With all the changes in the Google algorithm over the years, one thing has remained consistent when Google determines the quality or relevance of a site, and that is content. If fact, some experts believe Google has effectively been able to reduce the gaming of rankings so much, that content has actually become more important than it ever had been in the past. So if you are a DIY site owner and attempting to improve your rankings using best SEO practices, you better be focusing on new content, that can be pretty intimidating.
Creating content isn’t easy, it can be very time consuming and frustrating. Nothing is more infuriating than staring at a blinking cursor on a blank white page when you know you should be pounding out content. For those of use who don’t like to write, or think that we don’t have much writing talent, creating content becomes a huge stumbling block. Especially when we think our writing could be the difference between being ranked or being invisible. Then let’s turn up the pressure cooker a little bit more and consider our DIY content could be the difference between someone buying from us, or actually leaving the site and looking elsewhere… that is just numbing. So what can we do? In almost all cases when someone asks me how they should deal with the challenges of creating content, I suggest getting a blog going.
The data on the benefits of blogging is pretty compelling. Just citing some figures from a post by Neil Patel and an infographic he produced on blogging, we can see:
- 61% of US consumers have made a purchase after reading a blog post.
- 77% of internet users ready blogs
- 81% of us consumers trust advice and information from blog posts
- 82% of customers enjoy reading blogs
- 70% of potential customers learn about a new company through blog articles rather than ads.
Pretty convincing data. So what should we write about on our blog? I think the big thing is to make sure we are writing about something that is easy for us, so we can remain consistent in creating new content. Obviously on the SoloSEO blog, we write about DIY SEO, some of the reasons to do it and some different strategies to make a site perform better. Since that is what SoloSEO is about, it makes sense. For any other blog, I would just suggest writing about your day, or the past week and something that occurred while you were managing your business or hobby or whatever. And always write on your blog as if you were talking to a friend. Don’t try to be fancy or technical, just be real, just be you. So for a blog on painting, I think the artist should discuss how they came about painting what they are currently working on, how the decision was made, why they thought the subject might be interesting. A car mechanic could talk about a car they are working on, or maybe some of the biggest problems they are seeing that time of year. Maybe they could throw in some preventative hints, then would share with friends or customers in the shop. For any business, discuss challenges of doing your business, maybe some challenges of finding clients, or the difficulties of clients you are solving from day to day. As long at the content is about what you are doing for your site and it is relevant to your site topic, you are in great shape. If you don’t like to type, consider recording your thoughts and ideas on a digital recording and have your audio typed out for you by an online transcription provider.
Once a blog post is online, always visit your social media accounts and post a link to your post and maybe a little description of what was posted. Traffic from social sites is a wonderful opportunity, as those who follow you and start to enjoy your postings, will like, share and refer you to their followers. Don’t miss out on riding a wave from social media buzz, you never know what might go viral and bring in a lot of traffic.
Blogging can be such a huge boost for site traffic, with each posting you are increasing the opportunity and probability that someone using search engines will find you. All those new unique searches a day need to be able to find what they are looking for and with each new post, you are making your site more searchable!
