Organizations have been embracing blogging for many years. SEO-friendly blogs are a great way to build brand loyalty and can help with online reputation management. They also allow for a wide range of digital marketing strategies, such as inbound and SEO.

Problem is, very few businesses can properly manage and maintain a blog.

This article will not cover the other parts of a marketing strategy. Instead, it will concentrate on creating an SEO-friendly, growth-driven blog that attracts and converts organic traffic.

What is Different for SEO in 2020?

Before we get into the strategies, goals, and objectives of an SEO-friendly blog, let’s first define 2020 and how to publish blog content.

A blog that is to attract organic traffic must adhere to Google Best Practices, which are based on RankBrain’s continuous evolution. Google ranks RankBrain as the third most important ranking factor.

This algorithm is a combination of AI and machine learning. It studies the relationship between clicks and search queries.

It has been essential to rank and sells organic traffic since its creation alongside the 600 to 600 updates Google makes each year.

Is the Main Idea to Rank Content?

Many organic search strategies are focused on ranking content and then stop there. Growth-driven SEO requires a different approach. Ranking content isn’t the goal, but a necessary step toward helping companies reach their revenue targets.

Companies invest in SEO not just to rank high on search engines, but to increase their sales.

However, any strategy to rank content must have an underlying goal to convert organic traffic into sales. This means that content must address the needs and objectives of buyers.

Your Blog Should be Accessible through the Site Navigation

Blogs can live in many places. Companies that spend thousands on custom websites may find out later that a blog can’t live on their platform because of the way it was coded.

They will either get a subdomain for a blog or have a site with links to their main site. Some companies want to keep a specific look but have very little content. Their blog is not accessible from their homepage.

SEO-friendly blogs must be included in the top navigation to achieve the best SEO results. Google crawls sites to determine context and topics. It then examines the navigation of the site and evaluates its content regarding the URL structure, H tags, and structured data.

Visitors can also see a link from the blog on their homepage. This increases the likelihood that they will click the link and interact with the content. It also helps improve domain authority and organic ranking.

SEO-Friendly Blog Speaks to Your Ideal Customers

Instead of writing a blog about high-search volume keywords, you should focus your articles on target buyers to ensure high rankings and conversions.

This will require extensive research to develop buyer personas. A buyer persona can be described as a fictional representation of a customer that marketers use to target their audience.

The buyer persona will be based on the client’s industry, products, and services. As a rule, they will include the following: industry, job title, and job responsibilities. This information will also define success for that person and how people who sit in that position look for educational information that is relevant to their job. Other personal factors such as income, family status, and other aspects play a role.

Interviewing sales staff can help you gather data to build buyer personas. What are their main objectives, and common pain points, and how does the product serve buyer needs?

Social listening technology can be used to track how people interact with content that is relevant to your brand or industry. It also allows you to identify which blog topics receive the most comments, shares, likes, and likes. Surveys and questionnaires are two other popular methods of acquiring data to build buyer personas. These can be sent to existing customers as well as people who have never purchased.

Keywords and Blog Structure

Once you have identified your buyers and their motivations, it is time to decide on the structure and keywords for your blog.

SEO services tend to focus on keywords with high search volumes. However, an SEO-friendly blog should make topical keywords the heart of its search terms. The goal is to create sales, not just rank for no reason.

Here’s an example.

The keyword steak knives may be very popular and you will likely get many clicks if you rank high for it. However, conversion rates for this term are low as the content isn’t tailored to buyer needs.

Keywords like “olive wood handle steak knife” or “Laguiole Steak knives” might have a lower search volume, but they convert at a higher rate since they target specific buyers.

Do you prefer to rank on page 1 of Google for a broad keyword that receives 10,000 monthly searches and converts an average of 200 sales per month, or do you prefer to rank for a keyword that receives 2000 monthly searches and converts approximately 500 sales each month?

This is the best part.

Ranking for broad keywords is possible even if you first rank for lower-converting fruit. To create customer-friendly content, all you need to do is to show how your keywords are related and create context.

The blog structure is important. Topic clusters and pillar pages are good for industry dominance and superior ranking in 2020. These blogs each address a specific topic and link to other blogs on similar topics. Each blog then links to the pillar, which is usually the homepage or primary product pages.

This structure allows search engine juice to flow through your entire blog ecosystem while providing a positive user experience for visitors that aids them in finding specific content.

This structure is loved by Google because it’s easy for search engines to crawl and understand the information. People also love it for its ease of navigation, which are two big factors in SEO.

Add a CTA at the End of Each Blog

People won’t go to your site navigation if they have spent five to ten minutes reading blogs, searching for their product, and then making a purchase.

In today’s world, instant gratification is a must. Create a well-branded, attractive CTA that leads readers to a one-page checkout and gives them immediate access to the featured product on the blog.

Your steroid-induced blog does not stop working. But what about those abandoned carts?

We may be moving away from the “blog strategy”, however, your goal is to make more money.

You should have a marketing automation program in place to capture lead information and send them carefully-crafted messages that nurture them back into your funnel and their shopping cart.

Companies miss thousands of dollars annually by not remarketing abandoned cart shoppers. Although it is not part of a blog strategy, it will help increase sales.

Use the Cluster Model

Blog cluster models are when you create several blogs that address each buyer persona. Each blog in a cluster has a unique title that addresses a specific problem or question and links to another blog with the same content.

Each blog will also link to a page called pillar. Your site’s pillar pages are pages that you want to rank. These pages are generally the homepage or primary product pages.

Cluster models are a good way to attract organic traffic. Google loves structured content, which is why they love the cluster model.

Structured content is also a favorite of human readers, especially if they can find more information on their topic with just one click.

Cluster models help oxygenate blogs by providing circulation between pages and distributing search juice, creating a robust, growth-generating content hub.

Your Blog Steroids are in the Approach

Let’s end by returning to the core of our approach: understanding your customers. Every aspect of building a blog from keyword research to backlinks and internal linking strategies to CTAs. Knowing your customers is key to engineering a growth-generating website.

You need to understand your buyer personas and how they consume information if you want your blog to be successful.

This approach is the foundation of every piece of strategy. Once you dial in your customers, you can make it rain!