If you are wondering why your website needs a blog then I'll be going over some of the main reasons in this one.
You've probably heard about blogging many times, you may even have one on your website and not use it.
Blogs were very popular before social media became the main way to represent your business, but they are still highly important.
The main reason for that is that blogs belong to you. You own your website, and unlike social media that can't change overnight.
It is worth making an investment in terms of time and money to turn yours into a valuable resource for your clients.
I believe that having a blog is a major benefit for anyone with a small business selling products or services so to start us off, here are three of the benefits of blogging for your business.
1. It drives traffic to your website
When people talk about web traffic, they mean the number of visitors you attract to your site.
In simple terms there are two kinds of traffic, what Google refer to as organic traffic and direct traffic.
What is organic search?
Organic search traffic comes when someone is looking for information and they find your site through keyword search. For example, someone wants to find an ice-cream shop in their local area.
They search 'ice-cream near me', and up pops your website, possibly through a Google map listing, or a Google My Business listing. It is worth considering what your strategy for search on Google will be.
If for example you had a blog on your website that was about ice-cream, maybe serving suggestions, recipes to try at home, then someone may decide to come and buy some ice-cream from you at your shop.
What is direct traffic?
Direct traffic means someone comes straight to your site, perhaps they already know your site address and just type it into Google.
If you focus on producing high value content that is relevant to your audience, then repeat traffic on a direct basis is very likely. People may bookmark your site or simply come to you again by memory.
2. Creating blogs is brilliant for marketing content, you can repurpose everything
Two main reasons that people struggle with their marketing is content overwhelm and lack of time.
People feel like they can't produce one more piece of content to put out on social media or to include in their email marketing, they just don't have the time or the imagination.
To overcome that, I always recommend that people start with an idea for a blog post.
Instead of thinking up 30 different pieces of unrelated content for your month on social media (1 per day) you just need one big idea that you then pull pieces from to create your smaller content.
Blogs don't need to be really long, and one blog can be linked out to lots of pins on Pinterest, which in turn brings you more traffic.
If you really don't want to write then I'd highly recommend considering a good copywriter to help you produce high quality blogs.
Having someone take away the need to research, look up keywords, and structure the whole piece is really and truly worth the investment.
3. Blogging can help with link building
SEO is a really complicated concept to get your head around these days.
I've read that Google uses about 30 different signals to decide whether to rank your site or not.
What these all are remains to be seen, but at least one of them is having a site that is connected well on the internet to other sites.
Linking has two parts to it, links that you make to other sites, and links that other sites make to you.
These Google uses to decide whether you are a reputable, valuable site or not.
If you want to see how your site is doing on this front then I'd recommend having a look for backlink checkers on Google.
Overtime you should see the score that these sites give you starting to increase.
You don't want to get too hooked on checking your scores.
At the end of the day you are a business owner not someone trying to build a career as a blogger (unless you are a blogger as your business.)
Who should I link to?
To give you a starting place, I would recommend linking out to well sourced articles and websites. Make sure you have checked that anything you link to is a quality source.
If you are part of any organisations that relate to your industry, professional bodies or organisations, then linking to them is a good idea.
You could also link to, other businesses in your area if you have a local business, and ask that they link back to you.
How Can I Get Links Back To My Site?
One of the best ways to receive links back to your own site is to guest blog for other people. There are always lots of people who want articles.
You could check on Twitter the hashtag #journorequest where anyone looking for contributors is often found.
You could ask fellow small business owners that are in a similar but non competitive field, if you could write a blog for them.
You could list your site on any number of business directories, these are useful because they are normally themed so you can add your site and have people find you easily, plus the link back is valuable too.
I hope this article has been helpful for you.
Thanks for reading.
Shona
P.S If you would like to receive blogs like this straight to your inbox you can sign up here for my mailing list. I mail once per week on a Friday.
For even more low cost marketing ideas why not buy my book?
If you would like even more low cost marketing ideas I wrote a book. 100 Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners. Check it out here
About Me
Shona Chambers Marketing is a Marketing Consultancy based in SE London.
Specialising in helping Small Business Owners and Freelancers with their Marketing.
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