If you are reading this right now, you likely know what a blog is… after all… you are reading one this very second. Blogging isn’t just for people who want to share recipes or stories, it is also for businesses and a great way for them to connect with their audience and gain website visitors and customers. Blogging is no longer just a pastime for people you want to share a diary of their lives, it is now essential to your brand’s online presence. We are going to review how to use blogs to increase organic search traffic and give you a quick refresher of what blogs are, organic search is, and how they all connect.
What is a Blog?
As we said above, if you are reading this, you are experiencing a real life example of what a blog is, but if you would like to better understand blogging and how it can relate to increasing traffic and sales for your business, we have got you covered.
According to Merriam-Webster, a blog is “A website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer, and also the contents of such site”. They also define a blog as, “A regular feature appearing as part of an online publication that typically relates to a particular topic and consists of articles and personal commentary by one or more authors”.
Well, that just about sums it up, doesn’t it? Okay, maybe not. When it comes to your business and blogging, blogs can be more clearly defined. A business blog will usually be featured on a company’s website and will always be related to a particular business topic, product, or service that connects to that business in some way. Blogging for business is a marketing tactic designed not only to inform readers, but to increase visibility of your organization and, ultimately, to push readers towards buying your products or services.
What is Organic Search?
Now that we are all on the same page as to what a blog is, you likely are wondering how to use blogs to increase organic search traffic, maybe even what organic search is in the first place. Let’s start with the latter.
51% of all website traffic comes from organic search, and over 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic. Organic search is based on the unpaid rankings in search results, where paid search is exactly that, in the paid rankings and advertisement sections of a search engine. With organic search, Search engine optimization (SEO) is used to optimize a website’s visibility or ranking.
Organic search results are the website listings that most closely match the user’s search query based on relevance. Also called “natural” search results, ranking high in the organic results is what SEO is all about. Organic search results happen naturally and are not paid for like paid search. They are “natural” in the sense that, the search engine algorithms analyzing all the pages across the web, feel the pages they display contain the most relevant information for that particular search. Organic search can be powerful to users because they know they are seeing the results based on the search engine finding them to be the most relevant for them and not because they were paid for.
How do Blogs Connect to Organic Search and Increase Online Traffic?
As we mentioned above, you can use blogs to increase organic search traffic. How? Well, blogging is perhaps the most effective way to increase organic search traffic. With the right choice of topic and use of keywords in your blogs, your website stands a greater chance of ranking higher in search engine result pages, like we reviewed above, and increasing the number of people that are directed to your website.
Blogging helps advance SEO quality by positioning your website as a relevant answer to your customers’ questions. The right blog posts can give you more opportunities to rank in search engines and get people to visit your website. Having a blog that’s updated consistently with blog posts that are high quality and discuss topics relevant to your audience, can make a huge difference to how your overall website performs on search engines and how you rank in organic search results. Did we mention that blogging also gives you another way to build a type of personal connection with your audience? It does.
You can use blogs to increase organic search traffic. Blogs help SEO in numerous ways: keeping your website and content current and fresh, increasing the time people spend on your website, allowing you to target specific keywords, creating a space for internal linking, and as we mentioned, building a connection to your audience. Blogs improve SEO for your website, but also improve the overall experience and connection you have with your customers and ideal customers. As a business, having a blog is a huge benefit.
Ready to Improve Your Organic Search Traffic and Website?
When it comes to using blogs to increase organic search traffic, we are experts. Don’t believe us? We got you to read this, didn’t we?
At Water Bear Marketing, with our OrganicSearch product, we focus on SEO and create custom blogs, relevant to your business. We are focused on increasing our client’s online ranking, consumer perception, and improving their chances of being found across the Internet with clear and accurate information. Our OrganicSearch program allows you to stand out, literally. Our goal is to get you seen in as many places as possible.