Times are tough. More and more business owners are coming to me (and many other SEOs) because all of the sudden their customer base has dwindled down. Suddenly they need to be in front of customers, and the smart ones are looking to SEO for their business.
As I meet new business owners and explain what I do, I’m constantly amazed at the amount of them that have no idea what a blog is, how it works, or how it can help them.
Blogging, by far (in my opinion) is one of the best things you can do for your business. Why? I’m glad you asked.
Blogging Brings New Content to a Stale Website
Most of the business owners I meet have a website, and it’s in what I call “stale” mode. They fell for the old If you Build it, They Will Come routine. Wrong!
So they build a site, and sure enough, nothing much changes. They don’t promote the site, and soon it becomes just another expense that they wish they’d never spent money on. They soon abandon the website, and other than the URL on their business cards, it’s rarely mentioned or visited. It turns stale.
So there’s the thing. Search engines are infatuated with content. They can fall in love with your website if you consistently feed them industry-related articles, thoughts, tips, whatever.
The average spider visits a stale website once every 6 weeks or so. If the spider visits your site, and sees that nothing has changed in the past 6 weeks, they will mark you off as indexed, and will put a note in their memory to come back in six weeks to see what (if anything) has changed.
Six weeks later, nothing’s changed, so they mark you off for another 6 week visit. Meanwhile, you’re getting little or no organic rankings because of it.
If, however, you start blogging, say once a week, suddenly there is new content. The spider visits, sees new stuff, and decides that it will come back in four weeks instead of six. Four weeks later, there is more content, and the spider decides to come back in two weeks.
Soon, your posts are being indexed within 48 hours or less. Your organic rankings increase because the search engines see you as a ‘player’ in your industry.
Blogging Brings Targeted Visitors
Probably one of the immediate advantages of blogging is that it brings you targeted leads. If you are posting ideas, products, or industry-related news, those phrases may just end up ranking for what us SEOs like to call long tail phrases. These long tail phrases are gold. (For more info, read this wikipedia page)
A visitor to your website, which comes from a long tail search query, is usually highly targeted and willing to buy. They are usually looking for just what your blog post addresses, and in their minds you are immediately the subject matter expert on that topic. You’ve highly increased your chances of a sale because of it.
Blogging Separates Your From the Competition
By posting weekly articles, tips or whatever, your audience sees your business as “being run by real people”. This may sound like a silly thing, but in reality humans like to see a non-corporate side of a business. Even if it’s still targeted to the business, simply putting real world anecdotes into a blog post can give your visitor that warm and fuzzy feeling about your brand. You win.
What are You Waiting For?
If your website doesn’t have a blog, you’re missing out on one of the best customer-driving forces available today.
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Get New Creative Blogging Ideas
To help quell the fears of those business owners, I’ve partnered up with the Jefferson County Library to teach a series of free classes (yes, I said free) on Online Marketing, Social Media and more. This series of classes will run January through March, and will be very limited both in amount as well as seating.
