Welcome to the SEO Day podcast studio.
I am Kim White.
I am the official keeper of the mailbag, and I am here with the brilliant findability, Queen herself, Denise Millet.
Denise, thank you for answering questions from across the globe about something that's very intimidating to a lot of us, business owners, and that is SEO.
Hey, Kim.
Thank you so much for being here with me today and helping me along answer all these questions.
Thank you.
I feel very honored to be the keeper of the mailbag.
The first one I pulled today, and I just want to, like, put this out there.
Last episode, Denise, we you answered.
I asked.
You answered a lot of questions about blogging.
I kind of checked through the mail bag and pulled some more out.
I thought it was so interesting for the blogging in particular.
Cat Corchado, again, the founder of Small Space Pilates, she believes that everyone has a right to feel good in their bodies and created a virtual community for women where fitness meets them where they are in a comfortable space at home.
She is very direct in her messaging but she has another question for you today, Denise, and that is how does a blog help with SEO? This is this is really interesting because I do hear this a lot, Kim.
And I what I want people to understand is it supports you.
If you have, say, a website with five pages, you know, homepage services, contact, those are five links that you might have in a search engine because it it's it reads each page and creates an entry in their catalog for each page.
When you do a blog post, they read that as if it's its own page and you get a separate link for each post in the search engine results.
It's a great opportunity to expand the amount of content you have in a search engine and to support your authority and your experience in what you do.
So good that your answers are just always brilliant, Denise.
Thank you.
Cat also ask a follow-up question, which is, does her blog have to be long? Oh, this is a great one.
I love this question because I want to be super honest.
It has to be as long as the idea you're presenting to make it helpful and useful for people that they want to read it.
Where they want to watch it or they want to listen to it.
So counting words doesn't help anybody, and there is no official word count out there.
I don't care what anybody says.
It could be super short if you get to the point and you present something to help somebody and they're satisfied.
Great.
If you've created something that needs pictures or it needs video or it needs a little bit more linking to other things to support it, then that's what it should be.
So your real goal isn't how long it should be how helpful and useful is it? And is this going to be something that is going to help people and they need it? So Great.
Great answer, Denise.
Well, the next question that was pulled out of the mailbag is from Donna Bander.
Is the founder of the Donna Bender Company.
And Denise, if you'll remember, you answered a couple questions for her in the last episode as well, but she has some more blogging kind of questions too.
So the first one is do search engines care if photos are in blog posts? That's a great question too, Kim.
Um, what it really is is Do the photos make sense with the blog post? Are they there to support what you are presenting? Because we all love multimedia.
I mean, I would love to look at things with pictures I like headings.
I like all those things because it makes it easier for my eyes.
It helps give me context.
We process photos in our head, pictures so much faster than words.
So people can get a lot of what you're writing from a photo.
Search engines value multimedia.
They do because it's better than just text.
It shows a different level of effort.
And it's more desirable to their searching customers.
Yes, I believe they do value it more, but I also want people to think about what's their purpose in there.
And if they're giving a photo, they're giving a chance for a reader's brain to make sense of what they're writing them.
So when they actually read it, they are already primed to consume the information.
Mhmm.
Well, Denise, let's head over to a word from our sponsor real quick and we'll be back in just a minute.
So we're back with our questions from Donna Bender, who actually looks like she's the host of the big show and tell.
So she's busy, Denise, and she asked the great question for anyone wanting to blog, which is how often do I need to write a blog post? This this is my opinion.
You need to write a blog post as often as you can consistently do it.
Search engines appreciate consistency.
And they value that you have fresh content.
Fresh content isn't defined as every day or every week or every month.
It's defined by you.
So you're adding freshness to what you have out there by by releasing new things.
And I think if you do that on a regular basis, more consistent basis, whatever it is, that's going to give you better results because they're going to get used to you having updated things and they're going to continually look for updates to your things and you'll be in the flow of the search engine readers.
Thank you.
And she has one last question for the show today, and that is if she has a blog outside of her website, should she include it? And I'll be honest, Denise.
I don't understand this question.
So can you help me understand as the question asked her? Yes.
I think what she's referring to is there are some platforms that people use to write their blogs like, uh, Substack or medium.
Where they actually host their blog there, and they've done that previously before they're doing this business or it's, you know, it started somewhere else.
And so I think what she's asking is does she put those blog posts on her website like you normally would if you're releasing a blog, you would put it on your website.
So there's two different scenarios that I'm going to explain.
If your preview if your platform for your blog like Substack or or me, whatever it might be, if those blog posts are already showing up in search engine results, like individual posts are individual links in search engine results, that means the search engine readers are reading all the posts in that other place.
So your website can have a link that says, hey, take a look at my blog over here.
It's got some great information.
Right? If search engines are not reading that other platform and not creating a separate link for each one of your posts on that other place, then you might want to actually create a page for each of your posts that has the title so it will get read and included as a separate link in the search engine.
Does that make sense to you? It does.
Thank you for explaining.
Okay.
And thank you for answering these questions, Denise.
We're going to close the mailbag for today, and we'll jump back in next week.
But you did a great job again, as always, of making SEO clear to all of us who are learning.
And thank you for being here with me, Kim, and thank you to Cat and Donna for their questions.
I also want people who are who are listening to this podcast, get used to doing SEO work and get started and get solid on their keywords.
Because that's the first step.
I've created a free guide for you to download called, Quickly Find Your Perfect Keywords- The Simple and Easy Guide to Being Findable.
If you head to the show notes, there's a link down there where you can go and just give us your email.
That's the only cost.
And, hopefully, it'll help you get going on your SEO journey.
And Denise said generous, I just want to add the only reason it costs you your email is we have to have a way that she can get it to you.
So there you go.
There you go.
That's great.
So until next time, everybody.
Thanks.
