What is Blog SEO?

Blogging is the best way to increase quality organic traffic to your site and generate leads. According to DemandMetric, companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don't blog.

That statistic is hard to ignore, especially when you consider organic traffic is free! So let’s break it down for those of you who aren’t quite sure exactly how blog SEO can generate more traffic and leads. 

What is Blog SEO?

SEO is short for search engine optimization. Blog SEO is the practice of making your blog posts more visible to people using search engines like Google or Bing with the goal of increasing organic (non-paid) traffic to a website.

There are many ways to optimize your blog post or web page effectively for search engines. The most important on-page factors for blog post optimization include: page title, URL structure, tags, images, videos, meta tags, internal links, references, and the all-important overarching keyword strategy.

I detail of these on-page optimization strategies in my free guide The Optimized Blog Blueprint. It is the essential roadmap to getting your blogs to rank higher on Google and other search engines.

The Benefits of Blogging for Marketing a Small Business

Google processes more than 8.5 billion searches per day. That’s a lot of people searching for a lot of things. Within those searches are a lot of very specific searches made by people who are looking to engage with businesses with the intention of buying products or services. As a business owner, herein lies the benefits of blogging for marketing your small business.

Blogging involves regularly creating and publishing articles called blog posts on your business website that are relevant to your target audience and ideally relate to and promote your business, products or services either directly or indirectly.

Blogging is a cost-effective and powerful tool that small business owners can utilize to achieve your marketing goals. The benefits of blogging for marketing your small business include:

1. Increasing website traffic by creating optimized content that potential customers are searching for
2. Improving search engine rankings with fresh, high-quality content search engines love
3. Establishing authority by showcasing your expertise
4. Growing brand awareness by sharing your content on social and other platforms

Blogging can create opportunities for your business that should not be passed up on. However, to fully reap the benefits of blogging for marketing your small business, you need to employ SEO as part of your strategy.

Small Business Owners Marketing Toolkit Essential

Blogging is an essential part of any small business owners marketing toolkit. That said, if you are publishing blog posts or web pages but not optimizing them for search engines, you are seriously limiting their potential to get you traffic and leads for your business.

Blogging is a type of organic marketing. Unlike paid marketing (e.g., social media ads, Google Ads), you don’t have to pay money to the platform in order to show your content to people. All you have to do is these two things:

1) Create quality content your audience is interested in engaging with;

2) Optimize your content for search engines.

Anyone taking the first step without the second is likely wasting their time and efforts. A check of traffic analytics on a site with no search engine optimization will likely show that very few people are seeing any of that content. That’s because search engines need help in determining what a blog post is about so they can make a decision whether or not to show it to someone.

Largely Untapped Well for Small Business Owners

The better optimized your blog is, the closer your blog will show up to the top of the search results. The higher you rank in search, the more likely someone is to click on your link. That’s because most people won’t click on anything beyond the first 3 to 10 results on any search, even with Google’s continuous scroll results pages.

The purpose of optimization is to get your content a piece of that prime real estate at the top of the search results and get those clicks. The more traffic you can drive to your site, the greater your chance of converting that visitor to your site into a paying customer. And, that paying customer really is the bottom line.

I’ve been doing this for more than a decade. In that time, I have worked with clients who put resources behind blog optimization and have reaped the rewards with more keyword rankings, increases in traffic, more lead generation, and business growth.

I’ve also seen businesses neglect their blog against my advice and remain stagnant, just relying on the same network for referrals they have been tapping for years. If you want to grow your business in a significant way and reach new and bigger audiences with your services, you need to try an untapped well.

I work primarily in the health and wellness industry, and I am actually surprised at how many keywords related to my clients’ businesses have very low to medium competition. That is a strong indication that very few small businesses in this industry are actually using blog SEO techniques to boost their performance.

In fact, a survey by The Manifest revealed that only 30% of small businesses use search engine optimization (SEO). This presents a huge opportunity for business owners, like you, who are willing to take that extra step.

Furthermore, the report found that most small businesses are not hiring experts to manage their SEO. They are able to implement effective strategies by training in-house staff. SEO is not only affordable, it is easy to learn, if you have the right coaching and resources.

Get Started with The Optimized Blog Blueprint

I’ve created this free resource for people just like you to get started today on optimizing your blog posts. The Optimized Blog Blueprint is an easy-to-follow, repeatable, step-by-step guide for ensuring every blog post you craft is properly optimized for search engines. By following the steps I’ve laid out as you create your blogs, you are well on your way to seeing improvements in where your blogs show up in search results. With consistent effort, over time you will begin driving people who are actually looking for your services and expertise to your website where they can be nurtured into paying clients.

SEO doesn’t work overnight. It can take several months after optimizing and publishing to start ranking for a new keyword and several more months to rank in a position that is fruitful. However, if you stick with the Blueprint, the effects will compound over time garnering more traffic year-over-year. Soon enough you will be seeing the all the benefits of blogging for marketing your small business.

The sooner you start, the better off you are. It can be difficult to outrank competitors who have been in the SEO game for years. That’s because they’ve had a chance to build up authority in the search engines’ eyes. That’s the compound effect I was talking about. That’s why getting a jump on the rest of the field is essential. What are you waiting for? Let’s get started.

Download your FREE copy of The Optimized Blog Blueprint now!