It may feel like search engines are constantly changing the rules on what is acceptable for link building and keywords. What seems to be here to stay, though, is the use of content marketing including blogging as part of an integrated marketing solution, and sharing your content with the right audience.
How blogs help your SEO
According to Social Enterprise Times, quality blogging can give your site 434 percent more indexed pages, and many businesses have capitalized on this by creating blogs of their own.
But this doesn’t mean you can simply populate your blog with boring material, spammy SEO link building, or copied-and-pasted content—instead, you’ll need to focus on creating helpful blog posts that are written naturally.
Make your posts useful
How do you write a business blog to be natural and not pushy? First, your blog shouldn’t come off as “salesy.” After all, blogs are designed to provide helpful information. You can prompt your readers to take action, but the blog itself should read more like a magazine article and less like an advertisement.
Instead, you could write about your company’s area of expertise, offering links to relevant pages both on and off your site throughout.
Share your content
If you post a blog and no one is around to read it, did it really happen? Of course it did, but the point of your blog is to attract and captivate an audience. After all, you shouldn’t be posting just for the sake of SEO—blogging is part of a larger integrated marketing solution.
Choose which social media platforms seem to get the most response for you and use them to share your blogs, inviting readers to engage. Once readers see you’re a credible resource in your area, they’ll be more likely to trust your brand—and invest in your products or services.
Better link building for SEO
So you know you can’t just throw links around anywhere and expect SEO results. When you try to get outside sources to link to you in an obvious way, it will show—and sites like Expedia and Rap Genius have been hit with huge penalties for doing it.
Instead, try link building in a better, more natural way: by linking to your own content. When you link from one blog entry to another, or to pages on your site, you make it easier to keep your audience interested even after they finish reading what brought them to your site in the first place.
