A myth I hear a lot out on social media and in conversations is that blogging is dead. The argument is that there is so much content being produced every second of every day that your blog can’t possibly compete. And because it can’t compete, a blog won’t drive traffic or sales for your business.
But I have to disagree.
Apart from a few paid promotions I do throughout the year, this business and membership in my Business Class program is driven entirely by free, organic traffic from Google and some social media.
Quite simply, my program Business Class would not exist without free traffic, and by nurturing a blog on my website where I publish one new piece of content per week, I am able to maintain a membership program that employs two people and brings me substantial revenue.
Blogging is my biggest source of traffic and one of the main ways I employ SEO for my business.
If you’re interested in improving your own SEO, I recommend you start by downloading my SEO Health Worksheet— just click here and grab it for free to give your own SEO a checkup.
How do you blog for SEO?
If blogging is still a hugely important part of my organic traffic strategy, then the next logical question is — how can you use that strategy to improve your traffic?
The first step is to stop thinking about blogging for SEO — and start thinking of blogging as part of a bigger SEO strategy.
One of our team copywriters, Lacy Boggs, says that “Asking how to blog for SEO is asking the wrong question.”
“In my experience,” she told me, “people who ask how to blog for SEO want to know tactics like how many times they should use a keyword in a post, or how many keywords they should try to optimize for at once — things like that.
“But really, you should be writing for humans first and Google second.”
Old-school SEO tactics like stuffing a keyword into a blog post as many times as possible (making it awkward to read and understand) don’t work any more. Google has gotten much smarter and understands the difference between good content and content that just repeats a particular keyword over and over again.
That means you should consider what your ideal customers want to read before you think about what Google wants! The good news is that just producing high quality content on a regular basis is going to signal to Google that you’re doing good things — and will help send organic traffic to you via social media.
How to increase free traffic (& sales) with a blog
If you want to increase your traffic (and sales!) with your blog, start with these basic strategies:
- Get Started.
The sooner you start publishing content, the sooner you’ll start seeing organic traffic come to it. Don’t expect results overnight, but over time you will definitely see results. - Publish on a consistent schedule, but never sacrifice quality for quantity.
While I recommend publishing a blog post weekly (it’s what has allowed me to generate over 110 blog posts in just over two years), it’s better to publish one great post per month than four so-so blog posts. Decide what schedule you can commit to and be religious about it. (Consistency builds trust with your readers as well as Google!) - Create useful content.
Solve your audience’s problems with your blog content and answer their big questions. A great way to come up with blog post ideas is to keep track of the questions your ideal customers are asking — on your website, on Facebook, on other blogs, even in Amazon reviews. Long blog posts with a lot of useful information tend to be favored by search engines. - Repurpose your content.
Make sure you’re sharing your content strategically across social media networks and getting as much mileage out of each blog post that you can. It’s more important to share the same message across all your channels than to come up with unique content for each place every day. - Treat every blog post as an entry point into a sales funnel.
Write and create content with a purpose. Know what action you want readers to take after reading your post and then drive them towards it with a clear call to action statement. (Limit yourself to only one call to action per post!) - Employ good “On-Page SEO” strategies.
This includes making sure your content is structured properly, optimizing your images, and writing great meta descriptions.
I go into more of those “on-page” strategies are inside my Organic Traffic Destination Guide for Business Class members. Want a sneak peek? Click here to grab our SEO Health Worksheet from inside the Organic Traffic guide to give you own SEO strategy a checkup.
