5 Reasons why you should have a blog

In today’s fast-paced business world, staying ahead of the competition is more important than ever before. One of the most effective ways to do this is by keeping up with the times and embracing new technologies. The internet has paved the way for businesses around the world to showcase their products and services to a huge amount of people, and having a website is now a must for most businesses.

However, simply having a landing page with some key details about your business is no longer enough to stand out from the crowd and that’s why many businesses turn to blogging as a way to stay ahead of the competition.

Blogging allows you to develop a story and provide your customers with more detailed information about your business, which can help establish a deeper connection with them. It can also benefit the health of your website by improving your search engine ranking, driving more traffic to your site, and establishing your business as a thought leader in your industry.

Of course, for a blog to bring any benefits, you need to create the right sort of content that your customers are interested in. This requires carrying out the right level of research to identify your target audience, choose relevant topics, and optimising your blog posts for search engines. By doing so, you’ll start to reap the rewards of having an effective, high-quality blog that can take your business to the next level. With the right strategy and approach, your blog can help you achieve your business goals and establish your brand as a leader in your industry.

Why Is It So Important For A Business To Have A Blog?

Having a blog is crucial for businesses in today’s digital age. It provides a platform for businesses to showcase their expertise, engage with their customers, and establish their brand as an authority in their industry.

Blogging allows businesses to go beyond the basic information that a website provides and dive deeper into topics that their customers are interested in. By creating valuable, informative content, businesses can attract more traffic to their website, improve their search engine ranking, and ultimately drive more sales. Additionally, blogging allows businesses to connect with their customers on a more personal level, building trust and loyalty over time. Overall, a well-maintained blog can help businesses stay ahead of the competition and achieve their marketing goals.

If you’re not yet sold, read on and see the top 5 reasons why your business should have a blog:

Increased Traffic

A successful online presence requires people to be able to find you. When it comes to people who already know about your business then a small website will be enough because they can search for your exact business name. The other ways that people may find your site include:

• Traffic from an email list
• Traffic from social media
• Paid ads 
• Search engine results

From the options above, being found in search engine results has to be the best way to be discovered. Why? Because it is free. There is no need to pay for traffic. There is no need to buy ads on either Google or social media platforms. Your ideal customers simply type a search term onto Google and suddenly your site is there in the results. You may be wondering how a blog helps with this.

The reality is that when we launch a business, we’ll usually make sure that we get a website created and published as soon as possible. We are usually keen to get up some basic information and also to show why we are the best at what we do. Once the website is up, what do we do next? Generally, the answer is nothing. We just leave it there and rarely, if ever, make any updates. Google doesn’t like this!

We will take a proper look at Google shortly, but in basic terms creating more content gives you a chance to shine. Every time that you blog, you are creating a new page that Google will index. This means that you are given more chances to show up in organic search results. The more fresh content that you produce, the more chances you have. Blogging is an integral component of any SEO strategy. 

Establishing Trust

If a potential customer trusts you as a business, then they’re much more likely to hand cash over to you. A landing page simply doesn’t do enough in this regard.

By posting regular blogs, you have an opportunity to show customers that you’re an authority business within the industry. High-quality customer service is essential to a successful business and a blog allows you to provide a great service by taking the time to post about commonly asked questions, useful information about products, and so on.

A blog isn’t going to see readers growing in trust in an instant. Building trust takes time and each blog post becomes an important foundation. Simple ways that you can aid the growth of trust with your blog include:

Ensure That Your Blog Is Well Designed And Organised 

A chaotic layout where readers can not find their way around will hardly inspire trust. In contrast, a site where you have clearly taken the time to provide a great user experience can add to how your readers feel. When they can see that you care and that you have made your site easy to navigate, they are more likely to begin to trust you. The appearance and layout of your site is often the first impression so it is vital that you get this right. 

Make Sure That Your Keywords Are Relevant 

The keywords that you target are vital to the overall success of your blog. You need to make sure that readers can find your content and the best way to do this is to rank well in Google. If, however, you target keywords that aren’t relevant you will lose the trust of any reader. When they click on a link to read your content, they expect it to be relevant and useful. It is your job to ensure that it is.

