Is Blogging Dead? Not If You Want Organic Traffic

You’ve probably heard the whispers... “Blogging is dead.”

 But here’s the truth: Blogging isn’t dead — boring, inconsistent blogging is. If you want more traffic, more leads, and more sales without constantly relying on paid ads or social media trends, blogging is one of the most powerful tools you still have. Let’s talk about how to make it work for you this year and beyond.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Blogging isn't dead, inconsistency is
• 2:30 SEO benefits of regular blogging
• 4:14 What makes blog content worth reading
• 7:48 Easy blogging ideas that drive traffic
• 10:40 Action steps to start or restart blogging
• 14:27 Blogging evolves but remains strategic

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:33

You've probably heard the whispers that blogging is dead, but here's the truth. Blogging isn't dead or boring. Inconsistent blogging is. If you want more traffic, more leads and more sales without constantly relying on paid ads or social media trends, blogging is one of the most powerful tools you still have in your pocket today. So today we're gonna talk about how to make it work for you this year and beyond.

Carrie Saunders: 1:00

Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old. My main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Saunders: 1:34

So today we're talking about an interesting topic on whether blogging is dead or not, especially in the light of AI today. But I'm here to tell you that blogging is actually not dead. So the rise of video, social media and AI has hinted to the fact that blogging might be dead, and we all feel that people are overwhelmed with content. They also assume that no one tends to read, but Google still loves fresh, helpful content. They also assume that no one tends to read, but Google still loves fresh, helpful content and, honestly, so do your potential customers. Blogging shows that you are invested in your business, that you are invested in your customers. It also shows Google that you want to put consistent new content on your website, and so it thinks that you're updating your website regularly, which you are because you're blogging, and that helps bring in more Google traffic and Yahoo and Bing traffic because you're invested into your website. So there are a host of SEO benefits that go along with regularly blogging. It can help be a way for you to provide keywords, internal linking and get more pages indexed on your website. And the keywords are also important because people still search Google for questions, for answers to their questions, right, and if we don't have something that can get picked up by Google to answer that question, then your website's not going to be found. So whenever you create blogs around the questions your customers are asking, that really helps Google get in to your website and show them your website and get more customers and more looks on your website and more leads.

Carrie Saunders: 3:12

Google loves helpful content and they favor high quality blog posts. Still, they also favor high quality video content too, so you could combine the two if you really want to, but really it's the high quality blog content and just plain text on your website. That's really still very helpful, helpful, and it's evergreen content that works 24 seven. You don't have to be awake. You don't have to be on social media. You don't have to be awake. You don't have to be on social media. You don't have to be creating more videos for it. You can just let it sit there and bring in more traffic after you've established a great blog content and, like I alluded to a little bit earlier, it builds trust and authority with your audience. It really shows that you are on top of your subject. You are pouring in to the community by providing helpful blogging content, and so we wanna look at what makes blog-worthy reading content for this year and beyond.

Carrie Saunders: 4:14

So what really makes a blog post still worth reading and giving you value in your business? So, first off, we want blogs that start with a clear, relevant title, and that title should be based upon what your ideal customer is searching for. So the title is the most important place to put your keywords for that blog article, and each blog article should focus on one keyword or keyword phrase. Many times we don't ever optimize for one particular specific word. It's usually a phrase, so it's like three or four or five words at a time. So that title needs to be something that your customers are searching, and one easy way to find this out is to by using Google itself and start typing the title that you're thinking of and see what the suggested searches are that come down as you're starting to type. That's a good way to see what is actually being searched out there.

Carrie Saunders: 5:13

And then on our blog we want to use scannable content. We want to have headings, we want to have bullet points, we want to have shorter paragraphs, we want to mix it up with some imagery, we want some media on there, some visual elements to help guide the consumer to continue to read through your blog post. And then these other structured elements like the headings, the bullet points and short paragraphs also help with skim it, and then it helps search engines realize which parts of the blog post are the most important to really utilize for search engine optimization. So you want to repeat, but not necessarily verbatim, that title that you have in your blog post, so you know maybe subphrases of it or a rewording of the phrase. That helps make the search engine optimization keywords that you came up with a bit more powerful and it shows Google and other major search engines that these are the main words for this page. These are the main ideas and topics and then we want to make sure we're being helpful, very valuable and easy to understand. So when we're writing our blog post, don't feel like you have to be an English major here.

Carrie Saunders: 6:26

People tend to read things that are seventh grade level or below. Many experts argue you need to be writing no higher than seventh grade, even more like a fourth, fifth or sixth grade type of reading level. That makes it easy for our brains in these busy days to really just absorb and read and understand and get the gist of it and it builds the trust better because they don't feel basically stupid, because they don't understand what you're trying to say If you're using big words and lots of jargon and using complex sentence structures. You want to have really simple sentence structures. It's just easier for the brain to read.

Carrie Saunders: 7:03

It's like we want to have it like it's a conversation, not a formal letter to our English teacher, and we want to make sure we're using natural keywords. And natural keywords is like I was alluding to earlier, where we have that keyword phrase and then we repeat it, but we don't repeat it always in the same order. You want to have it sprinkled throughout the blog post in the order that you feel like they're going to search based on, but then also mix it up, have some loose keywords in a different type of order or a different sentence, or only two or three of the keywords say it's a five keyword phrase, maybe use just two or three in a sentence and then use a few of the other ones in another sentence. So just sprinkling it throughout can really help one make it readable, because nobody wants to read the same phrase over and over and over again, and two major search engines tend to penalize on that. It's basically called keyword stuffing. And then we want to add a call to action that leads them further down the buyer journey for you. So make sure you always have a really relevant and effective call to action per blog post. This can drive a lot of leads. This can drive a lot of buying power that way. Now, if you want to get started on blogging now and this is, you know, giving you the impetus to get started Some of the easy blogging ideas that can drive traffic is start by just answering some common customer questions Brainstorm.

