Driving good quality traffic to the company website is key for every business nowadays. While many SMEs feel they are battling against the marketing power of major corporations, creating and regularly updating a blog for your business can bring a number of great benefits.
1. Google Loves New Content
Search engines don’t really care for static websites. It’s a problem that many businesses have, particularly if they are supplying services rather than selling online products. You put up your details and there’s not much more to add. Adding a blog means your site is regularly updated and you stay on the radar of all the major search engines with fresh new and engaging content.
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2. Boosting SEO
Optimising your presence on search engines takes a lot of work. Carefully chosen blog posts can boost your site for keywords, outbound and inbound links and other important SEO tactics improves your ranking and drives more traffic to your site. It is especially powerful for making sure your business appears in local searches.
3. Social Media Engagement
Having a regular business blog enables you to engage with social media more intelligently. Rather than pushing products or services you can provide your fans and followers on Twitter or Facebook with the important information and advice they need. Include sharing buttons at the top or bottom of your post and you can greatly improve your reach when visitors like your content.
4. Creating Authority
Writing regular posts around your business sector or industry can set you apart as an expert in your field. People buy or hire services from people they trust. If you can show what your brand is all about, you are better able to convince the world that you are the service to choose above all else. Authority is important online and this is one of the best ways to secure it.
5. Improving Conversions
Providing more in depth information about your products and how to use them can improve conversions on your site. If you offer a service, then giving pertinent advice also makes visitors more likely to engage with you and pick up the phone to find out more.
6. Create Inbound Links
Linking in and out of your website is important for improving your search engine ranking. Google and Co like it quite a lot. If people appreciate your content and find it valuable, they are more likely to link to it, either via social media or from their own blog sites. The more inbound links you have the more likely you are to pick up valuable traffic from these sources but the more likely you are also to rise up the search rankings.
7. Long Tail Keyword Inclusion
Blogs are great for adding in long tail keywords. These are groups of three or four keywords that are highly specific and more likely to appear at the top of searches. The number of visitors coming from this kind of search is likely to be lower but they will generally be highly relevant to your business.
8. Brand Development
Most small businesses struggle to develop their brand online. Having a regular blog helps you to do just that, providing potential customers with a real insight into what your company stands for and why they should choose you.
9. Create a Community
Add comments at the end of your blog and bring in social media engagement and you can create a real community. Ask questions, post blogs that invite discussion, reply to comments and you can start talking to your visitors and build greater trust. It’s also a great way to network with other business owners in your industry and build valuable relationships
10. Build Your Email List
If people like what you have to say on your blog and want to keep up to date with your latest posts, they are more likely to sign up to an email list. When you have that, you have interested potential customers who you can market to via other emails.
