As a blogger or website owner, chances are that you’ve probably heard about SEO a countless number of times and that it means Search Engine Optimization, but that is not just it. Here we dive into what blog SEO is, and why it is an important skill as a blogger.

You need an in-depth explanation to help you know this better, so, this is where this article will come in handy for you.

I’ll be guiding you through the basics about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and what it means, in addition to the relevance it has to your blog website and business whatever niche you are in.

What Is Blog SEO?

SEO fully means Search Engine Optimization. 

It is the process of optimizing a webpage and its contents, to increase its visibility on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). 

This is done purposely to create awareness and lead relevant traffic to one’s blog or business.

To have a glimpse about SEO even better, you need to have the basic idea about how search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and the likes, work. 

How Do Search Engines Rank Content Google 

Search engines use what are called bots and crawlers. These are artificially intelligent bots that are used to crawl through web pages from one URL to another. They search for information to feed users, whenever they make queries on search engines.

These crawled web pages are ranked according to their relevance and their reputation or the authority they have; all for the sake of giving users more precise responses that are equal to their queries. This is done in a more robust and indexed manner by a system known as the Algorithm.

How Do People Find Your Content On Google 

When a user initiates a search using either Google, Bing, or another search engine, the search results are displayed in a matter of their relevance to that specific topic the user searches. The user will then choose from any of the results that are returned by the search. 

Therefore, you’d want your blog to be one of the results that the users see after they make related searches and click throughs. 

This is part of applying SEO, ‘proving’ to search engines that your content is the most relevant for search queries that users are making within your niche or industry. 

To do that, you’ll have to optimize your content and web pages for search engines.

The Scramble for Search Engine Ranking

Similarly, other businesses and blogs like yours want to push their contents to more audiences as well, so the most qualitative, relevant, and optimized site still has to come first before the other.

This is why depending on your blogging style and niche, SEO can be so competitive. 

For you to know if search engine optimization is worth you competing with other giant and small websites, you need to first know its importance.

Why is blog SEO an important skill to have?

There are billions of search queries made by people who are looking for ways to solve one or more of their problems or to learn something new, on daily basis.

If you invest in SEO, chances are that you’ll be tapping into some organic and quality traffic from the search engines, without having to pay for it.

Now that the industry is getting more competitive and saturated, SEO has never been more important and necessary to online businesses, than it is now.

Below are why SEO is important for your blog:

1. Higher ranking means more clicks

It is a behavioral instinct that people trust the first few search engine results more than the lower ranked pages. 

In fact, a study shows that a link in first place on Google search results receives on average 30% of all the traffic, and that 75% of people never scroll past the first page.

This says why it’s ideal for your blog posts to rank as high as possible on search results. It means more traffic to your website!

2. Higher ranking leads to more sales 

According to Google, 53% of consumers in the United States research products using search engines before they make any buying decision.

People trust the results they get from search engine result pages. They trust them so much, that they depend on them to make buying decisions.

Therefore, if your blog did well enough to appear at the top position, your brand/blog earns the trust of visitors coming through search engines. 

And if you have products that you are selling, it increases the chances that they will buy from you with less hesitation because your site was Google’s first, second or third recommendation when they enquired about their buying options.

3. Better user experience

User experience improvement is one of the topmost benefits of SEO and doing it right will not only help your audience find it easy to navigate your blog but also ensures that the visitors coming to your blog, are mostly those that have an interest in your blog’s niche and content.

With on site SEO, you don’t have to pay for the traffic you get. This is because search engines such as Google, rank sites based on what their algorithm decides as relevant to a particular query.

However, this doesn’t do away with the fact that you might need to make some investments in content and optimization. 

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Can A Small Brand Compete With Big Brands for Ranking?

Most search engines have different ad options that can boost your position for some queries, and big companies pay large amounts of money to rank on the first page of Google.

But this does not have to be the case for you as a blogger. You can apply some SEO techniques on your blog articles and website backend and be able to rank for positions that other brands would otherwise pay money for.

So SEO when done right, provides you with the opportunity to compete with those larger big budget brands for traffic while using a zero dollar budget. 

Even as a small blog, if you master some SEO techniques and use them to optimize your content, you will have the most relevant and optimized content, and you will have a fair chance to outrank some big and influential brands.

Is Blog SEO worth the effort?

When your blog ranks #1 in Google, then chances are that about 32% of the entire clicks from that query would click through your site.

Therefore, SEO rewards you with that competitive edge against your competitors and if done correctly, your brand will be able to secure a chunk of traffic shares from that query.

Organic search traffic is very qualitative, and according to the Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers implied that organic searches offer the best Return On Investment (ROI) than any other marketing channel.

Wrapping up SEO

Now that you know the basics of SEO right from its meaning, to why you should never rule your business out of the equation; I hope this ignited something in you to optimize your blog for SEO and implement it for your desired business growth.

SEO is a lot wider field than you might have imagined it to be, so, the best way to stay on track is by keeping up to date with the latest SEO trends and search engine updates.

What has been your biggest struggle with SEO? Let me know in the comments section below.

-Here is a guide on Creating Evergreen Content To Optimize SEO For Your Blog.

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