Talk About Your Company Values

Your blog is yours. That means that you can talk about pretty much anything that you want to. Yes, you want to create content that is useful to your readers. In fact, you want to be giving them knowledge and insights that they can not find anywhere else. At the same time though, you have the chance to tell readers what your company stands for and what matters. This can go a long way to increasing trust. 

Tell A Story

How often have we been told that people buy from people that they like? Being online you may think that this is a little redundant, but nothing could be further from the truth. By using your blog to tell a story you can allow your readers in and allow them to get to know you. The more they know, the more they’ll trust. Storytelling has many benefits and is a skill worth learning. 

Display HTTPS

If you want your readers to trust you then you need to make sure that they feel secure on your site. One very simple step is to ensure that your web address starts with HTTPS rather than HTTP. This shows readers that you take their safety and security seriously and this can only help where trust is concerned. 

Free Exposure

Businesses around the world spend a ridiculous amount of money to keep their brand at the forefront of peoples’ minds. Writing blog posts costs nothing but time but gives you a chance to repeatedly remind existing and potential new customers about your business and why it’s great.

If you want the exposure that comes from a blog, then you need to make sure that your posts are spot on. Poorly written content that is published for the sake of it is highly unlikely to do your business any favours. You are likely to find that Google will ignore you and should readers somehow find your post, they will walk away with a poor impression of what you have to offer. 

Writing a blog post should always be done with the end reader in mind. It can be tempting to try and write for search engines thinking that this will bring you more exposure. Even if you succeed with this strategy, the success will be short-lived. Readers will have little interest in a post written for an algorithm and so will leave your pages very quickly. Google will see this and your rankings will suffer.

To make the most of any free exposure that your blog can bring, be sure to write quality content that is written with your audience in mind. 

Keeping Google Happy

Having just said that we need to be writing for readers and not Google, it is still important to keep this search engine giant happy and on side. Keeping your business as high as possible in search engine results is no easy task. As the internet continues to grow with seemingly endless amounts of content, it’s a long-term battle to remain relevant. 

You can increase your chances of reaching that top spot by doing things that Google and other search engines love. These days, it’s all about quality over quantity. Professionally written, informative blog posts grab Google’s attention because you’re providing value that makes you worthy of a high ranking. High rankings tend to lead to improved performance.

It is never easy to stay abreast of exactly what Google wants. In fact, exactly how Google works is shrouded in mystery. Even when those working in SEO think they have it cracked, Google comes along and updates its algorithm. 

It is believed that Google considers 200 for more factors when it comes to ranking a site. That being the case you may be wondering why you should bother. The truth is that Google is all about giving the best experience to the end-user and so it only wants to display the most relevant results. Blogs can help here in several ways:

• Google loves to see new content added to a site
• Blog posts allow you to grow your backlinks
• Backlinks can help increase your domain authority
• You can use blogs to link internally to your own site

While your content is all about the user experience, crafting it in the right way means that more readers will find it. Google will only ever reward quality content so as long as you have this you never need to worry about Google updating its algorithm in the future. 

Social Media Superiority

Most of us know that social media is important to business growth these days. However, it’s also true that lots of us don’t know how to truly harness its power. 

Being loud on social media can help to get your name out there but you also want to provide substance to your posts. When you write a blog, you have an opportunity to share it on your social media accounts, and this can lead to more people finding your website, but also provides you with an opportunity to interact with others who are interested in your post. Interactions like this give you a chance to show onlookers that you’re the real deal.

There are companies just like yours that will pay a social media manager. Part of their role will be to create content for your social media posts. When you have a quality blog there is no need for this. You can either provide compelling headlines with a link then leading to your blog posts, or you can edit your blog post to make it more suitable for social media.

However you wish to approach social media, the truth is that having great blog posts means that you have amazing content that is all ready to use. With social media, you can use your content to generate a buzz with likes and shares showing how well received it has been. This social proof boosts your overall credibility and shows you as an expert in your field. 

In truth, any business website without a blog is unlikely to reach its true potential. If you’re already paying for a domain and hosting package, then all it will cost is a bit of your free time to create blog posts. The risk vs reward is heavily weighted to reward and it’s a no-brainer for anyone looking to increase traffic and potential conversions.