How Business Blogging Can Help You Grow — Tips from a Web Agency

How many companies have the time to do their own business blogging? It doesn’t matter if you’re a one-person operation, a small company or an international enterprise, starting a business blog can feel overwhelming.

Increasing your online exposure, improving your search results, and even boosting your bottom line are some of the benefits to be gained. Getting there, however, is not easy.

You may be wondering: Are business blogs worth it in the current climate of intense online competition – in virtually every niche? Yes, thousand times yes.

Benefits of a Business Blog

Let’s look at the “whys” of starting a business blog before we get to the “hows”. Business blogging has the following advantages:

Promoting your website’s visibility on search engines

Are there any ways for you to drive more traffic or readership to your site? Using blogs and search engine optimization can help you. It works like this.

Consider your website’s number of pages. It can’t be that much, can it? Consider how often you update these pages. Perhaps not very frequently, isn’t it? In this case, blogging is a great solution.

By publishing a blog post, you create and index a new page on your website, increasing your chances of showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs) and driving organic traffic to your website. Unlike conventional marketing, such as pay-per-click advertisements, blogs are an organic way for your customers to find you. Business blogs also synch up well with social media, allowing you to share your content across multiple platforms to bring your site maximum visibility.

Building trust with customers

Blogging helps businesses strengthen relationships with their existing clients. Visitors who see you as an expert in your field or on a particular topic will return again and again when you post good content regularly, and this can lead to recurring sales without much additional work from you.

Driving long-term results

Business blog posts that answer common reader and customer questions are the best. You will be recognized as a credible authority or leader in the eyes of your target audience if you consistently create valuable content for them.

Wouldn’t it be great if a confused customer received a company blog post that clearly explained things to them? Would a salesperson experience more business growth if their leads happened to discover blog posts that they had written?

The “authority” metric may not be as tangible as landing pages and leads, but it still lets you do pretty cool stuff. It can also be used to calculate sales enablement. Ultimately, that’s what it all comes down to.

Link building through business blogging

When determining a site’s ranking in Google’s search results, the algorithm considers 200 factors, including inbound links or backlinks. Backlinks are also considered key to search engine optimization by many small business owners and experts.

41% of SEOs believe link building to be the most challenging part of search optimization, despite the importance of generating inbound links.

By creating articles that not only enable you to gain links from other related industries but also from your potential customers, you are able to gain more relevant links.

An authoritative website’s link serves as a vote of confidence or recommendation from another website. In addition, it demonstrates to Google that you’re an industry expert and trustworthy. In addition to building your domain authority, backlinks also improve your search engine visibility.

Positioning Yourself As An Expert In Your Industry

We already mentioned it, but let’s be clear. When you publish a blog post for your business, you are sharing your expertise with the world. In addition to actually helping blog readers looking for information, your blog posts help you develop credibility among your target audience.

If you can show new website visitors that you understand their problems, they are more likely to trust you with their business. This makes frequent blogging an essential feature of inbound marketing for b2b websites. Blogging is a viable marketing channel, it works.

Encourage User Interaction And Engagement

Even if you keep in touch with your customers personally, a blog for your business is still a good way to reach out to your entire network at once. Continually publishing content gives your customers and site visitors a reason to return to your site and learn more about your business. Comment sections also provide an excellent portal for communicating with your customers about a variety of topics that are salient to your business.

The 6 Components Of A Perfect Blog:

The advantages of a blogging marketing channel for your business are indisputable, but it’s easier said than done. A good blog must be engaging, informative, easy to read, and, above all, search-engine-optimized.

As a digital marketing agency, we’re always asked by our Clients about the best practices to structure the blog.

Following these steps will give you a blog that drives website traffic, boosts user engagement, and enhances your web presence:

1) Blog Title

While the title isn’t necessarily the first part of the blog that you write, it still has the biggest impact on click-throughs, searchability, and the overall tone of your message. Your title should be informative without being dry, casual without being lazy, and feature keywords in your article.

2) Blog URL

Think of the URL for your blog as the second title. Like the title, your blog’s URL influences clicks, Likes, and shares. A good rule of thumb to abide by is to keep the URL as short as possible, using “vanity domains” or URL shorteners to make it catch the eye.

3) Blog Keywords

When it comes to web content, keywords are your bread and butter. But while it can be tempting to stuff your blog posts with keywords to get search traffic, it’s important to remember that Google’s PageRank algorithm also relies on cross-referencing, links, and website traffic to index searches.

Research different keywords in your field or industry and try to balance your writing with a variety of popular ones. The perfect blog is both machine-readable and human-readable.

4) Blog Content: How Much?

There’s no limit to how much you can blog or how long your blogs should be. Research indicates that anything between 300-500 words gets good treatment by Google. But a fully optimized, ideal blog post? Shoot for the 1000-2000 word range, featuring links, pictures, and an array of keywords.

5) Blog Calls To Action

Once you have attracted visitors to your blog, it’s time to convert them into potential clients. A “call to action” (CTA) can be as simple as a link at the end of your blog that directs readers to your services or contact information. Whatever CTA method you choose, be sure to make it visible and easy for your readers to keep discovering more.

6) Blog SEO Metrics

Last but not least, you want to track the success of your blog and optimize it for search performance. Yoast, an SEO plugin for WordPress, is a complete SEO metrics tool that allows you to perform SEO page analysis and optimize your content easily. It also functions as a helpful checklist (like this one) or general website SEO analysis.

Need Help With Your Blog Content?

Comrade Digital Marketing is a Chicago digital agency that provides comprehensive digital marketing services for our clients. Whether you are looking for web development, web design, Chicago SEO services, or a piece of blogging advice our talented team of digital natives can help you build and implement the tools you need to augment your market share.

Read more about our services here, or contact us for a free consultation.