IS BLOGGING STILL EFFECTIVE IN 2020?

To get the answer, take a look at this statistic that shows hundreds and thousands blog posts are created every day. If you are wondering why there is so much competition in this domain, the answer is a strategically created blog post could be one of the most powerful yet cost-effective content marketing tools your business could ever have.

And as you are reading this post, it also adds up the fact that people still prefer to read. However, the way blogging used to be ten years ago has been changed completely. In short, blogging is one of those strategies that aren’t on their deathbed. Instead, people’s approach toward reading them has changed. So, it can be said that any small business owner would be able to leverage the full potential of blogging providing some strategies are properly followed.

Without further ado, let’s delve deeper into the key strategies you need to focus on.

Think the way Google does

Did you know that a latest research performed by Databox revealed that blogging has become more effective than it was two years ago, according to 68% of marketers? And with its ability to help websites rank high in Google, it shouldn’t be a surprise why blogging is considered the “holy grail” of content marketing.

Now, the question is how would you accomplish this through blogging? We’ll come to it in a minute but before just imagine how many times in a day you, or us, google to find answers to our queries. It’d probably be impossible to tell an exact number. Put simply, Google isn’t the provider of knowledge. Instead, it offers information to people searching for it. And what are the sources of that knowledge? It’s the bloggers e.g. authoritative people who provide expert-level knowledge to address the search queries Google receives.

So, what does Google do? It keeps on searching for expert people sharing valuable information through blogging. And the best part is, anyone can be an expert source of information for Google, providing what he or she is sharing provides real value. And if it does, it gets rewarded by Google by gaining higher ranking in its search engine result pages.

What we’re trying to say is there’re lots of true opportunities that you can use to become a subject matter expert in your domain through blogging and help your website rank higher in SERPs.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for a huge number of business owners as they often fail to accomplish this goal despite trying hard.

Key reasons explained

Let’s take a look at the most common statement that we frequently come across from our clients who are the naysayers of the power of blogging.

“It didn’t work for us despite all the effort”

Though there could be many reasons behind this failure, we, at Prospect SEO, figured out the following as the most common ones why their blogging efforts didn’t make it.

The blogs weren’t search engine optimized

They were created as part of the regular content marketing strategy, but they missed out on the technical components that were actually needed to rank high on Google. As a result, those blog posts failed to rank and eventually failed to create any additional lead opportunity and ultimately, never accomplished the actual goal of boosting the bottom line.

The topics missed out on the most strategically relevant component – keywords

Put simply, if there’s no keyword research involved when creating a blog post, how would you be able to find out the topics that people search the most in the context of your business. Creating blog posts without doing proper keyword research is something that would never put you in a position to provide your target audience with useful information and in turn, rank high on Google. In order to get the most out of your content marketing strategy, the importance of keyword research is simply unmatchable.

They weren’t thoroughly customer-centric

Did you know that people keep on reading a company’s blog posts long before they’re actually converted? What it means is if you fail to chalk out your customers’ journey, how you would understand which blog posts actually led your target audience to convert. Without proper analysis, this isn’t possible and your blogging efforts are unlikely to bring any positive result, no matter how hard you try.

Different avenues weren’t explored to promote them

In today’s tech-driven world where almost everyone has multiple social media platforms, following a single avenue to promote your blog posts isn’t going to bring much success your way, even if they’re high-value, fresh, and properly SEO-optimized. Writing and publishing high-quality blog posts is only half the process and the other half encompasses how many different avenues you can successfully explore to connect with your target audience through those blog posts.

Blogging trends that you should keep an eye on in 2020

While it’s evident that blogging still holds a solid potential when it comes to connecting with your target audience and ranking higher in SERPs, the way of getting success in blogging is expected to transform a lot in 2020.

Here’re the things you should keep in mind when creating your blogging strategy these days.

• Videos are capable of attracting 300% more traffic, according to Marketing Sherpa
• According to 87.5% of marketers, visual pieces were used in more than 50% of their blogs, revealed by Venngage
• With the implementation of its BERT algorithm, Google has increased its focus on user intent, which means you should focus on it too, according to Content Marketing Institute

The above statistics mean that people are increasingly exploring both visual and engaging ways to find out the answers to their questions. So, your blog posts have to be focused on getting the most out of both the formats to attract valuable traffic. In short, focus on creating authentic, original, and high-quality content that directly addresses your audiences’ concerns, keep SEO in mind, and blogging will likely deliver the results you are waiting for.