SEO Strategy | The Importance of Blogging

Time and time again clients will ask about the overall importance of blogging? Writing consistent content for your business is actually a pretty tall order, and if it’s not your main focus it can easily fall to the back burner. But one thing that we seem to reiterate to client’s time and time again is that regular blogging is perhaps one of the most impactful on-page SEO tactics available. Why? The answer comes in two parts, each of which represents one of the most important ranking factors for SEO current - 1) Traffic 2) Internal Links

Traffic

Remember the game of SEO - you’re working to convince a search engine algorithm that your site is most relevant to a given search. It’s long been known that one of the biggest indicators of relevancy to search engines like Google and Bing is traffic. How many people are going to your site, how long are they spending there, and do they seem to find what they’re looking for - the answers to these questions represent data points that can literally make or break your SERP’s. Just think of Craigslist and what it can teach us about SEO. Aesthetically and functionally speaking, Craigslist is the real ugly duckling of online classifieds. Yet, when you search for something for sale or housing in a particular area, why is that CL is always among the top results? At the risk of sounding overly obvious, it’s because people are constantly flooding Craigslist, searching for something, and quite often finding it. These factors are recognized by search engines, and despite the fact that CL looks and feels to be about a decade behind, they still kill it when it comes to SEO.

The Power of Internal Links

Internal links are the other piece of the puzzle and one of the most crucial aspects of your on-page strategy. An internal link is exactly what it sounds like - a link on a page that links to another page on your site. Internal links do two things - establish a readable, SEO-friendly site architecture that is easily intelligible by search bots, and aid in the spreading of link equity from page to page. Internal links are essential indicators of relevance between pages on your site.

As rankings lift for one page, the rankings for pages connected via internal links will also start to buoy, as you’ve now passed authority (link equity) to them. Importantly, the anchor text that the link is built within is also important - it’s an indicator to the search engine that this particular term is relevant to the link’s destination. So, the idea is to have the anchor text of your internal links be similar to the kw’s of the pages to which they’re driving traffic - this is the true power of internal links: driving traffic while also building link equity and keyword relevance across your domain.

So, why blogging?

As you may have already guessed, blogging is so hugely impactful for SEO because it provides the perfect opportunity to generate traffic and build more internal links within your website. Additionally, blogs provide additional opportunities to rank for terms related to your business that are difficult to place within the foundational architecture of your site (homepage, services, about us, etc.)

For instance -

If you’re a manufacturer of ski boots, and through your knowledge and research into your industry, you’ve found that many people are searching using the query “choosing ski boots.” That particular keyword may difficult to rank for considering your current site set up, but it’s the perfect keyword to nest within a blog covering the topic.

A step by step would look like -

1. Write a blog centered on a kw that is relevant to your business, but difficult to fit within your existing site architecture
2. Outfit the blog with internal links containing the proper anchor text for the link destination
3. Promote that blog via the relevant channels and generate as much traffic as possible.
4. Repeat with
5. Pay attention to overall rankings lift across your domain. If you’ve done your homework, you’ll have prioritized topics and KW’s that are relevant to your site and business.

Real Examples from Our Work

Now, you may be thinking that we just gave away one of the main ingredients in the secret sauce of content marketing, but the truth is this tactic of generating traffic and building internal links is really just SEO 101 - the trick is how you select keywords and where you place your links.

Remember, SEO, in general, is a long game. If you expect to write one blog with this strategy and immediately notice a lift, we’re sorry to say that it’s going to take a bit more dedication than that. With that in mind, let’s look at three specific accounts for which we’ve employed this strategy in order to illustrate the results one expect if this strategy is employed properly over time.

Cascade Drilling

The nation’s largest provider of environmental drilling and remediation services, Cascade relies on Bonsai Media Group for content marketing and SEO. Cascade has a particular editorial calendar wherein they’re required to discuss certain topics at a given time, so the challenge is to find the right anchor text and kw/landing page combination that fits within the given topic while also supporting their underlying SEO strategy. 

The above graph shows the amount of KW’s ranked in the #1 spot on Google (Orange Line), and the amount of KW’s the client is tracking that are not ranked (the grey line). As you can see, when we started with Cascade, they had no focus kw’s ranked in the #1 spot, and 24 keywords not ranked at all. Since our work began, they now have 6 kw’s in the #1 spot, and their down to 12 kw’s not ranked.

As a result of their increased visibility online, Cascade’s overall conversion rate went up 44% and their overall goal completions went up almost 48% in the last 18 months that we’ve been providing service.

Tom Flick

Leadership Keynote speaker, and former NFL quarterback, Tom Flick relies on Bonsai for SEO work as well. When he came to Bonsai, Tom had a very specific goal - to increase organic traffic to his site as much as possible. Before working with Bonsai, the majority of his traffic and business came from referral sites - directories, or speaker related platforms.

Over the last year or so, we’ve taken Tom to not ranked for 6 of his focus kw’s, to ranked #1 for six of them. As a result, the majority of his business now comes from organic search and direct traffic, which comprises just under 87% of all traffic on his site.

Thank this increase in traffic, his overall goal completions, including those from referral-based traffic, have shot up over 300%!

Wipliance provides home automation and home theater installation in Bellevue as well as in Scottsdale, AZ. Wipliance primarily enlisted Bonsai for our SEO services, and as such our internal linking tactics were a crucial aspect of our strategy.

In just 8 months of dedicated content marketing efforts, we’ve taken cascade from having 0 Keywords in the number 1 spot to 19! Additionally, their unranked kw’s dropped from 148, down to 25.

As a result, goal completions and conversion rates have shot up across their site, conversion rate and goals via organic search have gone up 47% and 63% respectively.

As you can see, regular blogging, if done correctly in support of the underlying SEO goals, can have a MASSIVE impact on traffic, rankings, and overall business. You’ll notice that we didn’t mention specific keywords, blog topics, internal links, or pages involved in these client’s strategies. Why? This gets to the beauty of Bonsai Media Group’s SEO services - effective demonstrable strategies that are repeatable and customizable depending on the business in question. The process is always the same, the strategy is tailor-made for the business.

If you’re interested in any of the ways that Bonsai can give your rankings a boost, or work with you to improve the overall efficacy of your content marketing campaigns, make sure to contact us today!

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