Blog Schmog — What’s in it For My Business?
Blogging. You’ve heard the term. You probably even know that a blog is a section on a website that is frequently updated with content relevant to the business.
But why do smart, innovative business owners implement a blog, and is it really worth all the effort?
In short: while generating ideas and content consistently for a blog may seem cumbersome, it is absolutely worth the effort, especially if you’re deploying an organic growth strategy rather than a paid strategy like PPC or digital display advertisements.
Continually adding high quality, relevant and timely content that answers users' questions gives search engines a reason to crawl, index and ultimately rank your page. Additionally, a blog allows you to target an infinite amount of long-tail searches, specific queries and demands for users. This helps build your brand, increase thought leadership in your industry and boost your overall reach.
Useful content helps build trust and reliability in your business — not just to consumers or potential clients, but to Google — which uses an algorithm to calculate trustworthiness (among other ranking factors). Search engine crawlers count the number and quality of links to a page to determine how important it is. The idea is that more important sites are more frequently linked to by other trustworthy sites and pages. Which leads to the next point:
Blogs are considered “link magnets.” Consistently blogging is often the most effective way to earn links. Earn is emphasized: Whatever you do, DO NOT buy links. It’s tempting, but if Google discovers you using this black hat SEO trick to manipulate rank, your page/website could be de-indexed or penalized. That said, without links, it is difficult if not impossible to achieve high rankings in Google. I’ll share some tactics to earn links in another blog, but it’s imperative to understand how important links are and that linking is critical to the success of your website.
The truth is: blogging isn’t for the faint of heart. But as Neil Patel emphasizes, “Every drop of blood, sweat, and tears required to grow a blog is worth it.” Check out his blog linked in this paragraph for more stats, tips and tricks on blogging.
And if you need help, reach out! KE Butterfield has written hundreds of blogs to help innovative business owners just like you.
Karen Butterfield is an award-winning communications professional specializing in B2B and B2C content creation, copywriting, as well as internal and external correspondence. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Webster University, St. Louis, in 2010 and then served in progressive roles at a community newspaper and publishing company. During her tenure as a reporter and editor, she earned more than a dozen state awards for writing and photography.