As we all know, the world of marketing is incredibly dynamic. Trends are volatile and marketers need to adapt to them quickly and efficiently for success. This can be intimidating, but once you build your strategy to the point where your foundation is strong, the prospect of making quick, necessary changes becomes less daunting.
In this article, we will briefly review the fundamentals of a successful, growth-oriented blogging strategy and share search engine optimization trends for 2023. Additionally, we will offer tips on how to adapt to these trends to keep your blogging schedule fresh and effective.
Business Blogging In Review
Search engine optimization practices go hand-in-hand with your blogging strategy. A mastery of your brand and the principles of digital marketing – down to a strong understanding of each component – are the building block to a successful blog.
HubSpot blog defines a business blog as: “a marketing channel (just like social media, direct mail, email marketing, etc.) that helps support business growth. It does that by driving traffic to your website and providing opportunities for your audience members to convert into customers.” It’s important to keep in mind that visitors to your website will convert differently depending on your business and goals. Ultimately, your business blog, where you publish long- and short-form articles on a regular basis, will promote conversions that support your overall business growth.
Here are several ways you can convert your audience to customers:
- Know Your Audience: We discuss this in more detail later in the article but understanding your audience and consumer behavior is crucial for relating to them, solving their problems and closing a deal.
- Provide A Strong CTA: A call-to-action, if done properly and effectively, reminds the reader to do something. Whether your goal is for them to make a purchase or answer a survey, make sure they know that and make it easy for them to take action on the page.
- Be Authentic: Even with strategy in mind, consumers can often sense when a product or service is being pushed excessively. That can steer people away from your business. Always stay true to your brand, values and customer relationships. This way, you’ll attract the right people who resonate strongly with your offerings.
- Create Content That Solves A Problem: This ties in with the first method. Knowing your audience and issues they might face in relation to your product or service, will help you create valuable content for them, not to mention build your business’s credibility as well.
Now that we’ve briefly reviewed blogging strategy, you might be wondering, “Why is it so important?” In the next section you’ll learn the benefits of blogging for business, but as we begin the conversation in search engine optimization, it’s important to discuss Google and their tendency to make changes to their practices.
Google is the largest search engine – which is visited 89.3 billion times per month according to Oberlo in January of
2023 – and it plays an enormous role in driving trends. But just because you had high-ranking content in the past doesn’t mean your page will rise to the top in the future. This is due to the updates they make to their algorithms. Keeping up requires diligent research and preparedness to execute any necessary changes. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, try setting up alerts for Google news and press releases regarding their plans and updates. Additionally, we recommend educating yourself as much as possible on the updates. Your goal should be to work toward an understanding of the system that can seamlessly integrate into your current strategy. This allows you to adapt your strategy quickly and become an expert with valuable information that can help others.
Benefits Of Blogging For Business
We are constantly reminded how a rigorous and thoughtful posting schedule is crucial for blogging success. Just as Erika Taylor Montgomery shared in a previous Three Girl blog post, when a business produces 16 or more articles monthly, they receive 3.5 times more site traffic – a statistic that Oberlo found in 2021. Additionally, Quicksprout found that 61% of consumers will make a purchase based on a blog article. These numbers are major, proving that a consistent blogging strategy has the potential to significantly increase your visibility and influence consumer behavior.
In the same article, Erika shared a few more benefits of blogging for business as a component of your company’s digital marketing strategy. “It helps by:
- Boosting your company’s visibility online through search engine optimization (SEO)
- Positioning yourself and your business as a go-to expert in your field
- Giving you access to a global audience
- Establishing credibility for your potential consumers
- Amplifying awareness and recognition of your brand”
As you can see above, the potential for blogging to boost your success is undeniable! Cutting through the noise and getting your content and your business in front of consumers is important. Blogging widens your audience on a huge scale. Remember that Google search engine statistic? Establishing yourself as a brand leader on the world stage and strengthening your SEO in the process at a relatively inexpensive cost is a powerful plan of action!
The Foundation Of Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO, according to Moz, is defined as “a set of practices designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages in organic search results.” Furthermore, Moz describes organic search results as: “the unpaid listings on a search engine results page (SERP) that the search engine has determined are most relevant to the user’s query. Ads (in this context, PPC or pay-per-click ads) make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic search results are distinct from these ads in that they are positioned based on the search engine’s organic ranking algorithms rather than advertiser bids. You can’t pay for your page to rank higher in organic search results.”
As mentioned before, posting 16 blog posts monthly has the potential to increase your website traffic 3.5 times. That schedule might initially seem daunting, but it is critical for the success of your website. HubSpot blog briefly summarizes the value of a rigorous blogging schedule in this article, sharing that, “To make your website a valuable marketing asset, you need people to actually see it.” The overwhelming majority of consumers will find your business’s website by using search engines, so the importance of optimizing for search engines is crucial for your website to gain visibility.
