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Case Study: Blogging for small businesses

Are small business blogs needed for SEO?

Here’s what we have learned from seven years of search engines, testing and deployment.

Managed SEO Blog Services

An effective blog content strategy allows a website to improve its target audience reach. In addition, it increases brand equity with the opportunity of more leads and sales.

It’s a massive pull for hungry small business owners looking to step up their online marketing on a mid to low-end budget.

An essential ingredient of blog development is interesting content ranking for keyword phrases with search volume.

Unless new users find freshly written content, its SEO impact will be negligible.

 

Dispel a myth

Positive local and national search engine ranking results do not necessarily rely on an active blog. Neither are blogs appropriate in specific industries.

How to determine if small business blogging will yield a return on investment

Using keyword research to determine if blogging is worthwhile.

Customer researched industries

Keyword research

Long tail keywords have more than three words in the phrase and include a monthly user search volume.

Some industries naturally have long tail phrases at their disposal.

A typical example is bathroom design and renovation. There are thousands of homeowners looking for ideas around this subject and are using long tail keywords in Google to find answers. Likewise, business owners who compose blog articles answering and targeting these phrases yield those traffic streams to their blog, brand and offers.

Not all small business industries are so fortunate. For example, home emergency services such as locksmiths and pest control are narrow in comparison. Moreover, few people ask technical industry-driven questions, meaning a blog post strategy isn’t likely to bring about an ROI.  In these types of niches, we would not recommend a focused blog topics strategy.

Attention small business owners

Live case study

The real benefits of small business blogs

New website visitors leading to enquiries.

Alongside personalised client SEO projects, our team has developed a handful of in-house projects, including e-commerce and more traditional content marketing strategy websites.

Here, we share some statistics for a successful eCommerce website we developed in early 2018. The website has continued to grow in search engines like Google and now enjoys tens of thousands of monthly site visitors.

As with many common eCommerce business sites, a range of static pages performs well in search engines, regarded as Ever Green content.

We have also engineered successful ‘how to articles’ and relevant content guides, broadcasting regularly as industry experts in the sector.

The results have been fantastic. The blog consistently drives valuable keyword intent traffic leading to increased brand awareness, ultimately resulting in more online sales.

The screenshot below affirms the top twelve blog articles driving 35,000 hits per month, most of which arrive via organic SEO search engine results developed by our small business team:

See how SEO blogging has positively impacted the number of site visitors in a typical 30-day period.

What to blog about

Our strategy is simple in principle; create thought leadership articles and practical advice guides around the keyword phrases used in Google search every month.

Each article is optimised for search using our SEO expertise and best practices.

The results are notable with prominent calls to action, social sharing options, video, good quality imagery, and repeated testing. Head over to SEO Bristol page for details on this part of our service and how it can help grow your business online.

Blogging services for small businesses versus and in-house strategy

Measuring the quality of blog post content.
Domain authority is a crucial factor in ranking new blog content, quickly.

Back in 2018, before our website was established, each blog post would index in Google anywhere from pages five to ten.

That’s no man’s land in terms of SEO, online sales and ROI.

It took 12-months before the blog was trusted by Google enough to rank posts quickly.

Now the site is established, it ranks much quicker. In fact, for some phrases, it hits page one in minutes of pressing the publish button.

It comes from years of testing, perseverance, and experience.

No doubt, it’s an uphill battle that most small and medium business owners have neither the time nor inclination to manage. Our SEO blog strategy is developed to support businesses looking for a trusted company with a results-driven mindset and hands-on approach.

In-house blog marketing, actionable tips for a small business owner

Essentials for developing a business blog and improving online visibility in search.

1.

Keyword mining content ideas

A simple tool like Keywords Everywhere allows you to find industry-related, long tail keywords with monthly search volume. First, add the plugin to Chrome or Firefox browser to see the average volumes for related keywords. Then, compile a list of phrases in Excel that each new blog post will discuss.

For a full list of WP tools, see our best plugins for WordPress SEO and page one search results.

2.

Content optimisation ideas

To develop a business blog, ensure your content rings like a practical small business expert. Discussion angles include:

  • Latest small business trends
  • Unknown facts
  • Industry secrets and other content that gives your readers moments of realisation.

If you can surprise a reader whilst increasing their self-knowledge, your small business blog is on track, and you stand to grow your own business online. 

3.

Thoughtful metadata

Use prominent metadata, including optimised title tags, descriptions and headlines. For example, this page targets small business owners looking to build and grow a blogroll.

Am I guessing you found our page via a search term with that intent?

4.

Quality imagery in all successful business blogs

Where possible, include unique images that describe your industry leader article. If you use your target keyword in the filename of your image (just once), it stands the chance of ranking in image search results, another excellent source of organic traffic for your biz blog.

5.

Finding potential customers through content

Use thoughtful calls to action. Tell readers what you’d like them to do quickly. Articles discussing small business trends can be especially good for lead generation and online sales.

Calls to action include:

  • Links
  • Buy buttons
  • Contact forms
  • Phone numbers.

Used wisely, CTA’s can certainly increase monthly sales and revenue. 

COOLBISON blogging services for small businesses

Our small, ethical SEO team have earned the right to be called small business blog experts.

If your business ideas need a hands-on, personalised SEO blog strategy, fill in our Discovery form now and enjoy a manual audit of your site, including existing page content and technical analysis.

Our technical reviews will highlight the issues we uncover, a range of keywords, timelines to delivery and costs.

Where it is needed, our team will develop an entire content strategy for your business.

A look at the COOLBISON.