Why isn’t my blog post ranking well?

There are many factors that go into determining how Google ranks content (including these, but there’s many more than even that). Google doesn’t typically reveal what these “ranking factors” are, but they include things like:

• What the searcher’s “intent” is. Meaning, what type of answer are they looking for? Is it likely that the article will answer the searcher’s question? (The longer the content, the more likely it is that the question will be answered.) If yes, is the answer easy to find in the article?
• Is it clear what the article is about? What’s the title of the article? What are the headings in the article?
• Are other websites linking to the post (and/or to the website as a whole)? If yes, are those websites popular? What’s the surrounding context of the link? What’s the text that’s linked? Etc. In Google’s world, a link pointed to a page is like a “vote” of confidence toward that content… the more votes from high-authority/trustworthy sites, the more likely Google is to show the content.

• Blogging for SEO

  In fact, blogging can be very useful for both SEO and attracting users to the site.

  How? Here’s just some examples:

  • It provides excellent content to promote on social media, in email blasts, etc.
  • It establishes the business as an expert/authority on a particular topic (both in the customer’s mind and in Google’s “mind”).
  • It can help boost other pages on the site (ex. service or location pages) for queries where they rank in the search results. This is especially the case if you’re linking to those pages within the blog posts (caution: don’t add more links to other pages on your own site.
  • It can attract backlinks (other websites linking to the post). Similarly, it can be used for doing manual outreach to ask other relevant industry (or local) blogs/websites to link to the post.

  It can take months and (typically even) years for Google to trust a new website’s content more and more. But, the results can end up being very worthwhile!

  I’ve seen this happen with a retirement planner’s blog – they were consistently creating useful blog posts for years. The blog didn’t start with attracting lots of traffic from Google, but over the course of time, the traffic to those posts continued to climb. In fact, it got to the point where the issue wasn’t as much of “How can we get people to see the article?”, but rather “How can we get people deeper on the website to learn more about the business?”

• Help people find your blog on search engines

  You can make it easier for people to find your blog on search engines like Google and Bing when you:

  • List your blog on search engines.
  • Use keywords throughout your site to help it show up higher in search results.

  List your blog on search engines

  To let search engines find your blog:

  1. Sign in to Blogger.
  2. In the top left, choose a blog to list.
  3. From the menu on the left, click Settings.
  4. Under "Privacy," turn on Visible to search engines.

  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips for your blog

  You can use relevant keywords in the titles and text on your posts and pages. You can also tell search engines which pages, posts, and links to ignore so they won’t show up in search results.