Carrie Saunders: 8:39

Write down all the ideas you can think of of the common customer questions you get or the common questions in your field of expertise, and you can also do how-to guides or how-to tutorials. So think about you know what you sell, who you serve and what are some how-to tutorials that you can do around that you can also provide expert insights or opinions, so you can potentially even interview somebody else and have it be part of your blog post. You can also repurpose podcast episodes or videos into blog posts. So if you're already, you know, on the YouTube video wagon, that's great, that's another great search engine. But you can take that content and then turn it into a blog post and you could have repurposed it in that case. You can also repurpose your podcast episodes in a similar way. We actually do that here. You know, my podcast is the core part of the content and then we create a blog post based on it. We then create social media based upon it, and here in the future, we'll be creating like satellite, maybe I would say YouTube videos based upon it, but for now, this podcast goes on YouTube too, so I'm hitting four different areas with one piece of content. It's a great, smart way to do it, because not everybody consumes content in the same way too.

Carrie Saunders: 9:58

Think about the people who out there, who are your potential customers, who are not video watchers. I personally am not a video watcher. If I want to learn how to do something, I typically try to find a blog post about it. Honestly, because I read and skim so fast I don't have the patience or the time to watch a video unless I actually need to visually see what to do. You know, if a blog post is written well, many times I don't need to, so think of a blog post as a different way to reach another set of your audience out there. So it's an easy thing to try to dismiss, but it's really actually very important, and so what I want you to do is I want you to start or restart your blog post with these quick wins to get going. So pick your first three topics based on your customer's FAQ. What are they usually asking? You Write once a month. I've talked about this before that consistency is better than frequency. So if you are not consistent, that makes distrust in your customers. It makes you look not reliable. So even if it's just once a month, that's consistent. Think about it In one year you're going to have 12 blog posts that are going to be out there and living forever to help boost your revenue. Think about the snowball effect that that's going to create.

Carrie Saunders: 11:16

You can also use AI like ChatGPT to help you outline or draft your content. I do that a lot. I have a hard time. I get stuck at drafting content or I get stuck at outlining content. So I will use ChatGPT to help me outline my content, but then I, you know, fill in all the stuff in between, but it's my you know my go-to to help me do that outline. Before I started using ChatGPT to outline my content, I mean it was taking me hours and hours to write a piece of content. Having ChatGPT outline it for me saves me an hour or two of time, because that literally was my biggest struggle in creating content for everybody.

Carrie Saunders: 11:59

And so you can also share your blogs and emails and social channels. Now, I did talk about the social channels already, but emails is definitely a way that you can repost your blogging content too. You can feature some sections of your blog in it and have a call to action to look at your blog to read more. So you're basically wrapping people in this wonderful web of your services and your products by using a core piece of content like blogging and repurposing it in these other manners. It's just a great way to come at your content from all different angles. That meets the person where they are. Some people are not email people either, so you know, having things on social media is good for those people who are email, and then there's some people who aren't social media people. So having your blog linked and summarized in your email is great for the email people. So when we're looking, we want to look at all the different facets of our customers and our touch points to our customers and meeting them where they are, and by repurposing and using a blog post, for example, to do that, that's a great way to minimize your time and your outlay, yet still serving all of your customers and meeting them where they are.

Carrie Saunders: 13:17

So hopefully this has inspired you to either get back into blogging or start up your own blog. So some action items I want you to take away from today is I want you to brainstorm three blog post ideas that your ideal customer would be searching for. And, honestly, I'd also challenge you to go ahead and do a brain dump. First brain dump that just write down all your ideas and then pick your top three. And then I want you to choose one and commit to publishing it this month, and then choose the next one and commit to publishing it the next month, and so on. That way you can start building that habit. Put it on your calendar, make sure it's there and set in stone so that you get this done. Make sure you're adding a clear call to action at the end of your posts and, if you want, you could sprinkle it throughout too, if it makes sense Sometimes it doesn't make sense to do that and throughout too, if it makes sense.

Carrie Saunders: 14:07

Sometimes it doesn't make sense to do that. And then I want you to look at your Google Analytics traffic over the next 30 to 60 days to see what happens when you start regularly putting up these blog posts, especially if you're doing it more frequently. That's even going to help, but again, we don't want to be overwhelmed, we want to be consistent, so pick the timeframe that you can do. If you can do twice a month, great. Once a month, again, is what I generally say is minimal for regular content around here. So hopefully this has helped.

Carrie Saunders: 14:34

You see that blogging is not dead, it's just evolving, it's just changing, it's ever changing and when we do it right, it's one of the most strategic, sustainable ways to grow your visibility online and build a customer trust. And if this episode gave you some new inspiration, let me know and click on that button and send me a text. I can give you a shout out on the next podcast episode, but do note that I can't reply to those. So if you need a response, make sure to catch me on social media too. And if you love this podcast and this episode, be sure to rate it and review it on Apple Podcasts, because it helps spread the word to other business owners like you, so that we can help others as well. And we will see you next week.