Seo benefits to keywords other than specifically targeted?
-
Im a photographer. Im interested in starting a blog on my site with articles relating to photography advise, tips, recommendations, etc...
Will traffic to those posts help my serp rankings to terms i wouldnt specifically target in them?
Say local terms such as my city wedding photographer?
I know the blog posts would help others, and help give me industry authority, but i would like it if in addition it helps drive my local target market to my site.
Thoughts?
-
Hi Ruben,
How people use your site (like traffic to your blog posts) can contribute to your 'authority', and thereby, your rankings, yes, but you would want to be blogging with your keywords in mind. If you are a wedding photographer with a local business website and you're starting this blog as a vehicle for publishing additional, on-going content, then consider viewing the blog as a showcase of the client projects you take on locally.
So, let's say you're operating out of your physical location in Taos, New Mexico, but you frequently get jobs in neighboring cities like Santa Fe, Mora and Albuquerque. Lacking a physical location in these 3 towns, you are very unlikely to earn Google local pack rankings for them, because that's just the way Google works. But, by steadily blogging about the weddings you've photographed in these other cities (writing about the projects, the venues, showing your photos) you will begin to develop a body of content that relates to your service keywords + these cities. The hope here is to gain visibility in the ORGANIC SERPS, rather than the local ones. If your work is impressive and your writing engaging, this additional organic visibility can help you to start getting phone calls from these additional cities.
That's basically how it works. If you are blogging regularly about your work in these other cities, and your competitors aren't as motivated in their marketing as you are, you have a chance to get into the organic SERPs with the kinds of blog posts that excite new potential customers and encourage them to pick you for their event.
Hope this helps!
-
Great answer Dennis!
I think a good way to look at it is that if Google sees a blog post and is ranking it well for some search related to photography - they think you are knowledgeable & trustworthy. If they think you are knowledgeable and trust worthy about photography in general, they will assume you are knowledgeable and trustworthy about photography on a local level and reward you as such.
Dennis mentioned some steps you need to take to ensure that Google knows you desire those local SERPS - address citations being the most important. As Dennis also alluded to, there are other steps which you need to take as well to optimize your results, but a blog is a great start.
-
Hi Ruben!
It will definitely will help.
I'm assuming you will also be putting your business address on the site, so that also help identify you as part of that locality.
Aside from that, using the location on your posts will also help you rank for them.
There are other ways to specifically rank for those local terms, but I think you just wanted to know if your blog posts will rank locally/bring in local traffic.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I want your SEO feedback for my site!
Hello Moz community, Please check out my website http://www.likechimp.com - I'd love to know your thoughts. I have never built links for my website but managed to do pretty well on the rankings organically. Lately, figures have dropped so need to get back up there on Google. Any tips from what you see already would be greatly appreciated! Example ecom product I sell: http://likechimp.com/facebook-shop/buy-100-facebook-event-attendees/ Thanks
Content Development | | xlucax0 -
Best SEO Approach for Scanned PDFs
I've just found a large number of great technical papers that we have written over the years. They are all scanned pdf's but still relevant. Currently they exist as a download but it seems to me that as each is approximately 5000 words of unique content we ought to be able to get some mileage out of them So I'm thinking of OCRing them, editing and putting them up as blog post with lots of links (10 - 20 max over the post length) to product pages (as it discusses a lot of the technical aspects underlying the products). Is this the best way of maximising benefit from them? Are there any other ways that would be good to use them?
Content Development | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Is this good Blog SEO Exposure Practice?
When I create a new blog post for my site www.piolettilaw.com/blog in an effort to make sure it is seen by the most people the quickest I do the following: (1) link it to my google+ account https://plus.google.com/b/115145499443620475217/+PiolettiPiolettiAttorneysatLawEureka/posts (2) I then link it in virtually the same way on facebook (3) I ping it my blog directory piolettilaw.com/blog using ping-o-matic Is that a pretty good gameplan to follow when making new blog posts? Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions would be very welcomed. Thanks in advance, Joe
Content Development | | hundorama0 -
SEO for a News based site : Outdated content
How do we maintain the SEO of a 5 year old News content based site? How should we deal with 3-4 year old content, which are outdated or not searched? Some of them are still useful as archiving/history of a topic..but not searched.... ?? Should we no-index them? or should we keep it like that?
Content Development | | Wpfreesetup0 -
What is CSS/ HTML good for SEO ?
Hi forks I dont know why Thesis and Genesis is good for SEO ? what is diffirent about website's code ( css/html). it is something about schema.org. i have to fix my website's code like that. thank U
Content Development | | giasungoaithuong0 -
Is this a worthwhile SEO tactic?
Many 'list' articles break down so that number one is on page one, and you are asked to click 'Next' to see number two. Number two is on page two, etc. For example: http://www.prevention.com/health/health-concerns/12-replacements-high-cholesterol-foods Is this done simply to keep bounce rate down? Is it something I should try, or is it frowned upon in any way? Will it help bounce rate? If it's a good practice, how would I do this in a Wordpress blog post? Thanks!
Content Development | | getwilder20 -
How effective are online press releases for SEO purposes?
As part of a SEO program for a small business, how effective are optimized, online press releases?
Content Development | | Doug_Hay0 -
Blog on Sub-domain affect on SEO
Hi, Setting up a blog for a new website. What affects will hosting a blog on a sub-domain (blog.mysite.com vs. mysite.com/blog) have on SEO? Also, would having a separate blog domain be beneficial or detrimental (myblog.com)? Thanks, Shane
Content Development | | notarynow0