Do you want your website to be referenced on the first page of google? Do you want people to be able to find your online presence easily and quickly?
Why blog? Why spend time writing blog posts? How will a blog benefit my business? To what extent will a blog help my business?
If you have a website, you want people to be able to find it easily and ideally, you’d like it to be on the first page of google. However, unless you are prepared to pay for google advertisements, your website will not necessarily feature on the first page throughout good website optimisation alone. An effective blog is invaluable in improving your SEO to the extent of achieving the top of page one.
When I started blogging in early 2008, there were two blogs that I became aware of very quickly. Why? Because everyone (in related fields) was talking about their success, they were Irish success stories in blogging, they were featured in the traditional media of magazines and newspapers and because they were written by people with lovely personalities that shone through their blogs. They were also on the first page of google for related searches. One was Homebug, an interior design based blog who listed my blog in her ‘favourite blog’ section, sending me traffic (usually about 10-20 visits per day and valuable SEO juice. (Homebug ended about two years ago hence I can’t link to it).
The other is Murphy’s Icecream, the blog was started in 2006 and blog posts include their pride in Kerry, what’s going on in their shops in Kerry and Dublin, icecream recipes, videos and all things Irish-related. Apart from strengthening their brand and reinforcing their quality product, their blog means that when I think of Dingle, I think of Murphy’s icecream and I know I’m not the only person who wants to taste their icecream because of their blog.
If you search for ‘icecream’ in google.ie, their blog at Icecream Ireland is at the top of the page and their website at Murphy’s Icecream is number 4. Kieran Murphy is an enthusiastic blogger with a passion for his product and it shows. As a result, his business ranks extremely highly for a popular keyword.
If your business focuses on different varieties of a single product, e.g. T-shirts, wallpaper, vacuum cleaners, mortgage advice – whatever it may be, the challenge is there to try to get to the first page of google but it is a challenge that can be achieved.
How will your blog achieve a position on the first page of google?
Google likes regularly updated content and it likes seeing 2 or 3 main keywords being used throughout a blog post, especially in the first and last paragraphs, in the tags and in the category headings. (Yes, Google has become personified!)
Read our post on how to use the google keyword research tool to ensure you know you are using the right keywords and how to use them appropriately.
Getting to the first page of google will, of course, depend on the competition for the keywords you want to use. You can find out what the competition is by going to google search and typing in the keyword you want to use in quotation marks and then you will see how many other posts or websites are using that keyword.
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, “buy wallpaper online” is a keyphrase that I have used to optimise my Garrendenny Lane blog and website and as you can see above, it appears in 511,000 searches. Hence, I’m pleased that it usually turns up around the middle of the first page for that search term. Your success will depend on the competition but it is still possible to reach that top spot on google organically (through search rather than having to pay for it) via your blog.
Hence, you really need to establish your main keywords, ensure your website is optimised for those keywords and use them properly in your blog posts.
The Value of Backlinks
Another advantage of blogging is that people will link to good blog posts from their website or blog and if they do so using the keyword within the backlink / hyperlink, all the better.
Coincidentally, that happened to this blog yesterday. I am an advocate of using twitter at conferences for a number of reasons and have devoted some posts to the subject. I wrote another post on the topic the other day and referenced my inspiration as @TeecycleTim , author of an article in a Toastmasters magazine that came through my door a few days ago. Having tweeted him to acknowledge my source (and including it in the blog post), he retweeted it, and one of his followers, Herbert Lowe, saw it and devoted a whole post to my various blog posts on tweeting at conferences, using valuable keywords in each backlink. What the results will be remains to be seen but it all adds to valuable SEO juice.
Having a website that is not updated frequently is almost like a rowing boat without oars, it will float around without reaching any destination and may not be found by its target audience. Having an effective blog will pay dividends and remember, you can monitor the results too (more on monitoring your social media usage coming up soon).
If you would like help to create and maintain an effective blog for your website, do get in touch with Marie or I.
