Having a blog on a business website is a lot more than just a trend, it is vital if you want to rank higher than your competitors on Google and other search engines. At first, most of my clients are not convinced about a blog's value and don't look forward to adding yet another task to their already busy schedules. And, to put it simply, most of my clients are excellent entrepreneurs, but they're not avid writers. So understanding the goals, the strategies and the techniques of running a business blog can directly affect your motivation, your opportunities and the results you receive from your investment.
The Goal - The Purpose of a Blog
But why would you need a blog on your business website if you're not a news organization? The main goal of your site is to get more leads by getting more traffic and better rankings on Google. One of the best ways to improve your online authority, which helps you rank higher, is to position your website as a useful source of original content. Adding new, high quality pages to your site will greatly improve your overall ranking. As we develop a website, we usually plan the necessary pages that showcase the services you offer, so the site's content is mostly fixed and only changes when your services do. A blog, then, becomes the best tool for adding new, relevant content to your site monthly, after its initial launch. This will improve your website's ranking opportunities by not only delivering more pages to be discovered on the Web, but by actually showing Google your steady involvement in your site. Plus, you will be giving search engines a reason to crawl your website more often for newly available content. Your blog can also help you connect more deeply with your clients by sharing your passion for your work. So there may be a more personal and emotional motivation behind the marketing and financial purpose of your blog.
The Strategy - Choosing the Right Subject
Now that you know “Why” your business will benefit from a blog, let’s discuss “How” to do it. As with any marketing tool, you need to have a good strategy for reaching potential customers with your blog. Writing any kind of useful article might benefit your existing clients and subscribers by giving them tips about your products and services. However, getting new potential clients to visit, read and subscribe to your blog is a bigger challenge which offers a better reward, more leads. The best way to reach new people is to offer something they need, so your blog can simply answer questions people ask on Google about your products and services. Our SEO services can provide you with the statistics you need to choose the right subject, based on questions people are currently asking, instead of a subject based on a personal hunch. We offer you the details about the number of searches, the opportunities and the competition for the subject of each article. For example, in this blog article, I wanted to address a question most of my clients have asked about blogs. I analyzed the SEO about this subject to find the best key sentence to use as my title, written exactly as I found it, "how to write a blog post." Then I added this key sentence to my images' alt text, my page's metadata fields and my URL to truly optimize my article and get better results. This may sound technical, but, by doing this, I know that I am not only answering a question my actual clients have asked, but I'm also positioning myself to get new readers, more traffic and new potential leads.
The Technique - Blog Writing Tips
A frequent question I hear from my clients is, "How many words do I need to write per blog article?". A quick online search will give you a lot of different answers. Some people say 300, some say between 300-500, some more than 1,000, and others will even go so far as to say that you need exactly 1,890 words. From my experience, the number of words is actually less important than the frequency and number of articles you write. For example, I could write 5,000 words about blogging, which would take me a long time and would provide the search engines with only one title, subject and page on my site. Instead, writing 5 shorter articles about the different aspects of blogging will get you further. Of course, the content should be based on valuable information; people don't want to read a long article for a short, simple answer. So in the end, there's no magic number, and the length should differ for each subject because you will have a different amount of information to share in each article. My articles are usually between 500-1,500 words, but I stopped counting. I simply found the right spot for my style, and I focus more on the topic I want to explain and the flow of each article.
To Conclude
Now that your article is ready to be posted, optimizing it for SEO will get you the results you want. Adding multiple links to your article will increase the value of your article, which increases your search ranking. You can add hyperlinks to pages inside your website, like your services page, and add links to some references at the end, pointing outside to other websites. Furthermore, adding pictures will not only make your article more attractive, but also provide opportunities to improve your ranking by adding keywords to the alt text fields. And finally, once you have posted your latest blog article, be sure to visit all your social media sites to post a link back to it. This will increase the traffic you get and improve the authority of your work.
Still have more questions? We understand and would like to help you, contact us now to schedule your free consultation. You can also visit our SEO services page for more information.
