What moves the needle

Let's talk about what actually moves the needle for your blog. Because that's what it's all about, right?

For the sake of context, I'm talking about a corporate blog here, not a personal blog about cats or houseplants.

The company blog is the engine of your website. It is the single most useful tool in your arsenal to establish authority in your niche, and generate organic traffic. How so? Because the blog is the natural place for you to continually add content on your website without it being out of place or clunky. Most of your website is static content; it only changes if the product or service changes. Here are some basic tips to get your blog off the ground:

??Know and understand your target audience. Sounds easy, but is it? You are here to ease pain points, reduce friction, or produce an outcome. The blog is where you explain how you will.

??Keyword research is paramount for ranking on Google, which has a direct correlation to organic traffic generated. This is the starting point of how your ideal customer will find you.

??Figure out what your competition is doing. You'll need to use a tool like Ahrefs or SpyFu for competitor analysis.

??Build a content plan around your keywords. One of the easiest ways to do this is to take your keywords and plug them into a search engine and look at the first page results (only about 0.68% of searchers look on the second page, so the first page is the only relevant page). You want to produce content that hits any angles or gaps in the topic that you notice have been left out. This is your 'in' to tapping into organic traffic. Set up main topics and sub-topics for blog posts.

??Get to writing! There are a million ways to fine-tune your blog down the road, but none of it matters if you're staring at a blank page. Start producing content so you have a baseline to work from.

This is just a primer, but it gives you a basic premise for taking your blog from zero to 1.

SEO Tips of The Week

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Resources & Recommended Reading

Learn SEO with a Free Roadmap of Reliable Guides & Tools is still the best asset for learning SEO that I have found. It is the most comprehensive collection of blog posts, e-courses, and digital guides out there, with over 700 articles linked in the collection. If you read every single one, you will be an expert and highly marketable.