Face it: no one clicks past the first page of Google search results. You don’t and neither does your audience. Developing a content strategy with SEO at the forefront is key to ensuring your content gets the views it deserves. After all, you spent time and money creating it — your audience should see it.
It’s all about your audience.
Your target audience needs help with something. Odds are, the answer to their question is out there. Would you rather they land on someone else’s (maybe even a competitor’s) site than yours? Focus on answering their questions in your content and you’ll drive more traffic to your website, establish your expertise, and begin building a relationship with your audience. Eventually, you'll become an authority figure in your industry among your readers.
For example, if you create awesome work out gear for beginners, your audience probably consists of individuals who are interested in fitness. Consider the questions those individuals may be searching for:
- How to start working out?
- How to workout from home?
- What are the best exercises for beginners?
Answering those questions in your content will help you rank higher on Google for the terms your audience is searching for. Additionally, as your audience finds and reads your content, you’ll begin establishing your expertise and building their trust.
Your entire site will benefit.
By developing more high-quality content on your website and increasing keyword rankings for individual pages, the overall authority of your domain will increase. This will help other pages, including your home page and services pages to show up higher in search results. Additionally, it will make it easier for your new content to rank higher.
It’s also important to consider the value in bringing new visitors to your website. By getting more search traffic to your blog pages, you’ll be able to drive viewers to other pages of your site to learn more and potentially buy.
How should businesses incorporate SEO in their blogging strategy?
Start by identifying general topics you want your brand to be associated with. Use an SEO tool like Moz or SEMRush to determine the monthly search volume of your proposed keywords. You want to find a term that people are searching for frequently. Try to find 2-3 main keywords on different topics with high search volumes.
From there, for each topic, go through and find niche long-tail keywords. (Long-tail keywords are longer phrases that drill down into a niche topic.) Look for keywords that still have a decent search volume (more than 50 searches per month), but aren’t too saturated with content that you’ll never rank. In SEMRush you should look for keywords with a difficulty rating of less than .7. When you’re looking for long-tail keywords, consider how your audience would be searching for a topic. Think about the specific terminology and phrasing they would use when Googling. Develop a list of 20+ long-tail keywords for each main keyword.
As you develop your content calendar, reference your keyword strategy list. Try to find 1-3 keywords that you can write a blog about. Keyword stuffing now hurts your ranking, so don’t senselessly jam the keyword into your blog. Instead, use them naturally. Where it makes sense, use your keywords as headers or hyper-linked body text. Include internal links to both other relevant blogs on your site and external links to studies or other authoritative sources. For the best results, be consistent in your strategy and develop high-quality content. At the end of the day, if your blog isn’t good, your SEO efforts are for naught.
Develop a blog strategy to grow your business in 2021.
Putting SEO at the forefront of your blog strategy is a good way to focus on driving website traffic tactfully. By honing in on your audience, their interests, and their needs you can create content that will attract your target customers to your site and gain their trust.
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