More pages on your website results in more chances you will have to rank highly in search engines and get discovered organically. The most effective way to do this is through blogging because you’ll be creating new pages full of useful content with each article, as opposed to adding a bunch of unnecessary pages to your site for the sake of having more pages.
What’s more, each new web page added to your business’s site as a blog post is an additional opportunity for people to share your post on social media as well as link to your post from their blog, which extends your reach to a new audience and increases SEO. These opportunities are extremely powerful in helping generate new leads and increasing your customer base.
Search Engine Optimization Trends In 2023
It’s no secret that providing value to your customers through your content is essential, as it benefits every aspect of your business including search engine optimization. It matters that you revisit and evaluate your content and strategy often to ensure you have high-performing pages on your website. WordStream shares in a recent article how Google is improving its ability to identify content that is worthy of prioritizing and also lists important trends for this year.
- Topic Expertise: The New E In EEAT
“E.A.T” which stands for Expertise, Authority and Trust, is a principle that Google quality raters use to “determine the quality and effectiveness of search results.” In late 2022, the acronym received an additional E which stands for Experience. According to WordStream, this means “Google will now consider the experience of the author or creator when evaluating the quality of content.” They found that Google prioritizes first-hand knowledge and experience from each content producer on whatever topic is being discussed.
This is where it will be beneficial to know your target audience. In a recent Three Girls blog post, I shared tips for finding your ideal target audience. It begins with research. “Consider what problem or need your product/service addresses and focus on those who may benefit from it. Research competitors as well – chances are their customers can be valuable for you too!” You can also learn more about your existing clients by leveraging various analysis tools so that you recognize how to draw in new business opportunities. This will not only make your brand and search engine optimization stronger, but it will make your content much stronger too.
Three Girls Media is a marketing agency and our audience consists of marketers and business owners, so our blog posts will cover a wide range of topics that we have direct experience with, such as content creation, digital strategies and writing tips. Knowing this, Google will prioritize this type of content from us. Your audience informs your content.
- Prioritizing Author Authority
In relation to the first trend, author authority takes the “experience” steps further. Given that the amount of auto-generated content has grown significantly online, Google decided that “real people with real audiences” will rank better in 2023.
WordStream uses their expertise to brainstorm what creators can do to boost both experience and authority. This is what they shared:
- Include author bios to better and more fully communicate your content creator’s knowledge and areas of expertise.
- Create author pages where you link out to all the articles on your website that are written by the author.
- Link your creators’ social media accounts so Google can more easily understand through social signals that they are real people and real experts.
These two trends further drive the importance of having a strong foundation in your blogging strategy. The content you provide your audience is only as good as how well you know your audience and how well you know the topics you are speaking on.
How To Implement Your Trend Strategies
CoSchedule provides helpful tips in this article for creating an outline and defining your blogging goals. In a Three Girls article discussing how to create a content calendar, Danielle Winski shares what you have to gain from planning out your posts and more! In it, she offers valuable tips for blogging and other avenues for posting content. She writes that: “Consistency and quality are critical to having a successful blog, yet when it comes to blogging for business as part of a content marketing strategy, these two essential ideas are often the most overlooked. Search engines are constantly looking for new, high-quality content so they can get the best possible information to users. When you’re not posting regularly, the search engines won’t know when to return to your website to catalog the latest information. By staying consistent you can actually train the search engines when to come back to your site.”
If you have an editorial calendar in place, you will inevitably need to revisit it and adapt it for the new trends. Don’t worry – this doesn’t necessarily mean a complete do-over. If your strategy is already strong and in place, this could take the form of creating the author bios mentioned above. It could also mean carefully revisiting the audience data you collect on your website to identify where you could improve. If the “experience” principle causes a larger shift in your content production, then perhaps your strategy needed more help than originally thought.
Carefully consider how Google’s algorithm updates affect you and your content. Even if there are no drastic changes, your strategy will improve with the knowledge you’ve gained.
A business blogging strategy is a low-cost and highly effective method of marketing to help your business stand out,increase organic website traffic, establish relationships with your audience, generate leads and much more. Despite the high quantity of blogs, research shows a consistent posting schedule can drastically improve your online presence and help you reach your goals.
Do You Need Help Blogging For Business?
Blogging and search engine optimization can have enormous benefits when done right, and it can be something that anyone can learn – if they want to. There may be times however, when outsourcing your SEO and content creation may be in your business’s best interest. This is where Three Girls Media can help.
Three Girls Media offers SEO and blogging services to help your company succeed. With completely customizable plans, our team of writing experts can take your blog posts and website pages to the next level. Contact us today for a complimentary, 30-minute consultation with our CEO, Erika Taylor Montgomery, to see what we can do for you!