Stop Blogging, Start Thinking.

Stop blogging, and think: ‘Are you wasting your time?’

So many company blogs don’t deliver the traffic and conversions that they should. Instead, they sit on the company website and look pretty.

That’s a shame because blogs can be a wonderful thing.

When done right, blogs create engaged, loyal audiences. They help build trusting relationships with clients and customers (old and new). And they help make money.

There’s a lot that goes into making a great blog. Today I’ll focus on using an easy and effective SEO strategy, finding your niche and making money with your blog. Feel free to ask me about more in the comments. 

Anyway, lets go.

Sustainable blogging success starts with a SEO-savvy strategy.

I know what you’re thinking “Ugh SEO… What a bore.” I thought so too. But let’s face it, no matter how interesting your article is, it’ll struggle to get anywhere organically without SEO. Plus, it’s good to find out what people are searching for. This will help you find ways to meet their demand.

What’s Google up to?

Google's algorithm is constantly evolving to provide the best answers for searches. It takes into account your blogs’ design, links and content.

To save you from an essay (and a possible snoozefest), I’ll just stick to the essentials of blog writing for SEO. But if you fancy becoming a SEO whizz, Neil Patel’s SEO Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide for 2020 is a good place to start.

Anyway, back to business…

20% of mobile searches are now voice-activated.

Search queries are becoming more conversational. Think about when you want to know something: what do you ask Google / type in? It’s usually a couple of words or a broken sentence, rather than just one word. That’s important to remember when you think about targeting keywords.

Free tools like UberSuggest can help you research keywords and find out what people are searching in your market, but don’t just jump into choosing your target keywords. A company blog is rarely about a single all-encompassing topic, meaning that you’ll be overwhelmed with jargon keywords if you don’t segment your blogging strategy.

That’s why it’s best to think about the different topics that you want to rank well for first. Then, think about each topic’s keywords.

Enter the topic cluster strategy…

What’s the Topic Cluster Strategy?

The topic cluster strategy is a way of organising your blog posts in way that will avoid keyword gaps within your chosen topics, meaning they’ll rank well for multiple searches.

This starts with a pillar page of content for each of the topics. These topics need to be broad enough to generate more related blog posts that will serve as cluster content, but not so broad that you can't cover the entire topic on a single pillar page.

Your pillar and cluster content will be linked by keywords.

For a marketing agency, a good pillar content blog post could be ‘Everything You Need to Know About Blogging’, which would be linked to more detailed cluster content on SEO tips, writing styles, monetization etc. Here’s nine more examples of pillar pages from HubSpot.

The pillar content will be longer than a usual blog post and should cover the topic in its entirety, getting in all those juicy keywords. It will then link to the more specifically detailed cluster content (normal blogs) throughout, to get in more specific jargon and keywords.

Finding Your Niche

When you’ve got your pillar page written, you can get down to creating your cluster content (the interesting stuff).

Finding things to talk about will come quite naturally to you after doing SEO research and creating a pillar page. But avoid the temptation to start writing. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to stand out from the crowd and end up writing something identical to your competitors.

Your blog in a haystack of competitor content...

It’s essential to think about the unique value that you can provide. What will make people read your blogs and listen to you, instead of anyone else.

Sadly, I can’t tell you the answer in this blog. This is all about knowing your business and what you can offer better than anyone else.

With the recruitment company Charlton Morris, we have the recruiters talking about their markets to take advantage of their unique, objective viewpoints. These blogs are long-form and detailed to showcase that they’re specialists (which a lot of recruiters say they are but can very rarely prove) and provide knowledge-sharing value.

Value isn’t all about info though, you need to entertain your audience too. Striking a balance between being a blog that’s insightful but also easy-to-consume and engaging is important. 

One way to make your blog a bit less corporate and more personable is to give it a face. Giving different members of your team authorship/ownership of blogs can make them look like specialists, while creating a more human and relatable brand.

Choose your company’s faces wisely.

Making Money with Blogs

Every post needs a purpose.

Throughout the writing process for each blog, you need to think about what you’re trying to achieve. This needs to be complimented by multiple, clear CTAs in your content.

But blogs won’t do ‘the business’ on their own, you need to shout about them too.

Social media channels and email marketing are important, but your biggest asset for this can be your people. Utilizing your people’s networks can increase the reach of your blogs tenfold, hitting far more targeted and engaged audiences (that are more likely to convert).

Your sales staff / recruiters should use blogs to build their reputations as experts, showcase your brand’s value and start conversations in their markets (staying front-of-mind with key decision makers).

When talking money and blogs, it’s important to understand that they aren’t a quick fix. Success (aka monetization) will only come with time. That means testing, optimization and retargeting to chase conversions.

I hope this article has shown you the value of blogs and will give you a chance to review your own strategy – it could be time to shake things up a bit!

If you fancy chatting about anything I’ve mentioned here in more detail, please DM me or leave a comment. Anymore blog writing tips would be great too!