Blogs are probably the most important content pieces of any marketing strategy. DemandMetric claims that companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads per month than companies that don’t blog. And specifically for cybersecurity companies, blogs are an excellent way to position your product or service in front of the right audience and generate sales!
For example, Semrush reports that Amazon got 546.3 million visits from Google users in the U.S. in November 2023, which would have cost them $336.9 million to get that much traffic via Google Ads!
Here’s the main takeaway: aside from losing revenue, if your blog does not rank on Google, then literally NO ONE will read your content and your efforts will have gone to waste!
In this blog, we will skip the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We assume that you already know the basics:
- Using SEO tools like Semrush or Ahrefs.
- Finding a list of relevant keywords.
- Analyzing what your competitors are doing.
- Writing content that is at least 1,000 words long.
Instead, we will dive into specific mistakes to avoid, along with expert tips to take your cybersecurity blogs to the next level.
What are some best tips to consider when writing cybersecurity blogs?
1) Include the main keyword in your title
Google takes into account the words present in your URL to connect users with your content, making it crucial to include pertinent words in your title since they will be part of your URL. This is because content management platforms automatically assign the title of your blog to your URL. Meaning, if the title of your blog is “Why data retention matters”, your URL will be:
url/why-data-retention-matters
When users look for “why data retention matters,” having a link that matches the intent will result in much higher traffic to your website.
That’s why you should ALWAYS INCLUDE THE MAIN KEYWORD IN YOUR TITLE.
If you don’t know what a primary keyword is, it simply means the main word that best describes your content and for which you want to be ranked.
Let’s see an example:
Imagine you are a data security company and your niche is data retention. If we do a quick search on an SEO tool, we’ll find that it is much harder to rank for the word data security than it is to rank for data retention.
In this case, data retention has a much lower keyword difficulty, so your blog is more likely to rank higher with less effort.
If you want to rank for a main keyword like data retention, make sure you include it in your title and your URL.
2) Avoid categorizing/labeling blogs when publishing them
Some Content Management Systems (CMS), like WordPress or GoDaddy, allow you to add categories to your blogs so users can search different categories on your website. Although this may seem like a good idea… AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS.
This is because (most of the time) Google can’t index pages with labels correctly because tags confuse the algorithm. If you include tags, your URLs will (likely) NOT be listed on Google. Again, avoid at all costs.
3) Do not use monotonous blocks of text.
Google measures everything about your content, including the time users spend reading it (dwell time). If they spend several minutes reading your content instead of just a few seconds, it means they are interested (in the eyes of Google’s algorithm).
Thus, we suggest varying the length of the sentences and paragraphs. Try combining short and long sentences and short and long paragraphs. You should make your cybersecurity blogs EASY TO READ. By doing so, Google will promote your content even further and label your blogs as content that creates high user engagement.
4) Create authentic, organic content.
If you want to do SEO you really need to just re-engineer how Google’s algorithm works. The truth is, Google just wants you to create helpful, reliable, people-first content.
When we refer to “authentic” and “organic” content, we simply mean it must provide something new that is not duplicated or generated with ChatGPT. It should include a little more valuable information than the rest of the articles that already exist. It just takes a bit of effort, but everything worth doing does.
5) Incorporate both external and internal links
This tip is simple. For some of the keywords you want to rank, make sure you include both external links (from authoritative sources) and internal links (to previous blogs you’ve written about the topics or other sections on your website). This will increase your domain authority, and also help Google understand what content is relevant to yours and what category it belongs to without the need for a website label.
For instance, we could link cybersecurity blogs to statistics about Cybersecurity in the age of AI (external link) as well as how to spot a good cybersecurity writing agency to work with (internal link).
6) Properly address search intent
Our tip is to always focus on resolving possible doubts and needs that a reader may have. If you match search intent, Google will reward your blog by driving more traffic and improving your SEO positioning.
For example, if you write blogs about cloud security, you should first imagine yourself in your readers’ shoes.
What would a company look for in a cloud security vendor?
The best way you can clear this doubt is by going on your SEO tools and searching for the top questions that users typically look for on Google related to that keyword (in this case, cloud security).
