Everybody wants traffic to their website, but with a seemingly endless list of keywords to go after, deciding which ones you want, need, or can even rank for may feel impossible. That’s where blogs come in, providing you and your company with an opportunity to organize, target, and rank for the search terms your customers are truly looking for.
Blog posts are a powerful asset for any business to generate traffic, convert new users into customers, and build in a long-term and sustainable fashion. But the big question is, what is a blog and how exactly can it help my business?
What Is A Blog?
Blogs are an outlet for individuals, companies, or brands to share information with their audience. Blogs are a collection of written content, usually called blog posts or articles, where each unique piece of content is targeted towards a specific question, topic, or keyword in hopes of resolving an issue the reader is having. Most blogs are kept on the brand’s website and are can serve several different purposes, commonly being linked from either the main menu, footer menu or both.
Blogs can be used to build authority by demonstrating experience in a specific field or topic. You can even use additional strategies to help build your email list and even convert some of your readers into new customers.
How Do Blogs Work?
Blogs are a collection of written content where each post is targeted to a specific question or topic. The goal of most blog posts is to rank highly on search engines, like Google, to drive organic traffic to a website. Those individual posts will rank for different keywords or phrases, driving traffic over time. Slowly changing and shifting where those posts sit in the SERPs (search engine results page).
What Is The Purpose Of A Blog
The primary purpose of a blog is to drive traffic to a website in hopes of converting readers into customers. The more helpful and relevant blog posts you have the better your chances of ranking in Google are, leading to more traffic.
7 Ways Businesses Benefit From Blogs
Blogs have historically provided a wide array of different benefits for companies, from big to small and even national to local. Let’s review the 7 most common ways a business benefits from having a blog.
1) Blogs Drive More Traffic To Your Website
A critical part of growing any business is generating leads, and an evergreen way of getting leads is through building a blog. The reason for that is blogs and blog posts, when organized and optimized correctly, can rank and drive traffic to your website for the exact keywords your business target traffic is searching for. This allows your business an opportunity to convert that traffic into leads.
2) Blog Posts Can Convert Traffic Into Leads
While blog posts aren’t the same as face-to-face conversations or even sales calls they can generate leads for your business. This is possible by adding different calls to action throughout your blog content. Each CTA (call to action) is another opportunity to convert your website’s traffic into leads. Making each indexed post a 24/7 salesman for your business.
3) Blogs Drive Long-term Results For Businesses
The best business blog posts answer common questions your customers have. Gradually, you can increase traffic and turn your company into an authority in your industry. But traffic isn’t the only thing blog posts are good for, helpful blog content establishes a level of trust in your audience’s eyes, making it significantly easier to sell them your products or services. And since that post is on your website instead of social media, it’ll continue to drive traffic to your website for months or even years before needing an update.
4) Blog Content Differentiates You From Your Competition
Successful businesses stand out from their competitors, and an excellent way to differentiate yourself from the crowd of businesses around you is through blog content. Helpful and high-quality blog content takes time and effort to make, showing you care about the questions your customers are asking. It’s easy to stand out when your website ranks highly for the questions people are asking, especially if your competition didn’t bother to cover it.
5) Blog Content Positions You As An Authority
Each new post is another opportunity for your company’s website to increase traffic, generate leads or sales, and establish yourself as an authority. Every indexed post that helps solve people’s problems increases your authority and credibility in Google’s eyes, leading to your website ranking higher for increasingly difficult topics. This will put your blog content in front of more readers helping to position you as an authority in your space. Creating a positive feedback loop will continue to drive traffic, leads, and sales all while increasing brand awareness.
6) Blog Content Can Be Repurposed Into Social Media Posts
With social media becoming a bigger part of people’s lives your business must be posting content in the same places your customers love to spend their time online. Another fantastic way to leverage your company’s blog content is by repurposing them into social media posts. Giving you additional opportunities to generate leads and sales.
7) High-Quality Blog Posts Earn Backlinks
Backlinks are a key factor in Google’s algorithm making them valuable for businesses and marketers alike. The problem with backlinks is they’re time-consuming and often expensive, costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars per link.
But it is possible to passively get backlinks for free if you publish high-quality content, especially if you include original research and statistics that other websites don’t have. Leading more websites to cite you as a source, earning you free backlinks over time.
How To Start Building Your Blog Today
Building a blog for your business doesn’t have to be as complicated as others make it seem. Content-based businesses usually follow a simple process that helps their business scale, while keeping things easy to follow and execute.
Identify Your Blog’s Goals
The first place to start after deciding to build a blog is to figure out what exactly you want that blog to do:
- Are you trying to sell a product?
- Market your services?
- Educate people and eventually pitch them a course?
- Build an email list for an upcoming product launch?
- Build brand awareness by generating organic traffic?
Or are you trying to accomplish multiple of the above possibilities? Having a clear goal from the start saves you valuable time and money in the future by minimizing edits and rewrites. Having a clear goal can also help identify what content your company should prioritize writing and publishing first.
Identify Content Gaps In Your Industry
One of the hardest parts of blogging is building enough trust and authority to rank highly for relevant high-traffic keywords. That’s why many SEO experts recommend focusing on lower-difficulty keywords, improving the odds of your site ranks. A fantastic place to start is by identifying content gaps in your industry. What questions do your customers ask that you don’t see your competitors answering?
Stick To A Regular Publishing Schedule
Posting new blog content regularly makes it easier to track your progress and improves indexing, by telling Google to crawl your site more often. And since SEO takes time to start showing results, you can improve the odds of your site ranking well by publishing quality content regularly.
Keep Old Content Fresh And Relevant
One of the biggest opportunities for improving your website’s overall rankings is by updating old content. Many website owners set and forget their old pages and posts, often leaving them alone for years at a time. Leaving valuable traffic, and potential leads, on the table.
Updating your old content gives you a chance to see what’s working and what’s not working, giving you the option to rank for additional keywords you may not have seen before. Regularly checking your old pages and posts can even lead to you discovering new keyword opportunities that you can target with a new post, helping fill out your content schedule.
We recommend waiting 6 to 12 months after a new post has been published before looking for potential updates. This gives that post a chance to rank for as many things as it can, providing you valuable data even your competitors won’t have and making new opportunities even easier to identify.
Conclusion: Is Your Business Benefiting From A Blog?
Blogs are a truly undervalued resource businesses can leverage for long-term results. Not only do blogs increase your website’s traffic they help you and your company build trust and authority with both your customers and Google alike. Making it easier to rank for more keywords in the future, while also helping solve the problems your customers are facing today. If you believe your business could benefit from building a blog, or don’t think you’re getting the most out of your existing blog content, why not reach out and see what Diffuse Digital Marketing can do for you?