We know you’ve heard of blogging, but how much do you truly know about the value blogs provide to businesses? “Sure,” you might think, “they’re informative articles on a website. But how do they provide real returns for the effort it takes to produce them?” In this post, we’ll discuss why blogs are a critical factor in effective digital marketing and why your website can benefit from including one. Read on to learn more!
What are blogs?
Blogs (short for weblogs) are webpages that commonly feature information geared toward a specific community. Many businesses have incorporated blogs into their websites to showcase their expertise and distribute information their audiences will find relevant.
Typically, blogs are comprised of several posts that are uploaded on a regular schedule. For instance, the blog you’re reading right now is part of our Baer Necessities Blog that we’ve updated every Thursday for 14 straight years! These posts are usually brief, between 500 and 800 words in length, and can feature screenshots or attractive graphics to help illustrate the points being made.
Why are blogs useful?
Blogs have been around since the advent of the internet. But they’re still being used today, and for good reason. Blogs, when tied to a website, significantly boost search engine optimization (SEO). In short, when someone searches for your industry or similar products through a search engine, like Google or Bing, your SEO score is what determines how high your site will rank on the list of results. Since customers overwhelmingly use only the first three results, it’s critically important you rank as high on the list as possible.
The posts featured on blogs will frequently use keywords that are relevant to your product or business, which can help your website’s SEO. In addition to the technical advantage they provide, visitors to your site will expect to find engaging and interesting content. Blogs are a perfect way to provide the exciting content your audience is interested in, all while giving your site a technical advantage over your competitors’.
How do I start a blog, or start blogging again?
Maybe you’ve never thought about blogging before, or perhaps it’s just been a very long time since your last post. The good news is that it’s really easy to get a blog up and running, and there’s no time like the present to start taking advantage!
The first important step is creating a page on your website for your blog. Many sites, like ours, have a specific tab in their site’s navigation menu (ours is listed as “Free Knowledge”), and this is commonly thought of as the best way to present your blog. It’s easy to access and it’s linked directly to your site, so you can leverage it for your SEO results. This can be accomplished by adding a tab to your site through whoever programmed your website.
After the location of your blog is established, you can pick a topic for your first post. Try to make this topic as relevant as possible. Ask yourself: when someone searches for our product, service, or industry, what information will they be searching for? Once you’ve picked your topic, all that’s left to do is to write, edit, and upload your content to your site!
Now all of that can certainly feel intimidating, especially when it comes to modifying the code behind your website. In addition, it can be difficult to find time to devote to writing quality content on a consistent schedule.
Baer Performance Marketing has been helping businesses overcome these challenges for years! Whether you just need the initial technical help to set up your blog, or you need content written consistently to boost your site’s performance, the pros at BPM can help. Reach out to us today for a FREE initial consultation, and let us get on the same page with your blogging and marketing goals.
