How To Check If A Blog Affects The Positioning Of Your Website? - Important Tips From Semalt

There are many benefits to running a blog, as long as you do it right. One of the effects of having it may be greater visibility of the page on Google. But what does good blogging actually mean? What should you pay attention to and how can you check if it really affects the positioning of your website?

How to check if a blog affects the SEO of the website?

The best tool for analyzing whether a blog affects website positioning is Google Search Console. To use it, all you need to do is verify your domain. Thanks to Google Search Console you will get a lot of information about the visibility of your website.

After selecting the domain you are interested in, select the "Effectiveness" option from the left menu.

This is where you will find detailed data such as:

The total number of clicks - i.e. how many Google users came to your website through the search engine.
The total number of page views in SERPs (Search Engine Results Position).
The average CTR (Click Through Rate) - that is how often your website was clicked, taking into account the ratio of the number of redirects to the number of views.
The average rank for all key phrases in the report over the period.

Start by checking if your blog posts are among the most viewed pages. To do this, select the "Pages" tab and look at the information obtained.

Based on this, you can determine whether blog entries are visible in the search results at all. They don't have to be in the top positions on this list, but they should at least appear in the next positions. Also, take a look at the average position in the given case and the CTR.

How to interpret this data? You can draw different conclusions:

If the number of views is high and the position is far from TOP3, it means that it is worth optimizing a given post, thanks to which you will improve its visibility and get more user visits. You can improve the result if, for example, you place internal links to this content from other, clearly visible subpages of your website. Another way to do this is to get links to your blog post from a valuable website. However, remember to check after some time whether the implemented changes brought the expected results.
If your position is high, the number of impressions is high, and there are very few clicks, it doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong. In the case of phrases for which many ads are displayed, and in the case of business cards, the CTR is often even below 10 percent. Low CTR may also apply to queries in which there is a Direct Answer, called the zero position, i.e. a direct answer to a given question presented at the top of the search results. And here the CTR depends on whether the answer will be sufficient for the user, or whether he or she wants to learn something more and clicks the link to your website.
If an example address of an entry on your blog looks like this: xyz.com/blog/go-ahead, then thanks to GSC you can get information about the visibility of all blog entries in total. Select the "Effectiveness" tab, then click "New", and in the next step "Website". Add xyz.com/blog/ there. On this basis, you will check the visibility of entries on your blog.

Google is not only that type of search, however. After all, users could also find your entry via the image or video search engine. You can also check the GSC for information on such searches. How to do it? Click on "Search Type" and then select "Image".

On this basis, you can find out for which queries your website is visible in Google Graphics. The results are not the best? You can improve them - go back to the information on optimizing photos, make modifications to selected blog entries, and check after a few weeks if it will turn into an improvement in their visibility.

You can also use other tools to assess whether your blog entries are visible on Google

Talking of tools, you can check and see the powerful Semalt's SEO tools which also can help you more than others. Besides, you can have wonderful products for your ranking:

Remember, however, that the best source of such data is definitely GSC and in the case of analyzing the website you have access to, it is the optimal solution.

Okay. Have you already checked how the blog affects the positioning of the website and you want to improve the results? Here are some tips on how to do this:

How to keep a blog well?

Currently, it is almost a standard to run a blog as an addition to a company website or website store. Having it can bring you many benefits in many ways. How to make the blog influence the visibility of the website in Google search results and at the same time build your positive image in the eyes of users? Follow these rules:

1. Create substantive content

The user expects you to provide him with valuable content in an attractive form. So take care of the quality of your content - share knowledge, interesting facts, and increase interest in your offer. A worthless, unobtrusive website can cause a high bounce rate, which can harm the SEO of the page, but also reduce conversions. A user who is not interested in the content will not go to the pages describing the offer, will not send a query, or make purchases.

2. Take care of the correct length

When creating content, try to make it more valuable than the competition, which is in high positions in Google. Make sure the texts on your website are as larger or longer than on other websites. How to check their length with the competition? You can use a tool that will save you a lot of work - Surfer SEO. Thanks to it, you will learn the length of texts appearing on pages that are in high positions for a given query.

3. Remember regularity

Google likes fresh content. It's not just about starting a blog, but most of all about adding new articles to it regularly.

This is important not only due to the Google algorithm but also the user's expectations. If he estimates your content as valuable, because you helped him, for example, in making a purchasing decision, likely, he will also visit your blog next time. In the event that he enters several times and does not notice the new content, he probably won't come back. Interesting content may cause the user to add his e-mail address to the newsletter and you will then be able to inform him about new content on the blog and new products.

4. Don't forget to optimize your content

When creating an article, you should primarily think about content that is attractive to the user, but also remember about Google. Thanks to the appropriate optimization of articles, you can make them appear in the highest positions in the search results. How is this achieved?

Title - the title, the <title> tag, which is in the <head> section of the page. Include the most important phrase for this article. It should consist of about 65-70 characters with spaces. If it is longer, then Google can display it in a shortened form and with an ellipsis, as in the example below.
Meta Description - that is the <description> tag, which is also in the <head> section. It does not affect visibility on Google, but it can affect CTR, so it is worth describing what the user will learn from the content and include a CTA (call to action) in it.
Headings - Theoretically these could be <h1> through <h6>, but the most common ones used are <h1> through <h3>. There should be a title for the blog entry in <h1> - include the most important keyword. Try to include side phrases in the remaining headers. To learn more about headings, see our blog.
Keywords in the content - the most important phrase should be repeated in the lead and several times in the text, but only if it is not forced. Content is supposed to look natural. However, side keywords should appear at least once in the article.
Photos - add photos in the content of the article, preferably if they are original graphics or screenshots. First, make sure you have the appropriate file name. Do not use the notation: "_", only use dashes: "-". Also, do not use complex characters. When adding a photo, complete the <alt> tag. What should be included in the content of the alternative description? Reflecting on what you see in the photo. It's a good idea to use keywords in both the file title and the <alt> tag.
URL address - should be friendly, but this is the standard in the most popular systems.

5. Publish blog entries in an attractive form

Internet users will not be interested in the text wall. It is very unlikely that they will read such content. First, have an encouraging title. Second - use different formatting styles in the text. You already know about headings, but it's also very important to use bullets. It is also worth preparing a table of contents with anchors, i.e. one that facilitates navigation, especially in long articles. It will definitely be appreciated by users who view your blog on mobile devices. Take a look, for example, at such a table of contents in this article at the beginning.

You can use the <b> and <em> tags to highlight the keywords (for which you want to be displayed with a given post) in the content. The former will make the content bold, and the latter will result in italics. This tells Google that the keywords are the most important. In the case of highlighting content for users, we can use the <b> and <i> tags.

It is worth highlighting whole sentences/sentence fragments in the article or in the offer description - it looks more natural. Then, for example, to mark a keyword, you can use the <strong> tag, and for the remainder of the sentence, use <b>.

6. Take care of internal linking

In the text of the article, place links to other pages of your website. It is important that there is a thematic link between them, because thanks to this, users will become interested in your website and will not end their visit only by reading one article. You can even include a menu with thematically linked links in the text. The title of the link does not have to be exactly the same as the article itself. Use the keywords you want to position it for. This is one of the important ranking factors.

Conclusion

Of course, the goal of running a blog should not only be to gain the greatest possible visibility or traffic. Conversion is also very important. How to create content that will fulfill such a goal? You can read about it on our blog.