Should You Have a Blog on Your Website?

There is clear evidence that more businesses are investing in website development with attention to layout, color schemes, navigation, and content. That’s important because your website houses the information you want your target audience to know about your business. However, if your website contains nothing but static content, then it’s really nothing more than an electronic brochure, which will attract very few visitors. That’s why you need a blog.

If You Build It (a Blog), They Will Come

Today, an increasing number of businesses point to blogging as their most important inbound marketing initiative. Many have experienced greater engagement with their prospects and clients and higher visibility among their target market.

There are two key elements in blogging that are responsible for this phenomenon: search engines and social media engagement.

Search Engines will find you

The search engines look for sites that frequently publish new content. When new content is posted, the search engines release their bots to crawl through your website. They’re especially attracted to high quality content that’s optimized for search engines (SEO-friendly). If they keep coming back, your rankings in the search engines will rise.

Blogs are social media mechanisms

If your blog is equipped with a social media publisher, it will automatically publish your posts on your social media sites, which creates opportunities for sharing among your social networks. That increases traffic to your blog and website, pushing it higher in the search engine rankings.

Other tips to ensure high traffic to your blog:

1. Use images, graphs and charts to help convey your message and improve readability.
2. Optimize your blog title and content. Using some basic Search Engine Optimization techniques will greatly improve your blog’s visibility.
3. Make sure your message is targeted. Know your audience. If you are writing about what they want to know about, they will find you.
4. Update your blog frequently. The more updates, the more often the search engines will find and rank you. We recommend publishing a new blog post at least monthly.
5. Have your blog updates posted to your social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
6. Use a content management program to track visitors to your blog and their activities so you can determine which types of content are attracting more traffic.

If you don’t have the skills or inclination to write fresh and compelling content three or four times a month, partner with a freelance writer with knowledge or experience in your field. On freelance sites like Upwork.com you can find qualified business writers to write content in your voice for $50 to $100 per blog post. The results will be well worth the investment.

 

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