First off: why even have a blog?
This is a pretty common thing to wonder for those who are just beginning their dive into an improved online presence. In some ways, it can feel like just another task in an area that can already be a bit overwhelming at first. But once you learn more about blogs’ role in your digital visibility, it’s clear they’re a really, really great tool.
A blog can help answer people’s frequently asked questions, share industry news, and address informational intent from search engine users. But what does that mean for your site itself?
For starters, it’s a good way to ensure you’re consistently publishing new content; this gives you more opportunities to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs, for those of us too lazy to say all those syllables) and in the process creates more entry points for people to come to your site. Furthermore, a good blog fosters returning visitors — people who are familiar with your content and who deliberately return to check in for new blog posts.
Example of Fujisan Marketing Blog
A blog is also great for posting “evergreen” content — that is, content that’s timelessly helpful and will be relevant for a long time. Much of the content we publish here on our Fujisan blog falls under that category. A good example of evergreen content includes something like our post here on conversion pathways. Some non-Fujisan versions include this look at ice skating edgework, this recipe on Korean tofu stew, or this explanation for why cats cuddle roll. Evergreen content is fantastic because, with it being relevant for so long (and sometimes forever), its helpfulness to online users doesn’t expire — bringing new people to your site for years, many of whom will become returning visitors.
So how does optimizing your blog posts differ from optimizing the rest of your site?
The driver for these differences is the specific focus of a single blog post versus the wider net of your site in general.
The more focused, in-depth nature of a blog post allows you to garner both more targeted traffic and traffic from those looking to learn about relevant topics that just don’t fit on your main site pages. Meanwhile, those other site pages tend to focus more inward on your own service- or product-related topics and keywords. Long-tail keywords in your blogs are a big part of this; you can also check which ones your competitors are ranking on and then use those to come up with your own related posts.
Blogs are also an opportunity to write more longform content. Other pages on your site ideally aren’t stuffed with paragraphs upon paragraphs of content; making pages too dense like this tends to overwhelm site visitors and often drives them away.
Blog posts, on the other hand, are a great place to go more in-depth like previously stated so you can inform people on relevant topics, increase the time they spend on your site, and have more space to use the optimal keywords. Although that being said, we always warn people against just foisting keywords into their blog posts just for keywords’ sake — search engine algorithms are too smart, and internet users are too savvy (well, most, anyway), to be fooled by this. Quality is the number one priority for which there is no shortcut.
Example of “So Who Uses Bing” SERP
Example of “So Who Uses Bing” Post on Fujisan Marketing Blog
SEO blog tactics to keep in mind
So other than savvy and relevant keyword usage plus quality content, what other practices help ensure you get the most out of your blog posts?
One thing that’s easy to overlook is just the blog-adapted version of a real-life skill: networking and creating solid relationships with others! That might sound kind of dorky or like something a business school college freshman would say, but it can genuinely be really beneficial to build relationships with other relevant blogs, partners, and influential businesses and work together to promote each other. In doing so, you’ll hopefully get them to link to some of your content on their site and vice versa to help them out.
Similarly, we recommend linking internally to your other blog posts or pages when it makes sense to do so. For example, oh look, here we talked about link building with other sites in a two-part series on how it helps your online visibility! How convenient!
We also recommend sharing blog posts through your other marketing channels like a monthly newsletter and social media platforms. These are obviously pretty basic, but they’re a mega-easy way to ensure your posts reach a certain amount of people consistently.
Other tactics for blog search engine optimization are just adapted versions of search engine optimization for the other parts of your website. We have a more comprehensive look at that here, but a basic rundown includes a few key practices:
As we referred to earlier, it’s wise to start off with a target keyword in mind and incorporate it into the post — but again, do not just shove keywords in there at the expense of quality. You’ll also want to incorporate your target keyword into tags: meta titles, meta descriptions, images, and headers.
And lastly: one thing that people tend to overlook is the importance of making sure your pages are mobile friendly! We get it — it’s an easy thing to forget — but as mobile usage continues to count for a larger portion of people online, the significance of how mobile-friendly your page is increases in the eyes of search engines. In other words, all things held constant, Google will rank a mobile-friendly page higher than one that’s less mobile-friendly.
By utilizing these tactics for your blog, you’re ensuring greater visibility now plus greater growth of your visibility in the future. That means that for just a little extra work, all the work you already invested into your blog will pay off even more.
