Blogs are incredibly crucial. They are an invaluable SEO and social media tool that will not only boost your positioning in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS), drive huge amounts of traffic to your site and attract new customers – they will also help you to become more personable and approachable, turning business enquiries into sales. Because after all, today’s ‘net-generation’ demands transparency from all the products and services it buys.
If you haven’t yet got a blog, you could potentially be wasting thousands of pounds by having a dull, static website and therefore missing out on a significant amount of potential new business. It might be that you’ve already got a blog but haven’t yet unleashed its full potential. For instance, we’ve come across many firms who blog about their recent holidays, family members or views on a celebrity, things that hold absolutely no relevance to their business! By not understanding the power of blogging, these firms are letting their websites go to waste.
Ideally, you want an integrated blog – built within your current site. Or you can have a separate blog using free services such as Blogger.com or Wordpress. Either way, blogs are an incredibly powerful medium and one that you must add to your site as soon as possible.
Still not convinced? Read on to discover our top six reasons on why having a blog is so important for your business:
Content, Content, Content
As mentioned in our ‘SEO top tips for your website‘ article, fresh and constantly updated content is key to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the Google search engine spiders or crawler bots. More importantly, relevant copy is the magic ingredient to ensuring your site achieves a higher positioning in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). A blog will allow you to add huge amounts of fresh and relevant copy to your existing site, adding content that the search engines will love and can index more frequently. Ideally, you want the latest posts from your blog listed with links on your home page.
Search Engine Solutions
By having a blog, you’re not just relying on your home page and main keywords to draw traffic to your website. You can add lots of blog posts that relate to other search engine queries, like for example ‘How do I find the best deal’ or ‘Where can I find a good shoe shop in Stoke?’. A well-written blog, drafted with search engines in mind, can quadruple the amount of traffic to your site. It’s crucial that you start to view search engines for the way people use them, i.e. they search for answers. By having a blog, you can provide solutions to their questions.
Information is key
When people land on your website, they want information. They’re hungry for it, just like the search engine spiders are. A blog is a flexible mechanism that can provide as much information as you like, whether that’s new products or services, company news or ongoing commentary on news items relevant to your industry. By having a blog, you’re providing all the information your customers need while being able to update your website on a regular basis.
Showing off expertise
Building on the need for transparency, you can use your blog to share your knowledge and expertise. At Boomerang PR agency, we draft blog posts – like this one – to not only help others and drive traffic to our site, but to demonstrate our skills and experience. A blog is a great way to show off your experience and make you an authority figure within your own industry. It might even be followed by journalists who could turn your blog posts into great articles, gaining you fantastic publicity within your local paper or trade magazine.
Two-way Conversation
A blog will allow your customers to leave comments and engage in conversation with you. It will help you to become more interactive and enter the world of honesty and transparency, satisfying today’s ‘net-generation’. It will help you to build solid relationships and become a brand that people will like and trust. It will also form part of your crisis management and online PR strategy, helping you to deal more effectively with any issues or complaints as they occur. After all, honesty is always the best policy.
Bring it Back
The most important element of your social media marketing strategy is your blog. It will become part of your link-building campaign, using other social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, to help drive traffic back to your website. You can also comment on other forums or blogs, sharing your opinions and expertise by providing link-backs to your blog. What’s more, by providing interesting articles on various topics, you will spark people’s interest and have them coming back for more. Don’t forget to add an RSS feed to your blog and ping it to sites such as Ping-o-Matic!.
So there you have it! These are just some of the top reasons why a blog is so important. We’ve come across many firms who already have a blog but aren’t making best use of it. What’s the point in blogging about your recent holiday or views on a celebrity if it holds absolutely no relevance to your business?
