Despite the fact that Content Marketing is in it’s Golden Age, many companies are still wondering if it’s worth maintaining a blog on their website. And of course, they are right to do so – it takes time, effort, a lot of research, and in many cases – extra budget, especially if you are hiring a freelancer or an agency to do it.
But the truth is, if you are investing your budget and efforts correctly, there are many unquestionable benefits of blogging for SEO. Today, we are going to cover all of them.
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So, what are some of the most awesome benefits of blogging for SEO? If you are here for the short answer, here it is:
Some of the biggest benefits of blogging for SEO include high-quality traffic, better search rankings, increased brand awareness, higher domain authority, trustworthiness and improved user experience.
So, without wasting any more time, let’s dive right into them!
1. Get high-quality traffic
The first benefit of blogging for SEO is that once you’ve positioned for relevant keywords within your industry, you are going to get a lot of high-quality traffic that may later convert to customers.
Let me explain.
Let’s say that you are a clothing company that sells all types of clothes, from cocktail dresses to business formal attire. And you write articles that cover some of the following topics:
- 10 fashion tips to look stylish;
- 7 basic rules of fashion that will never go away;
- 9 tips for dressing in business formal attire;
If you’ve done your blogging right, and get on the first positions of search engines, users that go to Google and type keywords such as “business formal attire” will stumble across your articles.
Benefit #1 of blogging for SEO: Driving high-quality traffic to your website
These people are already looking for business attire, or are considering purchasing some formal clothes in the future. Maybe they are just starting a new job in the next weeks, or simply want to learn how to dress more formally at work.
The point is, these people are already interested in something that you are selling. They might not purchase it at the moment, but they will read your valuable and helpful content.
They will remember your brand, and may come back to purchase from your company in the future. However, blogging for SEO really helps you bring high-quality traffic that is already showing some interest.
2. Achieve better search rankings
One of the most important benefits of blogging for SEO is that the more you articles you publish, the better chances you have for ranking higher on search engines like Google.
Benefit #2 of blogging for SEO: Better positioning on search engines like Google
This happens for a few reasons:
- Fresh content – search engines value fresh and updated content. For this reason, websites without blogs that are barely experiencing any content updates find it hard to position on Google.
- Specific keywords – blogging allows you to rank for hundreds of niche-specific keywords for which you wouldn’t be able to position if you only had a few pages on your website.
- Backlinks – we will talk more about this later, but more content increases your chances of getting more backlinks, which in turn will help you position better in search rankings.
In other words, having a well-maintained and regularly updated blog can really skyrocket the overall search engine positioning of your whole website.
3. Increase brand awareness
Next on our list of awesome benefits of blogging for SEO is that it helps you generate brand awareness. According to Optinmonster, companies that blog get 97% more links to their websites, and have 434% more indexed pages than companies that don’t.
Benefit #3 of blogging for SEO: Increasing brand awareness organically
Getting more links and more indexed pages means that your traffic is going to increase significantly.
The more traffic you get to your website, the more people learn about your brand, which means that you are going to spread a lot of brand awareness as a result.
4. Score higher domain authority
Our list of benefits of blogging for SEO continues with domain authority. Domain authority score is a search engine ranking score developed by MOZ that predicts how likely a website is to rank on the first pages of Google.
Benefit #4 of blogging for SEO: Increasing the domain authority of your website
Domain authority helps you rank better on search engines, and as we saw earlier, better rankings mean more traffic flowing to your website. According to bigcommerce.com, some ways to improve your domain authority score include:
- Auditing your link profile;
- Creating engaging content;
- Earning high-quality backlinks;
And, from the previous points that we just talked about, we saw that blogging is the key to both interacting with your audience through engaging content as well as to earning high-quality backlinks.
Which, in turn, will help you boost your domain authority.
5. Get more cookies
Another awesome, although less direct benefit of blogging for SEO is that you get more cookies from users who are navigating through your website.
Benefit #5 of blogging for SEO: Making better campaigns with higher cookie volume
Since blog articles that are well-optimized for search engines tend to bring a lot of traffic to your website, this means that you get more web visitors that consent to collecting Marketing cookies.
As a result, you can build bigger audiences that you can later re-engage through remarketing campaigns in Google Ads, for example. Typically, audience volume is one of the biggest issues when it comes to remarketing since it builds up very slowly.
This means that, by blogging for SEO, you can organically increase your audience volume, and leverage this data for more targeted Marketing campaigns. However, make sure that you set up these audiences in Google Analytics beforehand.
And, if you don’t have a Google Analytics account, it is definitely time to make one! It is 100% free.
6. Increase your trustworthiness
While domain authority score is more from an SEO and technical perspective, it is not the only perspective from which you can increase your authority and trustworthiness.
Benefit #6 of blogging for SEO: Establishing brand authority and trustworthiness
In fact, blogging for SEO is a great way to establish your credibility and become a more trustworthy brand in the eyes of your audience.
By regularly publishing valuable and insightful content within your niche, you will slowly, but surely establish a brand that cares about its audience.
You will also show that you have a huge expertise within your niche, which will make people more likely to purchase something from you. And this will happen not only to your organic audience that’s coming from search engines, but also to your existing audience as well.
7. Improve user experience
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, one of the most important factors is user experience. In other words, how easy, intuitive and smooth is people’s experience on your website?
The better the user experience is, the more likely it is that you rank higher on Google. Search engines always prioritize websites that are fast and easy to navigate through, as opposed to ones that are slow and simply impossible to enjoy.
Benefit #7 of blogging for SEO: Delivering better user experience for your audience
In this sense, blogging for SEO allows companies to not only target their audience with niche-specific keywords, but also to get creative with their content.
