You’ve heard it before –
Blogging is great for business! Nothing beats a blog for SEO!
But you’re left with questions…
Why is a blog good for business?
How do I start a blog?
What am I supposed to write about?
Is blogging worth the time?
The short answer is YES! A blog is absolutely worth your time and effort. Read on to learn more about the value a blog can bring to your business.
Prefer a video? Check out the video summary of this blog post:
What is a Blog?
Let’s start with the basics. A blog is a collection of online articles that you share with your customers online.
There are many types of blogs, but you don’t need to worry about learning about them all. As a small business owner, you’ll most likely want to start an informative blog about your industry.
What Should You Write About?
The best topics to write about are those your customers are interested in learning more about.
Consider your industry to be the overall theme of your blog. Each article will get a sub-topic - a more specific topic of interest to your customers.
For example, I provide digital services to help people grow and manage their small businesses. So, the overarching topic of my blog is how small businesses can use digital tools to grow. This post is about the value of blogs, a sub-topic of interest to my readers.
If you aren’t sure what to write about, think back on your conversations with your customers. If you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ve probably answered the same question more than once. What were those questions?
If your customers often ask the same questions, you know your target audience is interested in the answers. And there you have it – the perfect sub-topics, each to feature in one blog post.
Show Me the Data! 5 Benefits of Having a Blog for Your Business
A strong blog can significantly help your business grow online. It’s no secret – there is a reason why there are over 600 million blogs on the internet, with over 2.5 million posts published each year.
While there are many more benefits to growing your blog that we will discuss in our upcoming articles, here are the top five for you to consider when deciding if your business needs a blog.
People (Your Customers) Love Blogs
For starters, people love blogs. They really do.
77% of all people on the internet read blogs (OptInMonster). That is an enormous percentage!
While over 3/4 of internet users read blogs, people don’t usually get on their computer thinking: “I’m going to go read a blog today!” Nope.
Instead, people sign on looking for something else: an answer to a question, a solution to a problem, additional information about a topic, or a business that can provide a service or product that they need. Blogs offer all these things, so people naturally find them when searching online.
In short, people love blogs because a quality blog post will answer their questions, solve their problems, and give them what they are looking for when they open their computers.
Content Marketing is Extremely Effective
Studies show that people prefer content marketing to traditional advertising, especially online, continuing along this same theme.
Blogs are a primary form of content marketing in today’s age.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing materials, such as a blog, to build interest in your brand or product. Check out our free guide to learn more about content marketing for small businesses.
Content Marketing is Effective
According to a 2017 Content Marketing Institute study, more than 92% of marketers considered content a valuable asset worth investment. The sheer number of marketing professionals that invest in content marketing is evidence of its potential to grow your business.
Customers find content marketing more trustworthy than traditional advertising. According to Social Media Today, only 33% of the people who see traditional advertising actually trust what it says.
Millennials and Gen Z are made up of digital natives who have grown up consuming more content than many members of older generations could imagine. As these generations come of age, marketing messages must become more creative and provide more value if they want to stand out in the sea of social media, streaming, and the internet.
As we mentioned earlier, people like blogs because they provide value – the answer to a question or a solution to a problem.
This is the heart of why content marketing is effective. People come to you. Your content provides them value. Therefore, they are more likely to become your next customer.
Your Blog Will Establish You as an Expert in Your Field
A blog is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Small business owners often have enormous expertise because they started from scratch, often taking on multiple roles within their own company and truly doing it all. Your expertise is invaluable to your customers, as it will be the driving force of the value that your business provides to them.
Starting a blog is an effective way to communicate this expertise to your customers. This will build your credibility as a professional and lead to increased trust in your business from your customers.
We’ve already mentioned the value of a blog in providing the answers to a customer’s questions. If a person finds valuable solutions and information on your blog or website, they are more likely to trust you and hire you to get the job done.
In addition to building trust and strong relationships with your potential customers, establishing your expertise will also contribute to your professional growth and image. Other professionals will be more likely to work with you. High-quality employees will be more interested in working for you if your website establishes you as a clear expert in your field.
Blogs Can Drive Personal and Meaningful Conversation
Blogs can bring more personal and meaningful conversations between you and your potential customers.
As people look through your blog, you’ll be able to see which blog posts retain the most interest and which topics your target audience is most interested in. This can help you strike up meaningful conversations with potential customers that can lead to closing more deals.
A blog post is also an excellent tool when helping potential customers make important decisions related to your business.
For example:
Say you own a clothing store and start chatting with a customer about which dress in the window is most appropriate for a summer wedding.
As you help her select a dress, you can casually direct her to your recent blog post, “The Top Three Best Heels for a Summer Wedding.” Naturally, you carry each pair, so she knows that she can purchase them from your store after making her decision.
In this example, the blog helped the customer find the best product for her event and provided a purposeful conversation topic to pursue.
Blogs Bring More People to Your Website
Blogs increase traffic to your website by helping you appear in the search results of Google and other search engines.
Businesses with blogs have 55% more website traffic than those without blogs (Hubspot).
As we mentioned earlier, over half of all internet users read blogs. They usually find them naturally by searching for something online and finding a blog post as a result.
Blogs are a fantastic way to improve your search engine optimization, also known as SEO. A better SEO strategy means that you are more likely to appear in the search results of your target customers. We’ll go into the details of making this happen later in the post.
All of this means that if you produce quality blog posts that provide value to your target customers, you will increase traffic to your website. More people will click on your website to learn something new, find answers to their questions, or find solutions to their problems.
An Example of How Blogs Help Your Business
Consider a typical example:
A person living in Westchester, NY wants to install a swimming pool in their yard but isn’t sure if they should choose a saltwater or freshwater pool. They head to their computer and search for: “saltwater vs. freshwater pools Westchester.”
