If you have a blog on your company's website then good for you! You are already doing more to market your business and drive traffic to your site than 40% of your competitors.
And if you're posting fresh content regularly and consistently, then congratulations! You are on your way to being a truly effective content marketer for your brand.
A Great Blog Needs to be Seen to be Great - and SEO is the Key
But to have a great business blog you need to have certain elements that consistently make up the "DNA" of your blog posts. Consistency, frequency and the length of your posts are all important factors, but if your posts are not being found by new visitors through SEO tactics, your audience will diminish over time.
The problem is that SEO is not a static function and the requirements imposed by the major search engines such as Google require marketers and content publishers - that's you! - to evolve with the changes. What worked well with SEO for content marketers years ago does not work as well today, if at all.
This is the premise of Barry Feldman of the Content Marketing Institute in a recent article on the topic:
SEO has hit the fan, man. Hmm. What?
I mean, if you think you have foolproof tactics up your sleeve and magic linking techniques in your back pocket for optimizing your content, I’m sorry to inform you that your sleeve and pocket are see-through.
In 2016, you can’t hide your tricks. The search gods see all. And they don’t look kindly on your 2010-era SEO.
Google and the other search engines you care about are now good at sniffing out evidence that shows readers get value from your pages.
To this end, Feldman produced a great checklist for boosting your blog post search rankings with the most current SEO tactics:
Content Marketing is Still a Powerful Marketing Strategy
According to Jason Demer, writing in the Forbes online magazine:
"More than ever before, content is at the very heart of the practice of achieving high rankings in search. Neil Patel called content marketing “The New SEO” as far back as 2012...
With a proper distribution strategy for your content, your content is far more likely to gain traction; through social shares, links and through increased search rankings. Creating useful, thorough, well-optimized content is key, but so is having a plan in place for getting that content in front of a wider audience."
While ensuring that your keyword research provides terms that are relevant and helpful to your audience, you must make sure that your content is well structured and your site is accessible and mobile-friendly. In addition, you must target mobile users in addition to desktop audiences, and work to earn links and shares,
But, ultimately, it is quality content marketing that matters most in the end for your SEO strategy.
To Have a Great Business Blog You Must Produce One!
It is one thing to know that a business blog is a valuable tool, not only for your SEO efforts, but for enhancing your impact on your audience. But it is another thing to actually produce one. And to produce one that is published consistently, frequently and with great, quality posts.
The time, effort, and ability to develop and write blog posts consistently over a long period of time is a challenge for many business owners.
But, of course, you don't have to write it yourself. You can delegate this task to someone in your company, or even outsource the whole thing to a freelance content writer or a good marketing agency. However, this, too, can be a challenge.
The temptation for many businesses is to look for low-cost, generic content that they can simply "plug and play" into their business blog. If you are considering this approach for your own blog, it would be better to not have a blog at all than to diminish your brand with low quality and ill-conceived content.
A better approach for creating and publishing and effective business blog is to get outside help. Digital marketing agencies, such as BroadVision Marketing, can offer expertise and tools that the typical business owner or marketing manager may not have.
It often helps to have an professional marketer's perspective to assess your content marketing strategy. Acquiring the insights and assessment of a third-party professional can be an investment that will bring a quantifiable return.
BroadVision Marketing offers all this and more. Get your Free Complimentary Inbound Marketing Session to help you make an informed decision or call BroadVision Marketing at 707-799-1238.
In the meantime, click on the button below and download your own copy of 10 Powerful Inbound Marketing Charts.
