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This is a legitimate question, to which digital marketing experts unanimously answer “YES”. 84% of specialists even integrate the creation of a blog into their Inbound Marketing strategy.
Regardless of the information sought, or the intention of the Internet user, the blog article remains a privileged communication channel, despite the rise of video or podcasts. For good reason, a blog has a lasting positive impact on the visibility, reputation and even the turnover of a brand. These are therefore three good reasons to create a business blog if, however, it is fed correctly and regularly. Our experts will give you some advice on how to transform your blog into a real lever for growth.
1) Gain visibility on search engines
The first advantage of creating a business blog is to gain visibility on search engines. This supposes the writing of SEO blog articles, that is to say optimized for natural referencing.
What is natural referencing?
Natural referencing is an essential concept in digital marketing, because the traffic to your site (and especially its quality) depends on it.
It corresponds to the ranking of your web pages on search engines like Google. It is determined by various criteria, such as performance, the quality of editorial content or the number of incoming links ( backlinks ) to your site.
On its search results pages (SERP for “Search Engine Results Page ”), Google then displays the web pages in order of relevance. The more he judges a website to be able to respond to the request of the Internet user, the better it is ranked on the page.
Thus, it is crucial to position yourself in a good place and on strategic queries to attract qualified prospects to your site.
For this, you must ensure the optimization of natural referencing (or SEO for “Search Engine Optimization ”). It consists of working on the technique, content and popularity of your website to make it appear in the best place on the Google results pages.
Depending on the targeted keywords (i.e. the terms and expressions that your target is likely to type in the search bar), you must at least appear on the first page of results. Only a quarter of internet users go further. The ultimate goal is to reach the top 3 (75% of clicks), or even the first position, which alone captures 30% of clicks on the page.
How to write an SEO blog post?
To write an SEO blog post, you must:
- Identify the most relevant keywords
Consider what your site would type to find your article. This ensures that you are positioned on queries likely to generate qualified traffic to your website.
SEO keyword research also feeds your editorial strategy. It allows you to anticipate the writing by feeding in particular the semantic field around the main keyword: this is an important criterion for the Google algorithm.
- Write long enough blog posts
The length of your web content has an impact on natural referencing. If there is no ideal and universal figure, it nevertheless depends on the keyword sought. You can consider the top positions on the search results page. If these include content with more than 2500 words, this will be the minimum required to hope to dislodge them.
That said, a “short” article is considered to be at least 3,500 characters, while a long article is at least 1,000 words.
- Structure your content with titles, subtitles and paragraphs
The structure of your blog post is just as important for search engines as it is for your readers. It airs your content and allows you to sort, even visually, the information.
Search engines look for the presence of your main keyword to assess the relevance of the content. If your keywords are correctly placed and each title is consistent with the paragraph it precedes, then this has a positive impact on your natural referencing.
- Add links to other related pages on your website
Writing an SEO blog article requires a real editorial strategy. It’s about anticipating your content creation process so your articles can resonate with each other. The goal is to link them by inserting in your texts links to other articles (or pages) to promote internal networking.
If it is sufficiently dense and relevant, it helps search engines to understand your topic. They can, by extension, better index you in its databases.
Last advantage and not least: by guiding your users from one page to another of your website, the internal linking improves your bounce rate. The lower it is, the more Google considers it positive: it means that your sign is worthy of interest and deserves, in fact, to gain places on its SERPs.
- Insert images to improve natural referencing
The images that you insert in your articles also influence your natural referencing. If the robots do not read visual content strictly speaking, they linger on the ALT tags associated with it. They must then precisely describe your images (and integrate your keywords) so that Google can more easily understand your article and validate its relevance.
2) Demonstrate your expertise and stand out from your competitors
Each article you publish on your business blog is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and set yourself apart from your competitors.
In an Inbound Marketing strategy, creating a business blog allows you to build a lasting relationship of trust with your prospects and customers. You can position yourself on strategic requests to, at each stage of the sales funnel, influence (subtly) their purchase decision.
It is then a question of identifying the different phases of the conversion funnel to answer all the questions of your Internet users. Creating a business blog then gives you the opportunity to create brand preference. You influence your buyer before he makes a purchase decision, or even becomes aware of a problem. Your blog can indeed help raise questions and actually start the conversion process.
Awareness
At the top of the funnel, your target becomes aware of a problem. She then seeks answers or information. His queries usually contain the interrogative words “how?” or “what is it?” “. These are questions you can easily answer in blog posts.
These constitute a first link between your target and your company: they are not intended to sell your products and services (in an open and displayed manner). Rather, it’s about positioning yourself to create brand preference, when your prospect has advanced through the conversion funnel.
Take the example of a garden centre. To attract qualified visitors to her website, she could deal with an article on plant maintenance: How do you maintain a bonsai? How to prune an orchid? Etc.
The corporate blog also makes it possible to address niche customers. In the case of our garden center, it can publish a post on plants toxic to animals, those that are suitable for a baby’s room or that could dress up an unheated winter garden.
The consideration
In the middle of the funnel, your prospect is in the consideration phase. This means that he evaluates the different solutions to solve the previously identified problem.
On your business blog, this is expressed by writing more commercial articles. You can, for example, highlight customer cases: this is a solution that lends itself perfectly to B2B companies. The ideal is then to insert in this commercial content links to your product sheets to keep the attention of your potential customer.
You can also integrate product comparisons or present demonstrations (to be combined with other media, such as video). The objective is to encourage your target to project themselves towards the next phase, that is to say when they will eventually be testing your product.
3) Sustainably convert more visitors into customers
Creating a business blog is a major asset in your marketing strategy.
First of all, it is a real element of reassurance for your buyers. Your business blog is a way to certify that you are active and aware of trends or players in your industry. That’s why posting blog posts regularly is one of the biggest success factors: it makes your potential buyer more confident.
This also contributes to the optimization of natural referencing: it “forces” the search engines to return often to your domain to scan your new content.
Moreover, associated with an SEO strategy, the frequency of publications ensures qualified and above all long-lasting traffic. Once published, your blog post, if it is well optimized for natural referencing, will generate traffic for several years. This applies to cold content, that is to say, disconnected from any news (as opposed to hot content which depends on a dated fact).
Creating a corporate blog then appears to be a profitable investment, even if a digital agency is used to feed it.
Business blog: priority to quality editorial content
Consider each visit generated by your SEO articles as so many opportunities to convert this Internet user into a customer. Therefore, the quality of your editorial content plays a key role in the performance of your business blog.
Writing blog articles is a task that requires rigor and above all time. To offer sloppy content, without added value, without optimization of the lexical field, without effective keyword research would be in vain. To generate an optimal ROI, you must take care of your web content so that it can convince your target as much as the search engines. It is a sine qua non condition to ensure effective results, and this, in the long term. Contact our web writing experts to discuss your project!
