“How much chilli powder must I add to the sarson ka saag recipe mum?” asked Anshu.

“Just, google it Anshu!” retorted her mum.

Google has become the first stop for most people when they want to look for just about anything

This means that if you want people to find you, your website needs to show up in the Search engine. One of the best ways to do this is to constantly update your website with blog posts that have unique content.

There are some well researched reasons for this

• Blogs help in creating a new URL

Every time you write a new blog post, you create a new URL for your site .Every new URL is a new opportunity for your website to be ranked in search. None of the other pages of your website gives you the opportunity to create a new page that discusses important topics and terms for which you would like your business to rank on an ongoing and perpetual basis. It is very simple. When your target audience goes online to search for content, blogging provides endless opportunities to put your content out there

• Blogging keeps your website fresh and current.

If you come across a website that has not been updated in years, you probably immediately lose some trust in the information you’re seeing. The company it represents could have gone out of business completely or the website could be providing information that’s been completely outdated or changed since that last update.

It also gives the Search Engine algorithms more reason to index your website frequently.

A blog is a practical tool for adding new and fresh content to your website on a regular basis.

• Blog keeps the visitors on your site for longer

The number one priority of any search engine number is providing the people performing searches with the information they’re looking for. If someone who does a search clicks on the first link, then finds it unhelpful and immediately leaves to go back to the search page – that tells Google that the first result wasn’t as helpful as they thought. On the other hand, when someone clicks on a result and stays on the website for a while, that signals to Google that this website is helpful to the user

Someone who comes to your website from a blog post that shows up in the search results is going to have more reason to stick around for a while and read the whole thing than someone who lands on a page with less text or information.

Blogging helps you target long-tail keywords

Search engine optimization is highly competitive. Mr Rao owns a customised gifting company. He hopes that anyone who searches for “ customised gifting company “ should land on his site. But unfortunately for Mr Rao there are hundreds of other related companies also sharing the same hope! So Mr Rao needs to tweak his SEO strategy. He can start targeting relevant long tail keywords . Most people search for four or more terms . It would not be possible to fit these into our product pages or for that matter any other pages. But it would be absolutely perfect to target these keywords in a blog post and make it interesting too. You could try to put up a blog post that addresses your customer’s pain points. Mr Rao might address the problem of busy professionals unable to plan for gifts and then offer the best solution to his customers through a blog.

These searches don’t attract as much traffic as “customised gift” does, but they come from people clearly in your target audience of gift searchers and, if you can make it onto page one, you’ll get way more traffic from these topics than you would on page five or ten for broader more popular terms.

• Blogs contribute significantly in internal linking

Search engine optimisation is all about strategies to get more external and internal links to your website. The best and easiest way to do this is by creating them yourself. As you add more pages on various related topics, you add more opportunities to link those pages to each other and drive in more organic traffic

Every time you do so, you can strategically use the anchor text that better tells Google about the page that you have linked to is to is about

• Blogs help in acquiring external links to your site

So now you have created internal links. They are very helpful. But the hardest part of Search Engine optimisation is earning the external links. For Google to see your website as authoritative and trustworthy , other good quality sites have to link back to yours. External links could be got without blogging but is much harder

When you write a blog you fill your website with lot of unique and valuable information. When another website decides it’s valuable to their readers to point them to useful information on a different site, there’s a better probability that your website will provide that information that’s worth linking to if you’ve got some quality blog posts.

Research suggests that websites that have blog posts are usually the sites that have maximum inbound links

It is obvious that other sites would link to Mr Rao’s blog posts that talks about “ Best Diwali gifts to buy for your dad in 2019” than to his “About Us” page

• Blogs help build a relationship with your audience

When your audience reads a post they like, there are huge probabilities they would engage with it by sharing it . This drives more traffic to the post and in turn to your site. When they have liked the type of content you are offering, they tend to come back to your website again to see more of your content . In this way when the traffic to your website increases and has repeat visitors, it shows Google that people like your website and raises your authority level in their algorithm.

More than trying to secure high ranking for particular keywords and rank higher up in Google search results, it is more important that your website should draw quality target audience who enjoy visiting your website. They are able to easily connect to it and they become regular visitors. This is significantly more important than trying to acquire the first spot on Google

Google algorithm Panda allows Google to assess the quality of the content in your site and adjust the ranking accordingly. So it is not just enough to upload blogs on relevant topic, but to make sure you are putting high quality informative content that provides good user experience.

Following are some of the core points to consider before writing blogs

1. Never, never put duplicated content out there. Avoid copying content from other sites by spinning a few words here and there. Google algorithms are getting smarter
2. Pay extreme precautions to careless grammatical errors. Anything that can be interpreted as a bad user experience will give you a low rating
3. Avoid keyword stuffing. SEO experts usually guide us about using five to six relevant keywords in a page. Avoiding keyword stuffing helps you rank higher
4. Quality content is achieved by curating content which means that you go deep into selected topic giving the necessary information the reader seeks
5. Update your content including your blog posts at least once in a year

Websites with blog posts have seen 55% increase in traffic year after year. Blogging helps establish your brand as an expert in your field. When you share tips and give away some helpful information on your blogs, people will visit your site repeatedly . Through blogs, case studies telling stories about your brand can also be shared. It has been found that such success stories drive in lot of traffic . Also they are more likely to be shared on social media.

It is understandable that you would love to have blogs only about your relevant topics. But it is necessary to start covering topics from all angles that will ultimately lead relevant visitors to your site. It has been observed that both B2B and B2B companies see more traffic and leads , with frequent blogging.

There are thousands of brands for consumers to choose from in every industry. You putting out good quality information through blogging can sway the reader’s decision from one brand to another. The key to effective blogging is to create interesting and engaging content that readers who like to read at leisure. Over time you create a relationship with your readers and create brand loyalty

Through blogging you can show the quality work your company can do . You can tell the stories of the past. Even months after a blog post has gone live, they continue to attract visitors and helps increase sales

Another strategy of blogging that has been found to be effective is updating a blog that has gained significant authority/ranking to fulfil the current campaign goals

Effective blogging not only helps in capturing new leads but in nurturing and engaging new customers