Nowadays, it isn’t enough to charm your customers on social media. While changes in the way people use social media, like Instagram and TikTok, make these platforms extremely powerful for your business, they are not owned channels.
If Facebook shuts down for the day, you lose access to your audience immediately. If you have hundreds and thousands of followers, you need to give them a place to go.
This is where channels like your website blog and email list come into play.
Writing and maintaining a blog is your way of sending out fresh content to the internet from a channel that you own completely. Google then takes and reads this content (also known as crawling) to identify how valuable your information is and then, help bring in users to your site.
Think about it: most people use Google to ask questions. Whether you’re looking up your moon sign because you overheard someone talking about it on your morning commute or you’re asking Siri how to tie boxing wraps on the way to your first boxing class, search engines house answers.
If your website and blog can provide users with the answers to what they are looking for, then Google, and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo, will reward your website by ranking it higher on the search engine results page (SERP).
Creating and revising content to play into the hands of these search engines is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Having a website blog for your business is one of the many ways you can boost website traffic and grow your business online.
Here are seven SEO benefits of having a blog:
1. Increased visibility in search queries
Search visibility is a measure of how well your keywords rank on search engines. Think of blogging as sending out invites to a party. The more invitations you mail out, the more people will attend.
In the same way, when you create and post several blog posts to your site, Google is logging pages from your domain into its search engine. Not only does this improve organic search visibility, but it brings in more of those fun, party people.
2. Easier to rank for targeted keywords
Having a blog allows you to constantly push out new content in one place without overwhelming your site visitors. In fact, the more content you put out there that prioritizes words relevant to your business, the easier it is to rank for those targeted keywords.
As your site grows with more relevant blog content, it will be easier for you to achieve a higher ranking on keywords that are important to your business. For instance, if you are a brewery specializing in local craft beer, and you create 20 new blogs about breweries and craft beer, Google is going to understand more about your business.
As a result, the search engine will start to give you priority because you’ve already established such a strong foundation of relevant content around those keywords.
3. Increased average time spent on website
Google’s ranking logic really comes down to can you provide a good user experience?
The value you can provide to site visitors plays a significant role in where your website ranks on the SERP.
Search engines want to provide results that will give the user a positive experience and engage them regularly. Blogging allows your business to do exactly this.
If somebody is looking for the answer to a question and your blog answers that question, they may be interested to learn more from you about the topic. This will ultimately increase the average time any given user spends on your website, also known as dwell time.
As they explore the content of your blog – whether that is just one or reading through all that you have on your website – your website engagement metrics will increase.
According to our own SEO team, dwell time is known to be an indirect ranking factor as it signals your page’s value to users.
4. Backlinking and internal linking
As you can see, the biggest benefit of maintaining a blog for your business is that you are publishing page after page of valuable content on the internet. When you do so, you have more opportunities to link content to other internal pages on your website, such as directing customers to your product pages.
You also increase the possibility of external websites linking back to your content, also known as backlinking. Both backlinking and internal linking strengthen your website’s connection to certain keywords and build up the authority of your website, making it of higher value to search engines.
In fact, HubSpot has found that companies that have a blog on their website earn up to 97% more inbound links. By maintaining a blog, you are able to increase your website traffic and strengthen the value of your site, based on the quality of your blog content.
5. Fresh content
Google does not want to deliver outdated information to its users. Someone looking for the answer to a question wants the most up-to-date accurate information. For this reason, Google prioritizes websites that push out relevant, fresh content regularly.
Since most businesses are not going to be updating their home pages regularly, a blog is a much better way to update your website and provide information on a regular cadence.
Moreover, you go back to make edits to older blog posts and update information. For instance, maybe you have some research links from 2008 in an old post. And perhaps some of the sections are no longer relevant because of changes in your industry.
Updating these blog posts and re-publishing them actually tells Google that you’ve posted new information. Therefore, going back every few months, or even every year, to update this information and make it more relevant gives you the opportunity for Google to reindex the blog post.
In other words, having a blog allows you to work smarter, not harder. You can just make content edits to old blog posts, and that alone may bring in new users and customers to your site.
6. Build authority
Every time you publish a blog post, you are sharing valuable information with site visitors. As you continue to blog, you’re establishing yourself as an expert in the field.
Search engines will see that people find your content to be useful. Whether it’s educational content about your industry, entertaining content around trends and products, or inspirational content that pushes users to make a purchase decision with you, you are generating trust through consistency.
7. Indirect benefits
SEO is a great tool to increase traffic brought to your site. However, there are also many indirect benefits to having a website blog for your business. For instance, you can improve marketing efforts by repurposing these blogs across other channels.
You might be able to use an informational blog and turn it into a carousel post on Instagram, a pin on Pinterest, a three-part series on Tik-Tok, and/or even an email course.
By repurposing one piece of content, you allow your content to work for you. Platforms like social media, a podcast, or a strong email list all help you build your brand, and ultimately, build your authority across the Internet.
Some other indirect benefits of having a blog for your business include:
- Build your social media following
- Increase the likelihood that a new lead will see you as trustworthy enough to contact
- Improve your company’s reputation in your industry
- Share images, which offer another opportunity to rank in searches (ex. in Google Images)
- And more
TLDR; Start a blog.
Get started on your business blog with Champ Internet
As you can see, keeping a blog for your business comes with a lot of benefits for your own team and marketing efforts, as well as your audience.
Get started with an SEO-informed blogging content strategy from a team of digital marketing professionals. Contact us today for more information.