Over the last several decades, businesses have built a cordial relationship with the internet as professionals rely on global connections to expand their reach. Recently, blogs have become a sure-fire form of in-depth communication.
The typically long-form of writing gained traction around 2005, when the White House granted blogger press credentials, thus cementing the practice as a legitimate writing practice. Because of its popularity and seemingly continuous production, the genre has developed, or indeed the public who rely on it, some common-sense rules around citations and affiliations. The cross-over relationship between the top social media platforms encourages references to use handles when a post mentions user content.
Blogging is a public-facing format that invites writers to think deeply about brevity as it relates to citational practice—the length of the section dictates the use and flow of a hyperlink. The writer, then, is tasked with a responsibility to acknowledge their sources and consider the dynamics of their readership. The eventual appearance of Microblog and Tumblogs—forms that cater to a nuanced, broader, and larger audience—meant even more consideration for the audience in terms of niches and attention spans in the age of social media, immediate gratification, and shifting ideas around what constitutes research. Consequently, Bloggers tended to search engine optimization or SEO, to better engage their publics.
So what is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
The acronym describes a process(es) of augmenting your online work so that it sits at the top of the search page in a browser when something from your content is referenced (inadvertently or otherwise). The intention behind this action is to drive traffic to your website and entice visitors, subscribers, clients, and potential customers.
How does Search Engine Optimization impact Blog writing?
Blogs can be more visible on a search result page if they are effectively optimized. If your site is updated regularly with changing ideas on a specific subject, the promise of fresh content and connections through references will make your work stand. Blogging, then, functions as a network builder by presenting the opportunity to include backlinks to other websites. Perhaps, most importantly, it is a unique way to engage your audience.
What is the Purpose of a Blog?
Well, it depends on the goals of a person or a company. Since we opened this blog with concern for companies, I will answer accordingly. The overarching goal is to land a client, so a blog is a marketing tool that targets someone who may be enticed by the format or reading. The marketing strategy here involves social media and the online persona that appears before the public regarding seduction and information. Readers need to find something visually inviting that might encourage them to look or read more about who and what is being presented to him, her, or them.
I believe in accessibility. I believe in honesty and a culture that supports that. And you can’t have that if you’re not open to receiving feedback.– Mindy Grossman, CEO of Weight Watchers
What is the key importance of Search Engine Optimization in Blog Writing?
- SEO dictates the visibility, therefore the traffic, of a blog. If the author embeds content properly and updates information, they increase the possibility of their work appearing at the top of a user search. In a sense, then, not blogging seems like a missed opportunity to interact with or attract customers on both a micro and macro scale.
- SEO works better if the words or keywords on the blog have something to do with the blog topic. If the piece is about the “Benefits of Blog,” you should focus on this topic and ensure that the words, keywords, or phrases have something to do with “Benefits of Blog.” If not, the SEO on your blogs will not be fully optimized.
- SEO helps blogs appear more credible and trustworthy because of indexing. Indexing is the process of having your web pages included on Google and other major search engine databases. If a company has an established and consistent blogging strategy, then most or all of its pages can be indexed in Google’s database. Therefore, visitors will most likely see the pages because it shows how the blog host provides reliable information.
- SEO helps blogs function as a backlink, a connection from one blog or website to another. When a blog provides useful information, chances are other blogs might rely on it and create a backlink. Content should be unique, informative, and fresh to be used as a backlink. It likely will not be referenced if it is merely a summary of another five blogs of the same topic as a backlink.
- SEO plays a vital role in the improvement of internal links. Internal linking assists in website navigation, establishing hierarchy and circulating links. SEO and internal linking will not be effective if there are no blogs on the website.
- Because databases like Google are primed to seek new, fresh, relevant information, regularly updated blogs have a search advantage. Blogs with unique topics and data are more likely to be included on indexes.
- SEO enhances user experience by directing the audience to specific niche blogs indicated by user searches. SEO benefits the blog by quickly aligning it with a user’s examination based on the author’s content.
In its infancy, blogging was characterized as doomed from the start because of the rapid pace of other forms of content and, thus, the looming threat of obsolescence. Early blogging content had minimal feedback from online audiences, making it difficult to gauge the form’s impact. With the help of SEO, blogging has extended its reach and established some formal techniques for determining and reaching specific audiences.
In addition to implementing SEO for the benefit of ensuring that a computer can crawl the internet and find your content in order to organize and present it to humans who are looking for solutions based on the keywords that they are searching, SEO also helps to assure that your content is accessible for people with disabilities. SEO takes into consideration the American Disabilities Act (ADA) and can go so far as to describe an image for people surfing the internet who may be visually impaired. By embedding (alternative) alt text into images that describe what the image is of, serves three main purposes: to help robots find the image and present it, to help people who have visually impaired access a description of what the image is of, and if the image can’t load in an email because of a user’s spam setting for newsletters then SEO and alt text will help the reader know what would normally appear in that email if they enable image files to be viewed in newsletters.
– Written by Ma. Ellen & Jaz Riley