Content is not only about text. By incorporating videos, infographics and charts, you can get as creative as you want, and deliver an outstanding experience that both users and search engines will appreciate.
After all, the main goal that search engines have is to offer users search results that are useful, relevant, appealing and enjoyful. So, it is all related – by making your audience happy, you make search engines like Google happy as well.
8. Get more internal linking opportunities
Another awesome benefit of blogging for SEO is that it provides you with more internal linking opportunities. If you are not familiar with the term, internal linking is the process of linking pages on your website to other pages on your website.
Benefit #8 of blogging for SEO: Having more content for a better internal linking structure
Of course, this should not be arbitrary – the goal is to connect a piece of content with another relevant piece of content that provides additional value. There are multiple benefits to doing so:
- It makes it easier for users to navigate through your website as they find additional content related to their search query.
- It helps spread link juice. Link juice helps you build your domain authority because it assigns power to other links on your website.
- Internal linking also increases your pageviews. If you are linking correctly to other related articles, people may go to another one once they finish reading.
- It also improves the time spend on the website. As people browse from one piece of content to another, they usually stay for longer.
The more content you have, the more powerful your internal linking can get – it is also a really important factor for positioning better on Google. Since pages on a website are limited, you can’t really link them that much.
However, if you are blogging for SEO, you can leverage all of your articles for better internal linking.
9. Keep people on your website for longer
We just touched on it briefly in the previous point, but I definitely think it deserves a separate section.
Benefit #9 of blogging for SEO: Making people stay on your website more time
Another essential benefit of blogging for SEO is that you keep people on your website for longer time. Since the keyword of your post is matching the user’s query on Google, they are reading a high-quality content that they are truly interested in.
If you regularly produce valuable content that resonates with your audience and solves their problems, they will visit your blog frequently and will probably check multiple posts. Especially if you’ve effectively used internal link building strategies.
In other words, they will not only visit your website just to take a look and leave. They will actually spend quality time on it, browsing through different posts and pages. In terms of Google Analytics metrics, this will not only increase the average time spend on page but also the number of pageviews.
10. Show your audience that you care
Another huge benefit of blogging for SEO is that, by providing valuable and high-quality content, you show that you actually care about solving the queries and problems of your target audience.
And you are not only about selling them stuff, which is a mistake that many companies make.
But the truth is, if you show to your audience that you really want to help them and add value, they will be more willing to purchase from you. As opposed to a company that only generates content designed to sell.
Benefit #10 of blogging for SEO: Showing your audience that you want to provide value for them
A great example of a company that produces really high quality, extremely valuable content is Hubspot. Hubspot constantly publishes super helpful articles that really want to help the user as much as possible with whatever search query they have.
They write long-form, detailed and very well-explained articles which consistently rank among the top 3 results on search engines. Which is probably bringing them millions of pageviews every month.
11. Boost your social media efforts
While this is not a direct benefit of blogging for SEO, it definitely helps in speading brand awareness and getting to more people who are likely to share your content, thus boosting your rankings.
Benefit #11 of blogging for SEO: Improving your social media presence
Blog posts are great for sharing on your social media channels for a variety of reasons:
- You send more traffic to your own web instead of publishing content to third-party websites;
- They help you increase the number of your followers and build a community across your industry;
- Blog posts allow you to reach more new people, increasing your chances of getting shared or linked to;
Additionally, if you convert your blog posts into infographics, you can take this even further and get really creative with your content.
Infographics are some of the most shearable pieces of content on social media, which means that you can generate more backlinks from people who loved them and found them useful.
And, as we mentioned previously, having high-quality backlinks can improve your SEO significantly.
12. Attract new customers without paying
And of course, one of the most awesome benefits of blogging for SEO is that it can help you attract new customers without spending budget on any Marketing campaigns.
All businesses want to attract new customers, but most of them invest heavily in Marketing campaigns instead of working on their SEO strategy.
Benefit #12 of blogging for SEO: Acquiring new customers organically
And to a certain extend, it makes total sense. After all, campaigns get you results immediately, while blog content is more of a long-term SEO strategy. A single blog post may take up to 6 months to position on the first page and start bringing you traffic!
So, it is completely understandable that companies would rather pay and get results immediately. But the problem with that is that the moment you stop paying, you stop getting leads and customers!
This is not the case with Search Engine Optimization – if you managed to position well on the first page and have an established website, you may be getting organic traffic for years to come. Without paying a single cent!
In this sense, here are some statistics by Optinmonster that show how blogging for SEO and gaining more organic traffic can help you attract new customers:
- Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to have a positive ROI on their efforts
- 57% of marketers say they’ve gained customers specifically through blogging.
- B2B marketers who have blogs get 67% more leads than those who don’t.
These statistics show that, although blogging for SEO is not such a direct tool for generating leads and acquiring new customers as paid channels, it definitely has a lot of impact.
13. You get more space
This point is highly related to our previous one, and it’s the fact that blogging gives you more space to promote your brand. Let me explain.
Benefit #13 of blogging for SEO: Getting more brand space to show relevant content and placements
Depending on your blog template, you will have space such as the left and/or right sidebar, as well as in-between content, to incorporate elements that are relevant to your business.
For example, you can incorporate banners between blog paragraphs to invite users to try out your platform, register for a webinar, or download your ebook. Or you can use the sidebar space that you have in your template.
Of course, the most important thing is to make sure that you are not overdoing it. You don’t want to saturate your audience with promotional banners; it has to be subtle and casual. You can also use this space to let users know about free pieces of content that you have, such as ebooks and whitepapers.
The point is, with blog posts, you also get space that you can use to boost brand awareness.
And that was all from me for today! Thank you for taking the time to read my article on the 13 benefits of blogging for SEO, and I hope to see you in the next one!