They click on a search result, which brings them to a blog post titled: “Saltwater vs. Freshwater Pools in Westchester – Which is the Right Choice for You?” They read through the article, deciding along the way that they would prefer to build a saltwater pool in their yard.
Towards the end of the article, a statement prompts: “Have you made your decision? Click here for your free quote.” They click the link without really thinking about it and arrive on a page to fill out their information for a quote on their new pool.
Before you know it, this person searching for information about pools has just hired the company who answered their question to build their new swimming pool. The blog post worked to convert this person into a customer.
There are a few important things to notice about this hypothetical but prevalent example:
The company never reached out to this person directly with an advertisement. The customer came to them.
The customer developed trust in the company because they provided information that helped them solve their problem (deciding which type of pool to buy)
The customer found the article because the pool company specifically designed it to appear in the search results for the term that this person typed into the search bar.
Although only written and posted one time, this article can bring in many more customers who search for the same term. It will continue to drive new customers repeatedly with little to no maintenance or further investment
This example shows the value of blogging for your business.
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website more likely to appear in Google search results or those of other search engines.
The better your SEO, the higher you are in google rankings, and the more likely you will appear on the first page of the search results.
What Factors Impact SEO?
Many factors impact SEO, and it can get tricky, so we won’t go into too much detail here. We'll cover a few of the big ones here so that you can keep them in mind while deciding if you will start your own blog.
Relevant Keywords
The most well-known factor that impacts your SEO is the keywords that you use on your website (or your blog posts).
Your keywords are words or phrases your customers search for on Google. The idea is to decide which keyword searches you want to appear under in the search results and optimize for those.
Choosing broad, general terms is tempting, such as “furniture.” However, it is usually best for small businesses to choose longer, more specific keywords related to their services, such as “furniture for white living rooms.”
These longer options, called long-tail keywords, are easier to rank for small businesses. The more general ones are nearly impossible for a small business to rank for because larger companies tend to monopolize them.
In the example above, it would be challenging for a small furniture store to outrank companies like Wayfair or Raymour & Flanigan for the google search “furniture.” Instead, the small furniture store would have much more success optimizing a blog post for the phrase, “furniture for white living rooms.”
While you want to include your keywords, it’s important not to over-include them. Google considers this “keyword stuffing,” which will have the opposite effect and lower your position in the search rankings. Instead, write naturally and use synonyms. You don’t need to always say exactly what the keyword is to optimize your blog.
You can complete keyword research on your own, use an SEO plugin or keyword research tool, or hire a professional to help you choose the right keywords and then optimize for them.
If you’re looking for keyword ideas, take a look at our SEO suggestions for small businesses organized by industry. We update these every month based on what people search for and the likelihood of a small business ranking highly.
Backlinks
Another factor that Google looks at when determining which pages will make the top search results is the “authority” of a page. This loosely translates to how legitimate Google thinks your website is compared to other related sites.
Backlinks are one way that Google decides how much authority your website has. Backlinks are links on other websites that connect back to your page. The more backlinks you have, the higher your authority is, and you are more likely to rank highly on a Google search page.
You can get more backlinks by producing quality content for your blog that other people are interested in sharing or linking to from their own websites. You can also increase your backlinks by writing guest posts or appearing on other people’s websites who will then link back to your own.
Link building is one of the most important aspects of improving your search engine rankings, but it can take time to really see the results in your SEO. Keep working at it and reaching out to your network and eventually, you will see SEO success.
Internal Links
Internal links are links to other pages within your own website.
Although not as significant as backlinks, your internal links will also positively impact your SEO. Google likes to see you linking from one post to another within your own website.
Internal links tell Google that your website is well-organized and easy to follow, making it more likely that Google pulls you up to the first page.
Website Usability
The final factor we will discuss here is website usability, or how often and easily people navigate through your website.
If Google realizes that people rarely spend time on your website, or pages load too slowly, or it is filled with glitchy or unusable content, you will be unlikely to rank highly on the search page.
You want to make sure that your website is clean, fast, and easy to load so that Google knows that you are a legitimate website their users will love.
Another way to make sure that people stay on your site for prolonged periods is to provide quality content that they want to read or watch instead of clicking away.
This section was indeed the tip of a Titanic-destroying-sized iceberg when it comes to SEO. Stay tuned for future posts on the many other factors that impact your SEO, blog SEO tips, and how to best optimize your website for search engines.
How Can a Blog Improve Your SEO?
Back to blogs!
Adding a quality blog can significantly improve your SEO by impacting each of the factors we discussed above (and more!).
A blog improves your keyword usage by providing you with a space to create optimized content for a specific keyword. Each of your blog posts should focus on one longer keyword to increase the chance of appearing in the search results for that phrase.
A blog can also generate backlinks, as people link back to your posts, and internal links, as you link within your blog to other pages on your website. A good rule of thumb is to include internal links in each blog post that you write. It’s also a good idea to link to other authoritative websites when you create your posts.
Blogs also provide more pages for Google to scan, or “index,” to learn more about your website. In fact, websites with blogs have 434% more pages reviewed by search engines for each post (Hubspot). This is great for your SEO.
Finally, a blog encourages people to visit and stay on your website by providing them with valuable content. This not only looks great for your SEO, but it also increases the chances of turning each visitor into a customer.
Wrapping It Up
Let’s wrap it up.
Blogs are a valuable part of your website. Blogs bring more people to your website by improving your SEO and providing value to your potential customers. A blog with quality content will establish you as an expert in your field and build trust with your existing and potential new customers.
If you’re ready for your own blog, check out these resources to get started:
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