Why Your Business Needs A Blog
The modern Blog has run its course…..or has it?
Blogs Are Cliche
The term Blogging has been overused, abused, and made into a cliche at this point. It has become a universal term to signify someone trying to be trendy and whenever people start writing or talking about Blogging, tons of trendy marketing terms get thrown around very quickly. In some ways, Blogging has just become another “get rich quick” scheme. Another venue for the Saturday morning informational pitching you some crazy “business opportunity” or “work from home pitch”….are you old enough to remember those? The modern Blog has run its course…..or has it?
There Is A Reason For The Blog
The fact that you are reading this on my Blog may make you do a double take and wonder what I am getting at. Just like every good idea around, someone has tried to cut corners, take advantage, or outright beat the system. Blogging is no different. If you look closely at most blogs, there is an obvious and sometimes not so obvious sales pitch buit in there. Links to affiliate sites so the author can make money doing a thin and shallow product review. A sidebar full of Home & Garden ads, or worse yet, that sweater you looked at two days ago won’t leave you alone, appearing on every website you visit. You know the one, we have re-targeting ads to thank for that. (What is my pitch you are asking? It’s at the bottom, I promise.)
I could go on about the thin and useless content that fills numerous Blogs on the internet. Blogs full of hidden agendas, black hat SEO schemes, and scams that never seem to go out of style…..have you ever clicked on the wrong “DOWNLOAD” button? I think we all have at least once. The thing about Blogs that we sometimes lose sight of is they are incredibly useful. When leveraged correctly and done in a professional way, Blogs can generate traffic and connect with customers. It is these reasons every business needs a Blog!
A Blog is just a webpage, but it’s an extremely useful webpage. I am not talking about a “pretty” layout with great fonts, masonry picture galleries, and magical photos. I mean the simple layout of a chronological listing of categorized information. Before some of you start commenting on my use of technical terms, I am just over simplifying the explanation for now. A consistlently updated Blog is one proven method to help with the indexing and ranking of your website. Here is a helpful article on grasping the idea of recent and fresh content; Moz Blog . Now, lets look at how the Blog relates to your website.
A Blog section of your website is the perfect place to get info on your site that doesn’t need its own separate page. A great spot to put information that won’t fit in the natural structure of your site navigation, or information that is not part of your online sales funnel or landing page direction. (Forgive the trendy marketing lingo). A Blog on your website today takes the place of a Press Release page, an announcement page, or any number of old school print marketing that was getting duct taped onto the internet. Your Blog gives you the ability to publish content in a magazine or newspaper format, get important information out to customers, a section to complement your social media accounts, but most of all, it makes your site personalized and have a voice.
A Blog Is A Tool
The Blog is the modern variation of a trade publication or magazine. Some sites still have not figured out how to effectively integrate Blogging in their marketing or digital home. Some business owners are at a loss as to what they should be blogging about, and some are just intimidated to put “pen to paper” and write their thoughts. Many may not have written a 1,000 word anything since College or High School. (What, you need a thousand words? That is for another post.) A blog is also the perfect spot on your website to put information that doesn’t fit neatly on your other pages. It also saves you a ton of work and site management by not having to add additional pages and making sure they are in your navigation structure. Despite the recent abuse…….a Blog is awesome!
Your Blog Is Part Of The SEO Foundation
I am not going to start listing 100 Hundred Business Blogging Ideas, but I do want to point out the general direction and some main reasons you need to Blog for you business. First and foremost is SEO! Blogging has a huge impact on your website traffic, search engine optimization, and page ranking. It gives you the opportunity to put quality, recent, and relevant content in a usable way on the internet. That my friend, is the golden ticket. You want to hand info over to the search engines on a silver platter so they can make it easy for people to find your site, business, or service.
A key point to remember is that Google and Bing are all about collecting information and being able to show you the exact search results that you are looking for. Forget for a minute they are a business themselves trying to make money. They exist for one reason, to organize and serve up relevant info to you! They take the info we create and read every word on the internet so when you are looking for something, they know right where to send you. It’s like the card catalog of years ago. A systematic way to organize and retrieve all the information in the world.
I mentioned it above, a Blog is typically laid out in a chronological order by publishing date. This fact alone has deep SEO impacts. Nobody knows all the factors that Google & Bing use for ranking and search results, but we do know one of them; recency! The search engines know when a post or page was created and a Blog with dates takes it one step further. Having dated material is a signal for the search engines to know that the information contained on the page and website is relevant. Other SEO is vastly important also and there are other strategies such as “evergreen” content, etc. I am talking today about leveraging the recent post in your favor because of dates.
I should ask, you do have a website, right? If not, go here and read why today every business needs a website…..where are you going to put your blog?
Blogging Sends Important SEO Signals
Wait, what happens when the content get old you ask? The dates work again in your favor. A website with quality information overtime develops a more authoritative ranking because of the depth and scope of content, links, and information. This established content sends good SEO signals to the search engines and again helps to generate traffic in search results. Ultimately, this is the point of all web-based business or websites that use traffic to convert into customers, to have your website show up near the top!
The cost of entry is cheap, the results can be amazing, and you can start today.
How does this apply to you? No matter what size company your website is representing, how many employees you have (if any), or what line of work you are in, you need people to find you online. SEO has many factors, some easy to master, some take more work, but Blogging is low hanging fruit when it comes to site optimization. The cost of entry is cheap, the results can be amazing, and you can start today.
Why does your business need a Blog? Because it drives traffic and increases your page rankings! As promised, why did I write this post? Because if you don’t have the time, skill, or knowledge to write a Blog for your website, I will. It’s what I do, so shoot me an email.
Why does your business need a Blog? Because it drives traffic and increases your page rankings!
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