We know that blog marketing is great for a company’s online presence, search engine ranking and digital branding. But what about local SEO? Can blogging help your local SEO? Going “local” is all the rage these days. High search engine rankings for your neighborhood or city are solid gold for local companies with lots of competition in their industry. Small and large businesses alike are all looking for ways to climb to the top of the heap, and local SEO has become a highly-sought-after online marketing technique.
According to Chris Silver Smith of Search Engine Land, blogging might very well be the secret to becoming a local hero.
“The cool thing is, a great many local businesses still are not blogging, so use of it as a search engine optimization tactic is still something of a secret weapon,” Silver Smith writes.
The most straightforward thing blogging does for business’ local SEO is that is it provides regular, updated content for your website “to seduce parts of Google’s algorithms that feature content based on freshness.” Blogging is an easy fix for freshness seeing as the best blogs are updated daily or at the very least several times a week. Blogs also make for great fodder for social media. Local businesses can help secure their SEO with frequently-updated Twitter and Facebook feeds, and links to blog posts are naturals for these platforms.
Silver Smith also notes that since blogging helps businesses interact with other bloggers, it can help establish your company as a trusted resource and provide endless unique link profiles.
Yet, as we tell our clients, Silver Smith warns blogging success doesn’t help SEO overnight.
“Installing a blog and writing on it consistently are not going to be shortcuts to achieving higher rankings fast — these things take some work,” he adds. “However, this investment in engaging with online consumers will give you an advantage that won’t disappear overnight. And, if you do it right, it could help you get ahead of your competitors in terms of SEO and social media.”
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