The Benefits of Blogging
What purpose do blogs really serve? A sentiment felt by many. Blogs have been sprouting up all over the internet in various forms since the late 90โs. Amateurs initially used blogs as springboards for expression. Now the benefits of blogging have become a vital part of content marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes.
I hope we can all agree more traffic to your website is a good thing, right? So the million dollar question is, how do you increase traffic to your site. Therein lies the marketing value and benefits of blogging on your website!
Curating blog content that strikes a chord with your audienceโs interests and needs can transform your brand into a source of information for a whole community of potential customers.
Table of Contents
Planting Seeds: Organically Nurture SEO
Like anything worth doing, the benefits of blogging only become apparent through time and effort invested. Just like planting a garden, building a blog into a flourishing hub for commerce and resources doesnโt happen at the drop of a hat. Yet, with a little water and the right soil your garden will slowly start to grow. Farmers use fertilizer to increase a cropโs yield. Well, the โfertilizerโ in this analogy is SEO!
What exactly is SEO you ask? Well, for starters โ it’s one of the biggest benefits of blogging. Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a method and practice used to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement on search engine results pages, or SERP for short. When we say search engine think Google, Bing, Yahoo, and so on.
There are 47 billion web pages indexed on Google creating a bit of a challenge to stand out in a crowd, but not impossible. Keyword targeting is the practice of focusing precisely on producing content containing a vocabulary your target audience is most likely to use when searching online for a service or good your company may offer.
Here is a helpful and brief SEO checklist to walk through before publishing a single blog post.
SEO Checklist for Blog Posts:
Share This Infographic About the Benefits of Blogging On Your Site
Itโs also helpful to know the difference between long tail and short tail keywords.
Short tail keywords can be described as broad keywords. Generally used to reach large groups of people, these keywords are often saturated with content and harder to rank for quickly.
Example: โgreen applesโ
It is much easier to rank for long tail keywords. Although these keywords are used less in search engines, the visitors that find your website through long tail keywords are more likely to buy your service or product.
The longer and more specific the search terms are, the higher the chances of conversion are.
Example: โGrannie Smithโs famous green applesโ
Think Long Term: Build Brand Trust & Show Authenticity
Become a thought leader in your industry and provide your audience with useful information. Creating content your audience values is the best thing you can do to build trust! Visitors who value your content will reference and share your content. This creates backlinks, which helps SEO tremendously.
A backlink is a reference comparable to a citation. The quantity and sources of backlinks for a web page are among the most important factors that Googleโs PageRank algorithm evaluates in order to estimate the page worth.
PSA: Blackhat SEO methods like purchasing backlinks and spamming forums/groups is a big no-no, it really hurts websites. Google adjusted its algorithms to detect these types of SEO hacks.
Backlinks are still incredibly valuable. Google sees backlinks as a testament to the authority of a given website, or in other words, it shows if a website is a trusted source in their field. Search engines want to see backlinks that are relevant and useful.
Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website.
Blogs are a vessel for creative brand storytelling and content that educates users. Showing authenticity will establish a companyโs authority within an industry, and fortify brand trust.
Quality Over Quantity: Engaging Blog Content Concepts
When people visit your blog make it worth their while! While there are many benefits of blogging โ it’s important for your blog to also actually benefit your visitors.
Your goal should be to produce engaging content that keeps your audience coming back for more. It is important to diversify the style of content youโre producing. Keep your blog fresh!
Example Of Post Styles:
- Publish long list posts to get more backlinks
- Create how toโs / DIY: educate & empower audience
- Develop a recurring series that an audience can latch onto
- Design eye-catching and informative infographics (use downloadable PDF to capture emails)
- Video Post (Wisita allows you to add call-to-actions to videos)
Multimedia posts give you an opportunity to engage visitors with other methods than copy.
Video Content is gold! Companies operating in industries where few brands utilize video or motion graphics to market to customers have an enormous and unique opportunity to separate themselves from competitors that are slow to adapt. The benefits of online video are becoming more and more apparent.
- Visitors stay on websites that use video 78% longer than websites that had no video.
- 82.6% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company whose site had web video.
- 73.4% of consumers said that seeing video on a companyโs website increased their comfort level
Qualifying: Convert Inbound Traffic Into Leads
So what should happen once visitors get to your blog?
You should have a clear path intended for your visitors to follow with actionable steps along the way. The benefits of blogging will only become apparent if you have a clear plan.
A blog will increase the number of pages on your website. A larger site means more opportunity for engagement and conversion. Creating unique content is the perfect way for visitors to subscribe to your blog, download your newest e-book, schedule a demo, etc.
Optimizing your blog as a method for lead generation is essential to any inbound marketing strategy.
B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not.
Using call-to-actions and opt-in forms is a great way to convert blog traffic into qualified leads. A blog can take strangerโs to your brand and turn them into visitors, qualify them as leads, and ideally, close a deal. Blogs are becoming a bigger and bigger part of customer retention. Hubspot does an excellent job breaking down inbound methodology.
Donโt Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
The benefits of blogging for your business are important, but first determine who will create the content and develop a content calendar. If the blog exceeds the capacity of your in-house marketing department, it is best to seek outside creative agencies to aid with content creation and management. One of our brand storytellers would love the opportunity to help you design a blog strategy and produce engaging multimedia content.
Feel free to contact us to set up a free consultation.