One of the main points to keep in mind is: your company is not a newspaper. Writing about random industry topics has been shown to contribute little to the SEO of a website and nothing to your potential customers.
But how do you know if your News / Blog section meets SEO objectives? Test your website with the following 3 questions:
1. Do the posts written follow the funnel of your Buyer Persona?
This is possibly the most important question. Having a clear profile of your potential customers is essential in Marketing, and it is also essential to know who we want to find us in Google (i.e. for SEO). The blog section is a perfect space to solve all the doubts that your buyer persona may have throughout the buying process, even long before it begins. What we know as conversion funnel.
Conversion Funnel of our Searcher persona
Once we have well defined the profile of our customers, we will establish what needs or doubts they may have until they acquire our service or product. And how that translates into Google searches:
Problem / Idea. Initial search. There is something in your life that worries you and you want to solve or change. This point is fundamental for companies that offer services or products that are not well known, since the user will hardly search for it by name.
Intent / Search. The searcher has already been reading information about possible solutions to his problem and is looking for more details about a particular one.
Consideration. The user is hesitating between several companies, products or services and is analyzing what is the most correct decision in his case. It may be that the same company (website) offers all the services or that the competition comes into play. Comparators are the kings in this phase.
Action. You are in the purchasing process but you may have very specific doubts related to data or documents you need to make the purchase: payment methods, return time, shipping costs, etc. It is essential to resolve these blocking points at the moment: on the product sheet, in the shopping cart or on the transaction page.
Evangelization. People who have already been customers at one time but might repeat the purchase or recommend it to others. These can be posts that help to get more out of the service or product purchased. For example, Lekue has a section of recipes with their products: https://www.lekue.com/es/recetas/por-productos/recetas-para-estuche-de-vapor
These articles are not only important for SEO but also for other channels such as Email Marketing or RRSS as they help to build loyalty and create community.
Let's see all this in a practical example.
We did this exercise for an English Academy that organizes summer experiences in the UK for children and pre-teens. In this case the Searcher Persona is the parent:
IDEA: remember that the doubts that you do not clarify to the buyer persona will go to Google and may end up falling on the page of a competitor who has a better working funnel and end up taking the purchase. So, be that competitor!
Take a look at the Leroy Merlin Community section, they have very well covered the entire buying process and even include the items in subcategory pages to resolve user questions.
2. Keywords y etiquetas. ¿Están los artículos optimizados para SEO?
It is almost as important to know what we are going to write as who we have to beat in the SERPS. A good tactic is to do a review to see what is published in Google for that search, for example: if there are rich contents, many images, infographics, videos, comparative tables...
Another fundamental point is the optimization of articles (and we assure you that it goes far beyond the green dots of Yoast SEO):
Keywords with high / medium search volume. It is always advisable to do a keyword analysis before approaching each article. It is possible that users call your service in a different way than the "technical" you know. It is also useful to know their doubts about it.
Optimized and attractive Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions that boost CTR.
Hierarchical headings structure. Always an H1 and several H2 as a minimum. The more organized the article is, the easier it is for the user to read, which will increase the time spent and possibly page views.
Table of contents. For very long articles it can be interesting and helps to lower the bounce rate.
Images with "alt" attribute and optimized name. Not too heavy, the speed of the web will be grateful.
Links. We leave this for the next point.
Do you have videos and other resources that provide value on the subject? Add them
3. Are the interlinkings being used well?
Before we go on, let's review the three SEO functions that the Blog section fulfills:
Increase the visibility of the website. Thanks to the periodic publication of posts and the treatment of informational keywords we will have more and more positioned words.
Get "qualified" traffic since we are targeting the buyer persona. And at the same time we help him/her in the buying process so that he/she does not leave in the middle.
Distribute PageRank to the most important pages of the web. Generally transactional of services or product.
Interlinking plays a fundamental role in achieving these objectives. It is the common thread that allows the buyer to move forward and allows pagerank to be distributed through the links.
A post with good internal linking has:
A minimum link to a main Landing of the website to which it transfers most authority. The higher up the article, the better.
Links to other pages or articles (from a higher stage of the funnel that we have seen previously) that help the user to move forward in their buying process.
IDEA: Use CTAs and buttons to tell the user what to do. If they read the article and leave, we are losing an opportunity.
How did the test go? Does your site pass all three points? If not, you already have the tips, it's all about getting started! And of course you can contact Rocket Digital for us to accompany you in the process of improving SEO, increasing organic traffic and conversions.
