According to the English dictionary, a blog “allows users to reflect, share opinions, and discuss various topics in the form of an online journal, sometimes letting readers comment on their posts.” In other words, a blog creates an avenue for you to relate and understand your clients. This can help you grow organic website traffic. But do you use a blog to grow your organic website traffic? Here is a step-by-step guide to get you started.
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Blogs are more efficient and effective in generating leads than paid ads
Paid ads might have proven useful, beyond doubt, but blogs offer several advantages that ads do not. For that reason, many of the big and successful businesses worldwide use blogs as their number one medium for generating leads and driving sales.
According to Neil Patel, one of the leading digital marketing experts, “companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those who don’t, have 434% more indexed pages, and 97% more indexed links all leading to better SEO and ranking.” But how does a blog help to grow organic website traffic, better than an ad could do?
Firstly, blogs are more detailed than ads and it is easier for your potential clients to understand what your business and brand is really about.
Secondly, blogs can create a connection and understanding between your audience and your business’s objective, making blogs highly beneficial especially to small and medium-sized businesses.
Creating a website for your business is one thing, but generating leads to the website is another. To grow organic website traffic, good web contents are vital. Through blogs, you can increase your keyword ranking and grow your organic search traffic.
Some small business owners are reluctant about creating blog content because they feel it entails lots of work and time. However, blogs are not that complex to handle. Besides, you can hire professionals to create good blog content.
Leads can be generated for any website, and there are no exemptions. And while paid ads may seem to do the job, blogs may be far more beneficial in appealing to your target audience. Reading your blog offers your potential clients a good insight into what your business can do for them and nudge them as well to go for it.
We will walk you through how to use a blog to grow your organic website traffic in this post.
Step-by-step guide to use a blog to grow your organic website traffic
1. Plan your blog and know your main objective for starting the blog
Before starting your blog, you first need to strategize on how to go about it. If possible, contact a professional to assist you with the process.
If you want to run a successful brand, it would be best to write down your objective for starting the blog. This will help you get your priorities right if you lose focus along the line. If the objective of your blog is to bring new traffic to your website, your blog needs to be optimized for SEO. Therefore, you need to know what to write with the right keywords, and you need to be consistent.
2. Know your target audience
Getting to know your target audience and finding out their needs and expectations is vital when creating blog content. To sell a product, you need to find out who needs the product.
The three basic problems in economics are what to produce, for whom to produce, and where to produce. The same thing applies to capturing your target audience. You need to know the kind of blog content to create, find out who needs your services (target audience), and research where you can post your blogs to capture the right audience.
A sound approach to reaching your target audience starts by understanding who you want to reach, and then identifying their challenges and interests. A farmer doesn’t expect a tree to grow if the seed was planted on infertile land. Starting a blog for your business is a great start to making your business grow, but if you need your blog to grow your organic traffic on your website, you first need to know your target audience.
How do you make sure your blog is attractive for your target audience? Be specific, no need to bit about the bush on what your business is about. Your headings, subheadings, keywords, and contents should be about what your business entails. That way, you will be able to attract your target audience at first glance. After winning your target audience, do not relent because it expects changes from time to time. Keep coming up with ways to keep them interested.
3. Identify your keywords
You need to do intense research on keywords to make sure your blog articles appear at the top of Google search results. Also, you need to think about how people search. To think of how people search on Google, you have to first think from their perspective. If you were to be in their place, how would you phrase your search?
Be on the lookout for long-tail keyword phrases on topics related to your brand. This will help boost your search engine rankings. Your selected keywords should have at least a volume of 50 searches per month, preferably more.
Do not get discouraged if your page fails to appear amongst the top-ranking searches because it can take time. Search engine optimization (SEO) is key to make your content relevant in the eyes of Google. One good hint to get started is to think small. Especially smaller websites should start by pinpointing niche topics rather than trying to “tackle the giants”. You can still drive enough traffic to your site as long as your page appears amongst the relevant searches on Google. When searching for relevant keywords, as an SME business, do not go for the most obvious keywords to avoid competing with top businesses in your category because it won’t end well. You will eventually compete with them someday, but not as an SME business.
There are lots of keyword research tools that can make your work easier. Some of these tools are SEMRush, Google keyword planner and Ubersuggest. Although most of those tools come at a cost, they can be a big help to ensure that your content actually generates traffic.
After identifying the right keywords, use them in different areas of your article. They should appear in your head, sub-heading, paragraphs and at the end of the article – basically, make your keywords noticed.
4. Optimize for SEO
There is no way around optimizing for SEO when creating blog content; it is very necessary. It should be done in every blog article you write. Your article needs to be fully optimized to get slotted into relevant search results by Google. This enables Google to identify what your article is about and have a good placement for it as well.
How do you optimize your article for SEO?
You need to search for the best long-tail keyword with a good search volume of 50 and above searches per month for the topic you want to write about.
Optimizing for SEO on all your blogs articles shouldn’t worry you; it is not so complex to handle. Besides, the more practice you have, the easier it becomes for you. There are also some online tools you can use to find out the most searched for topics concerning your business so you can write about them without wasting time on stuff people are not actually looking for. If you are not sure about getting it done properly by yourself, you can always employ the assistance of professionals.
5. Post consistently
As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day – everything is a process. It takes time for your page to appear on Google or any other search engine, so you need to post consistently to accelerate the process. Regular updates on your page will get Google to notice you faster and scan the site often. Even after appearing on search engines, you still need to write articles regularly to remain relevant.
Creating a blog requires commitment; once you have started it, you need to be consistent. Apart from maintaining your relevance on search engines, you don’t want to disappoint your audience. Both your intending customers and your actual customers will likely negatively react if you do not keep up regular posting.
6. Create innovative and quality content
Creativity is the key to creating good content.
Make your content unique, interesting, easy to understand, and detailed. People read blogs about businesses to have a clear image of the brand before going for it. You do not need to use big grammars to make your article look important. What really matters is getting your audience to understand your business objectives.
Your article needs to be flexible, like water; it shouldn’t be too hot or too cold but rather lukewarm. A little bit of humor will make your audience comfortable. Be innovative, keep coming up with new and interesting write-ups, to maintain your relevance.
Closing words
How to use a blog to grow your organic website traffic? We have tried to answer this question in the article above. While there are many more aspects involved in driving traffic to your website, these are the most important ones. The main goal you should strive to achieve when creating a blog is to grow organic website traffic.
