Blogs aren’t just a trend – they are a critical part you’re your marketing strategy. Business blogs not only drive traffic to your website, but they build trust with potential customers. Today we’ll talk about why every business website needs a blog and how to create business blogs that search engines love. Welcome to Marketing and a Mic. We’re here to give you various digital marketing tips, trends, and helpful guides to help your business get results. Why is blogging so important? Think about this: With every blog you create, you increase your visibility in organic searches, establish credibility as a trusted source, and build your website’s authority over time. So, let’s dive into how a blog can help bring you more business.
#1 IT IMPROVES YOUR SEO
Improving SEO is perhaps the most crucial reason your business website needs blogs. SEO is the process of setting up your website to attract more customers based on their online searches. Blogging is an organic way to boost your SEO and get your website discovered. So how do you do that? Well, you need to think like a search engine. Search engines, such as Google, crawl your website, looking for content that will help them determine your website’s credibility and relevance to people’s online searches. Ongoing blogs keep your website current. Search engines do not send searchers to outdated or no longer relevant sites. When you update your website with new content using specific SEO factors, your company’s website will gradually rise through the ranks on SERP (the results page people see when they enter something into the search bar).
Here are some of the leading SEO factors Google looks for in blog content:
Use Relevant Keywords
It’s essential to anticipate the keywords that your audience is searching for and include those keyword phrases in your blog content. This will allow you to use specific keywords related to your product or service, which will help increase your search engine results. Keep it natural.
Organized Content and Page Layout
Readability is a critical search factor. Articles that are easier to read provide a good user experience and thus get the user to stay on the page longer.
Keyword-Infused Metadata Title & Description Tags
This is a short description of your article for search engines and crawlers. This is also the brief snippet users read in the search results, so make sure it’s catchy.
Pages with Captivating Visuals: Images and Videos
Adding visuals makes your blog posts more engaging. Make sure you optimize your images for SEO.
Backlinks
Backlinks or external links are links from one website to another website. Search engines view backlinks as an indicator of quality content with support from other websites. TIP: Make sure you are linking to quality websites
Internal links
With internal linking, you send readers to other relevant posts. Making internal linking a habit keeps your on-page SEO strong, and your older articles continue to get new links.
Use Categories to Organize Your Content
Categories work like a table of contents to help divide up significant topics. It makes it a lot easier for search engines to index your content.
Strong Blog Post Title
The title of your blog is essential for search ranking. A good blog title encourages clicks and makes your article more relevant in the search query. You also want to try and use as many different titles as possible while incorporating your keywords.
#2 IT DRIVES TRAFFIC
A blog that directly addresses someone’s specific question about a particular product or service gives them the information they need to decide to make a purchase. So, an audience-focused blog topic with a strategic Calls-to-Action is a great way to point the people with the most interest in your product or service directly to the place they can make their purchase. To get the right web traffic — the kind that will be more likely to purchase your product or services — you’ve got to write about the topics that interest your target audience. This is the quickest way blogs transform online traffic into solid leads. And once your insightful blog post brings someone into the sales funnel, your sales team can approach them confidently, knowing they already have at least a vague understanding and interest in your company, product, or service.
But let’s say a business blog doesn’t convince someone to send you their contact information or make a purchase immediately. Does the blog still have lead-generating value beyond that? If not, you need to add it. To help create a traffic-leading blog, consider adding the following:
A specific CTA (Call to Action): Are you asking your audience to act? Please make sure all your blogs end with a request or a hook for them to seek out more information.
Share Button: Include a share button in the footer of your blog to encourage readers to share posts on their sites.
Other Links: Include links to other relevant or related blogs the reader can click on to get more information.
Promote it: Post your blog on social media and include it in an email campaign or newsletter to help maximize audience views.
High-quality blogs bring traffic. They also get repeat visitors who are more likely to become customers or subscribers.
#3 IT Builds Value and Brand Authority
Well-written, audience-focused blog posts are an excellent way to share your knowledge and provide value to your customers. Customers want to turn to brands that they feel ‘know their stuff’ and genuinely want to help their customers. Here are all the ways blogs provide value to customers:
Provides Solutions: They’ll be thankful to find information that helps them in some way— whether it answers a question, solves a problem, or feeds an interest.
Build Your Credibility and Expertise: They’ll start to see you as a subject matter expert. This confidence will only build over time as they read more posts and become more familiar with your company.
Value Your Business: They’ll begin to understand your company’s value & usefulness.
Become a customer: The more top of mind you become, the more likely, they will think of you when they need your product or services down the road.
After posting regularly, well-written, helpful blog content for several months, you’ll see a gradual but steady increase in your website SEO and traffic and hints of greater customer loyalty. This is because Google has always emphasized quality content that provides value and helpful insight to the end-user.
#4 IT BUILDS CUSTOMER TRUST
As a business owner, you want to get your name out there and prove to potential customers that you are trustworthy and knowledgeable in your field. Blogging can help you accomplish that. KLT (Know, Like, Trust). As readers and search engines discover that content, you’ll begin to be recognized as a reliable source of information, which helps you rank higher.
When a business understands our pain points and helps solve them, we trust that this business is putting our needs front and center. If your business blogs start delivering quality content, answers to common questions, and valuable insights, we begin to trust them as a resource more and more. If someone found your blog helpful or interesting, they’re far more likely to remember your company as an industry authority and a resource they can trust. It plays into the long-term process of using a variety of marketing “touches” to lure in potential leads and earn customer credibility gradually. People love to buy products and services from businesses they can relate to, and Google places considerable importance on trust when ranking websites.
Wrap Up
That’s it for us today. If you need any help creating business blogs or other ways to improve your SEO strategy and get more customers, our team would love to talk to you. Don’t forget that our podcast also goes live on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and you can catch the replay on Instagram. You can also subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more resources to help your digital marketing plan.