Digital Marketing 101: 4 Ways to Build Credibility & Authority With Blogs

Many business owners have already been advised time and time again to write blogs for their website. Yes, that can sound like a very time consuming and tedious task. Many even worry that their time and effort would be wasted if hardly anyone actually ends up reading the blogs or wonder how this activity translates into business sales. Writing blogs provides a seamless way to inject valuable and relevant keywords onto your site to benefit its SEO performance and provides a controlled outlet for you to exhibit your expertise in your field of business and position yourself and brand as authorities in the respective industry. This is why they are often called “authority blogs.”

Search engines love content, and for a good reason. The more well-structured content (i.e good formatting, proper headings and HTML tags) you have on your site for search engines to crawl through, the more they believe that your site will provide the most relevant information and best user experience for those looking up a particular topic, therefore pushing your website to a higher position in the search results. This is ultimately what we all strive to do. So let’s explore some ways building a business blog can help your brand establish credibility and authority.

1.“Content is King”

Building authority by means of publishing blogs is not simple and requires a lot of work. When planning out your content, it would be wise to start by figuring out what keywords are important and relevant to the topics that readers would be interested in. The blogs should be educational and relatable and enrich your target audience's lives in one way or another.

Though it isn’t a must, it is recommended that each article is a long-form blog of approximately 1000 words. These numbers may seem daunting, but Hubspot's data shows that 2100-2400 words are actually ideal for SEO. It is also highly recommended that some extra time is taken to research the latest developments and trends in your area of expertise in order to provide a sense of resourcefulness to your audience. You want to provide answers to questions and solutions to problems and ultimately become the go-to source of information whenever the readers need something they trust you can provide.

Showcasing evergreen content is key to keeping the content fresh for the readers so that they don’t feel like the blog is dated. Publishing a series of posts on a particular subject could keep readers engaged and really help to build credibility with the search engines on the specific topic.

2. The Power of Backlinks

With strong online recognition and authority, your business is more likely to gain the trust of potential customers, which in turn leads to more sales. Therefore, you would want to write blogs to establish the three pillars of “A.C.T.”: Authority, Credibility and Trust. Your online credibility can ultimately help open doors to more business opportunities, including potential partnerships.

Similar to that of people trusting online reviews of previous customers, informative blogs written by subject-matter experts that have been approved by others can easily influence a higher likelihood of conversions. This is why when search engines find one site linking back to another, they consider this as a vote of confidence. Though not every link is weighted the same, this link building process plays an important role in search engine ranking, and that’s why well-written articles that are good for backlinking should always be kept in mind when writing blogs for your business.

3. Back Your Words Up

Now, nobody said that becoming a thought leader on a specific topic is going to be easy. Often, it takes more to convince the audience that your blog is a credible and legitimate source of information. In order to win them over, consider including case studies once in a while. You can use this as an opportunity to guide your prospective customers to make an educated decision on purchasing the products or services of interest and promote what you have to offer at the same time. This will undoubtedly require more work than your typical blog but can also carry more weight as your words will be backed up by research and data, which most people find valuable.

4. Reach a Larger Audience

If you’re spending the time writing these authority blogs, you should do what you can to ensure as many potential customers get to see it as possible. Expand your audience by sharing your work via social media. For example, if your market is geared towards B2B, LinkedIn would be the prime platform for sharing your work. Frequent posting of good quality content gives social media users a solid reason to follow and subscribe to you. If you’re able to establish a loyal following of people who endorse and validate your content and brand, then they’ll be more likely to engage with your posts and easily share your posts with others. These types of social engagements act as forms of social proof that can heavily influence the perception of others in your target audience.

Conclusion

As with most SEO and content marketing strategies, it’s important to set the right expectations and understand that it will take some time before seeing the return on building a business’ blogging strategy. However, patience is a virtue when it comes to an organic marketing play. The more consistent and frequently you blog, the quicker you’ll be able to see results. Once readers start finding value in what you have to say, they won’t hesitate to purchase your products or services. If you believe that you don’t have the right chops to write well-written blogs or just don’t have the time to dedicate to such a tedious task, there’s always the option of giving the task to someone else or hiring a professional content marketing service to do it for you.