences are vastly experienced and will instantly distinguish authentic from non-authentic approaches. This is why your best approach is to remain true to your initial blogging mission and deliver high-quality and to-the-point content at any given time. Don’t force it, don’t try to get smart, but simply analyze what your potential audience would need to make their lives better and deliver it via your blog posts. The more authentic and informative, the better.
At the same time, you need to work on your website’s SEO – without it, your great ideas and wonderful articles won’t get the attention they otherwise can get. Always look for prospective keywords in your niche, link user intention with relatable content, make sure your website functions just fine, establish a good website structure, make sure your internal linking game is on point, and gradually you will establish an online presence that not only brings results, but establishes your brand as an authority in your niche.