How to check if blogging influences SEO?
Google Search Console is the finest tool for analyzing whether blogging influences SEO. To benefit from it, you just need to verify the domain. Thanks to Google Search Console, you’ll receive a huge amount of data concerning your website visibility. After choosing the domain that’s of interest to you, choose the “performance" option from the left menu. Here, you’ll find detailed data concerning:- Total number of clicks - informing you how many users entered your website through the search engine.
- Total number of website impressions in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
- Average CTR (click-through rate) - informing how frequently your website was clicked on, considering the ratio of redirects and impressions.
- Average keyword position over a given time period.
- If there are many impressions but the position is far from top3, it’s worth optimizing the entry to improve its visibility and attract more visitors. To boost the results, you can provide internal links from other, highly visible subpages of your website. Another method is to obtain backlinks from some quality platforms. Remember to check whether the implemented changes brought the expected results.
- If the position is high and there are many impressions but very few clicks, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you did something wrong. In the case of phrases that are commonly advertised or in the case of company business cards, the CTR is frequently lower than 10%. Low CTR may also apply when dealing with direct answers, aka the zero position, meaning direct answers to the question presented at the top of the search results. In this case, CTR is determined mainly by the fact whether the answer is satisfactory for the user or whether they decide to click on the website link to learn something more.
- If your exemplary blog entry URL looks like this: www.yourwebsite.com/blog/entry-title, then GSC can help you obtain information about the visibility of all your blog posts. Go to the “effectiveness” tab, click “new” and “page” - check out the screenshot below. Add yourwebsite.com/blog there. Thanks to it, you’ll be able to check the visibility of your blog entries.
SEMSTORM - shows the visibility of a specific URL and keywords the page is displayed on in the search results.
Both these tools enable checking how the website visibility changed over time and whether the performed activities were actually effective. However, keep in mind that Google Search Console is the finest source of data and it's an optimal choice for website analysis.
Okay, so you already know how your blogging influences SEO. Now, it’s time for improving your results - below you can find a few tips on how to do it:
How to run your blog properly?
Nowadays, it’s almost a standard to run a company blog complementing your website or online store. Blogging can bring you numerous benefits, in various fields. How can you make your blog help you improve your website visibility on Google and position yourself as an expert? Follow these rules:1. Create substantive content
Users expect to receive valuable content in an appealing form. Ensure proper quality of your texts, share your expertise, interesting facts and increase people’s interest in your offer. A worthless, unattractive website can result in a high bounce rate which translates into a lower conversion rate and less satisfying effectiveness of SEO activities. A user who hasn’t been attracted to your offer won’t enter subpages describing your product range, send inquiries or finalize transactions.2. Ensure the appropriate length
When creating your content, try your best to make it more attractive than texts offered by your market rivals ranked high on Google. Make sure that your entries are as long and comprehensive as entries on other websites. So how to check the length of your competitors’ blog posts? For this purpose you can use Surfer SEO that will help you save a lot of time. Thanks to it, you’ll find out what are the lengths of texts that are ranked high on specific queries.3. Be consistent
Google likes fresh content. Setting up a blog is not enough - you need to publish new entries on a regular basis. It’s important not only for Google algorithms but also for users. If people see your content as valuable because it helps them to e.g. make a purchase decision, then it’s very likely that they’ll visit your blog in the future when they need another piece of advice. If someone enters your site a few times and doesn’t see any new publications, they probably won’t check it again. Appealing content may encourage users to provide their email addresses and subscribe to your newsletter - this way, you’ll be able to inform them about new blog posts and products.4. Don’t forget about SEO
When writing a blog post, you should focus on creating content that is attractive for users, however, you shouldn’t forget about Google robots. Appropriate SEO activities can help you reach higher positions in the search results. So what to do?- Title - meaning the <title> tag in the <head> section of the website. Here, you should include the most important phrase of a given entry. It should be from 65 to 70 characters long, including spaces. If it’s longer, Google may display it in a shortened form, just as in the example below.
- Meta description - meaning the <description> tag which is also located in the <head> section. Although it doesn’t affect Google visibility, it can have an impact on your CTR, that’s why it’s worth using it to describe what users can learn from specific content. Don’t forget to include a CTA (call to action) button.
- Headers - theoretically speaking, you can use headers from <h1> to <h6>, however, <h1> to <h3> ones are the most common. The <h1> header should include the title of the entry and the most relevant keyword. Try to place some less important phrases in the subsequent header types. To learn more about website headers, go to our previous entry: What is a website header?
- Keywords in the content - the most important phrase should be repeated in the lead and content a few times, provided that it’s natural. On the other hand, less important keywords should appear in the text at least once.
- Images - enrich the content with photos (ideally taken by you) or screenshots. First of all, remember about an appropriate file name. Use hyphens “-”, not “_”. Avoid using special characters. When you include a photo, remember about <alt> tags. So what should an alternative description include? It should be a reflection of everything you see in the picture. Both <title> and <alt> tags should contain keywords.
- URL - it should be friendly, however, now it’s a standard in most popular systems. Check out: URL structure - how to build a user and robot-friendly link?