Why Blogging Is One of the Best Things You Can Do for Your Website’s SEO
In 2009, I launched Anne Louise Magazine. I had a vision for it, I was excited about it, and I threw myself into building it – but if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t really understand what I was sitting on.
When I started adding articles to the site, something started to happen. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly. My website began showing up in Google searches I hadn’t planned for. Traffic crept up. People arrived at pages I’d written months earlier, having found them completely organically. Over time, the site’s SEO grew in a way I hadn’t engineered – it had simply happened, as a natural result of consistently publishing content that people were searching for.
I didn’t see the power of it at the time. I was just writing. Topics I cared about, things I’d learned, conversations I kept having with women in business. It wasn’t until I looked back – at the traffic data, at where my audience was actually coming from – that I understood what blogging had quietly been doing for Anne Louise Magazine all along.
And once I understood it, I wished someone had explained it to me properly from the start. Not in a technical, jargon-heavy way – but in a this is what’s actually going on and why it matters for your business way.
So that’s what I want to do here.
Google Can Only Send People to Pages That Exist
This sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but it’s the thing that changed everything for me.
Your homepage is one page. Your about page is one page. Your services or shop page is one page. If that’s all your website has, that’s all Google has to work with. Three or four chances for someone to find you – and only if they search for something that matches those specific pages.
Every blog post you publish is a new page. A new door into your website. A new opportunity for Google to say oh, this page answers exactly what this person is looking for and send them your way.
Someone searching “how do I price my services as a freelancer” isn’t going to find your homepage. But they might find your blog post on that exact topic. And if they do, they’ve just discovered you – someone they’d never have found otherwise.
That’s the quiet power of blogging. You’re not just creating content. You’re building more ways for the right people to find you, every single time you publish.
It Builds Something Social Media Simply Cannot
Here’s what social media gives you: reach, in the moment. A great post on Threads or Instagram can bring your content in front of hundreds or thousands of people in a day. But within 48 hours? It’s gone. Buried under everything that came after it.
A blog post doesn’t work like that.
A blog post I wrote years ago still brings people to my website today. Not because I’m doing anything to maintain it. Because it answered a question someone had, Google remembered that, and it keeps sending people there.
Social media is a tap you have to keep turning. A blog is more like a well – once it’s there, it keeps giving.
I’m not saying abandon social media. I’m saying don’t let it be the only thing. Because if the algorithm changes (and it will), if your account gets restricted (and it might), if you burn out on the constant output (completely understandable) – your blog is still there, still working, still sending people to your website while you sleep.
Keywords Without the Cringe
I know “keywords” sounds like something that belongs in a very boring marketing textbook, but bear with me – this part is actually interesting.
When you write a blog post that genuinely answers a question your audience has, you naturally use the words they’d use to search for it. You’re not stuffing phrases awkwardly into your writing – you’re just being helpful in the way you’d naturally be helpful.
Think about it from your own perspective. When you don’t know something, you type a question into Google. You’re not the only one typing that question. Thousands of people are typing versions of the same thing, every single day.
If your blog post is the one that answers it? They find you.
That’s keywords. Not complicated, not cringe – just writing about things your audience is already wondering about, in the language they’d actually use.
Google Pays Attention to How Active Your Website Is
Websites that are updated regularly get crawled by Google more frequently. That means when you publish something new, Google is more likely to find it quickly – and more likely to take your site seriously as a source of useful, current information.
A website that hasn’t changed in two years sends a signal – even unintentionally – that it might not be particularly active or relevant. A website that publishes regularly sends the opposite signal.
You don’t need to post every day. You don’t need to post every week, if that’s not realistic right now. Even one thoughtful, genuinely useful blog post a month will do more for your website’s visibility over time than three months of nothing followed by a panicked content binge.
Consistency beats volume, every single time.
It Gives People a Reason to Stay (and Come Back)
There’s something else blogging does that tends to get overlooked in the SEO conversation: it builds trust.
When someone arrives at your website and finds a library of useful, honest, well-written content, something shifts. You’re no longer just someone trying to sell them something. You’re someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about. Someone who gives before they ask. Someone worth paying attention to.
That trust is what turns a first-time visitor into a subscriber, a follower, or a customer. It’s what makes someone come back to your website rather than just having found you once by accident.
Blog content is also wonderful for your email list – it gives you something genuinely useful to share with your subscribers rather than just promotional content. It feeds your social media without draining your creativity. And it gives collaborators, journalists, and podcast hosts a way to understand your area of expertise before they reach out.
One piece of content, many uses. That’s the kind of sustainable approach that actually works long-term.
You Don’t Have to Be a “Writer” to Do This
I want to address this one directly, because I hear it a lot: I’m not a good enough writer to have a blog.
You don’t need to be a good writer. You need to be a clear one.
Write the way you’d explain something to a friend over coffee. Use short sentences. Don’t try to sound impressive. Just be genuinely helpful and honest and yourself.
The blogs that build real audiences – the ones that actually get found and shared and returned to – are rarely the ones with the most polished prose. They’re the ones that feel like a real person wrote them. The ones where you can almost hear the voice behind the words.
You have expertise. You have experience. You have things to say that someone out there really needs to hear. That’s everything you need to start.
Where to Start If You Haven’t Yet
You don’t need a content strategy before your first post. You don’t need a niche perfectly defined, or a brand style guide, or a content calendar mapped out for the next six months.
You just need to answer one question your audience has. Write it the way you’d explain it to someone you’re trying to help. Give it a clear title. Hit publish.
Then do it again next month.
That’s it. That’s the whole strategy, at least to begin with. Everything else can grow from there.
If you’re part of the FEHQ community and want to share what you’re blogging about or get feedback on ideas, bring it into the community – I’d love to see what you create. And if you haven’t set up Google Search Console yet to track how your blog posts are performing, [read this first →]
Linsey x