SEO, once viewed as a mysterious concept, has now emerged as an indispensable strategy for bloggers who aspire to drive organic traffic to their websites.
By optimizing their content and aligning it with the search engine algorithms, bloggers can position themselves favorably in search engine result pages (SERPs) and attract a steady stream of targeted readers.
In this article, we will explore the many benefits of SEO for bloggers and how it can help you take your blogging journey to new heights.
Benefits of SEO for Bloggers
#1. Permanent and Passive Traffic
One of the key benefits of SEO is permanent traffic.
When you pay for an online ad, the traffic stops once the ad expires. Same with social media: as soon as your post drops off someone’s feed, it’s gone and the traffic dries up.
Not so with SEO.
If you manage to get your article listed on Page #1 of Google for a given keyword, you can expect it stay on Page #1 for months, even years.
And if it does move down to Page #2, you can usually get it back on Page #1 with a few updates.
#2. Builds Trust and Credibility
Ranking on Google builds your authority.
When your post or article ranks on Page #1 of Google, it builds trust and credibility in your brand (whether personal or buisness).
This is a benefit of SEO that’s quite separate from traffic. Even if a person never clicks on your web page, when they repeatedly see your content ranked on Page #1 of Google, it tells them your website is a trusted source of information.
#3. Works For You 24/7
Another of the benefits of SEO is that it’s ‘set and forget’.
Unlike other marketing channels (for example social media and email marketing) SEO doesn’t require continual effort.
Once your content is ranked on Page #1 of Google, it stays there for months, even years. And if your page slips down the search results onto Page #2, you can usually update it to bring it back onto Page #1.
#4. Delivers Highly Targeted Traffic
Visitors who find your web page through organic search are already looking for your products or services. This is especially so if you target long tail keywords.
This is why SEO traffic is far more effective than ‘push’ advertising. Other forms of marketing rely on interrupting a potential prospect with a sales pitch.
But SEO is completely aligned with user intent – you’re not trying to persuade someone to do something they’re not already doing (i.e. searching for a product or service).
#5. High Conversion Rates
High conversion rates are another of the benefits of SEO.
Because search engine traffic is highly targeted, it results in high conversion rates. MarketingSherpa reports that organic search has an average conversion rate of 16%.
By comparison, Facebook ads have a conversion rate of just over 9% (Source: Quora) while the conversion rate for Google Adwords is 2.7% (Source: Wordstream).
#6. Find Your Audience’s ‘Pain Points’
One of the keys to succeeding with a blog, or any other online business, is finding your audience’s pain points. Business owners go to great efforts to discover what these pain points are.
But when someone lands on your website from organic search you already have a very good idea what their pain point is.
Why?
Because people go to search engines to solve problems. If they found your website through organic search, it means your content offers a solution to their problem.
#7. SEO Is Measurable
What you can measure you can improve – and that’s another of the major benefits of SEO.
Through Google Analytics, just about every aspect of how your visitors interact with your website is measurable, from acquisition to behaviour to conversion.
In addition, you can use a SERP tracking service to see exactly how your individual pages rank for a given keyword.
These kind of tools will usually also show you key metrics for all the SERP results:
- Domain Authority
- Page Authority
- Citation Flow
- Trust Flow
- MozRank
- MozTrust
- Number of Links
- Facebook Shares
This shows you where you stand compared with competing web pages and pinpoints issues (e.g. bounce rate, time on page, or SERP CTR) where you can make improvements.
#8. Largest Source of Internet Traffic
Conductor carried out a study of 310 million website visits which revealed that 64% of all website traffic across the Internet comes from organic search.
Search Engine Journal (SEJ) reports an even higher figure: 93% of online activities start on a search engine.
When you’re tapping into the single biggest source of traffic on the Internet, you know you’re on the right track.
#9. SEO Creates Brand Awareness
Top ranked pages receive 1000’s of impressions.
So the mere fact of having your content listed on Page #1 of Google creates exposure for your domain and valuable brand awareness. It sends a signal to searchers that you’re a key player in your niche.
#10. Keyword Research Helps with Content Creation
Bloggers often struggle to get new ideas for blog posts. And when they do come up with an idea for a blog post they often have little idea of the volume of demand for that topic.
By contrast, long tail keyword research gives you an endless stream of new, laser targeted, blog post topics.
And because you’re using a keyword research tool, you know exactly what the monthly search volume is for that keyword.
Conclusion
As you can see, the benefits of SEO go far beyond free traffic.
SEO builds authority and brand recognition, it gives you insights into your audience, and it teaches you how to create content that better serves your audience.
More Articles About SEO
- Search Engine Visibility – 23 Valuable Tips For More Traffic
- Stuck on Page #2 of Google – How To Get Out in 7 Easy Steps
- 13 Types of SEO You Need To Know About in 2022
- SEO Recipe For Success – The 7 Key Ingredients For Ranking Well
- What Is SEO? An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
- Seven Google SEO Trends To Watch For In 2022
- How To Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts – 17 Important Tips
- SEO Off-Page Techniques: 7 Important Facts You Need To Know
- SEO Acronym & What It Means (+ 7 Proven SEO Techniques)
- The Advantages of SEO – 13 Important Facts You Need To Know
- SEO for Blog Posts – 15 Factors To Help You Rank Higher
- 19 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid At All Costs
- Bing Search Engine Stats – Some Interesting Facts & Figures
Wow! What a marvelous information you shared on this blog post. I really appreciate your efforts for research and share with your audience.. After reading this blog post it is too much easy to understand blogging and newbie can start their blogs very smoothly.
In addition would like to share that since 2010 doing blogging and have 100+ blogs with good quality content and traffic. I wrote a post on my blog which topic is “Five Steps on How to Become A Blogger” which will really help to all readers to more clear this amazing online source of income.
Regards
Mukhtiar Ali Khan – Internet Marketer
Thanks so much Mukhtiar, I’m glad it was helpful :), Best, Rob.
Thanks Abhishek, I’m glad it was useful.