Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [203]
Blogs constantly gain links and link to sites; websites slowly gain top-level links.
Updated content is the critical factor in this equation. It is in the search engines’ best interest to have the most up-to-date content and the most requested content in the search results. To provide what searchers want, search engines are constantly hunting for the latest and most relevant information on any topic. As a result, search engines favor the content provided by blogs.
Keyword Advantage
In the HubSpot survey mentioned earlier, businesses that actively blogged had 55 percent more visitors, 97 percent more inbound links, and 434 percent more indexed pages in the search engines. A follow-up survey showed that businesses that were actively blogging drew more than 6.9 times more organic search engine visitors than nonblogging businesses. (http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5506/Active-Business-Blogs-Draw-6-9-Times-More-Organic-Search-Traffic-Than-Non-Bloggers.aspx). How can something as simple as a blog develop this much additional organic traffic from search engines? It goes back to something mentioned in Chapter 6, the keyword long tail. The keyword long tail consists of the hundreds to thousands of related terms that your website will be found for. Even though you may have a keywords list you are targeting, the search engines will naturally find relevance for terms beyond your list; blogs enable that list to go even further with all of the related content that is published.
As a result, blog articles are great resources for very detailed information on deep topics. Search engines tend to favor blogs, because searchers with detailed queries will tend to find the information on a blog. Blogs enable businesses to provide very detailed information in a very search-friendly platform. More in-depth and varied content fits the needs of thousands of searchers, and the development of content on a blog creates a source for visitors looking for that information.
Engagement Advantage
In the same study cited in the previous section, based on analyzing visitors who find a business website through search vs. visitors who find a business’s blog through search, actively blogging businesses see a significant benefit to blogging. Even when the blog is not providing the same numbers as the website in terms of visitors, the engagement is very different. If you remember Tuesday’s discussion in Chapter 16 on the different visitor behaviors based on the source of the link, this will come as no surprise.
Figure 17-2 shows a website that is bringing in more than 1.5 million visitors. In that same time frame, the blog generated 17,000 visitors. However, the difference is in the engagement.
Figure 17-2: Comparing the engagement of visitors entering at the blog vs. entering the website
Two-thirds of visitors who enter the website leave the website after viewing a single page. The average time on site for website visitors is about 3 minutes, and the average number of page views is 3.6 pages. After factoring the bounce rate, time on site, and page views, the blog-generated visitors are still on the site after 5 minutes. In fact, the blog-generated visitors stay and engage on the site significantly longer with time on site topping more than 20 minutes and 20 pages per session!
This is typical behavior of blog-generated visitors. They stay longer, do more, and engage more with the website when they find content. This includes visitors who find the blog via search engines. Visitors who enter the blog from search engines tend to be much more active and engaged than visitors who find the “traditional” website through the search engines.
Blogs make it easy for the visitor to be engaged with an information architecture that is very accessible and functional. Comments, related topics, new articles, and a very clean design and structure make it easy to find more content and stay longer on a blog.
Blogs are a resource for growing your business’s visibility online that you just cannot ignore.
Tuesday: Understand the Architecture