Blogging and Small Business are a great fit. In today’s world of social media and content marketing, it seems as if the rules for optimization change on a daily basis. Whether it’s Google’s Algorithm updates or the introduction of new features on Twitter or Facebook, change is a common normalcy in inbound marketing. However, blogging has been and will seemingly continue to be the focus of any successful social media marketing or content marketing campaign.
In the rat race of trying to climb to the top of a search engine results page (SERP), most marketers seem to forget the importance of providing your audience with good information. While social networks are vital for sharing and reaching audiences, your blog is the honey that attracts the flies. In other words, it all begins with the blog, and it has a significant impact for small businesses.
Are Blogs Effective?
In any case, blogs are no secret. According to Marketingsherpa, 84 percent of marketers rate blogs as either very or somewhat effective. The impact blogging has on search engines has undoubtedly been recognized by businesses. In the survey, Impact of Blogging on Search Engine Optimization, 54% of participants saw an increase in ranking, traffic, and links from their blog within three months. At the same time, 40 percent of the survey participants saw those same results anywhere from four to 12 months. Simply put, blogging brings makes your more visible and brings more potential prospects to your site.
When you blog, you are publishing new content with related keywords throughout the post on a regular basis. As a result, you are publishing fresh content to your website. Because of this, blogs allow your website to benefit and take advantage of the ‘freshness‘ factor in Google’s algorithm. Blogs are instrumental in drawing traffic to your website by keeping your website fresh with new and relevant content.
Build Vital Backlinks
Google’s quintessential goal is to provide the user with the most relevant content. In addition, the majority of the other search engines share this goal. As a result of this overwhelming and underlying goal, search engines place an arduous amount of importance on the number and quality of links coming back to your site (back links). Backlinks are links on other off-site pages that direct readers back to your page. When you create good and relevant content, others will build backlinks back to your site as a point of reference. In the end, the number and quality of backlinks are indicative of how important or reliable the content you have on your site is.
The More Blogs the Merrier
The simple existence of each new blog post actually increases your chances of ranking higher on a SERP. This is because search engines consider each blog post to be a new indexed page. The more pages you have, the more likely backlinks you will have and the higher you will show up on a SERP. According to HubSpots, Marketing Benchmarks from 7000+, businesses with 51 – 100 content pages on their website generated 48% more traffic than pages with less than 50 pages of content. In addition, the study revealed that blogging 15 or more times each month can return over 5 times more traffic than businesses that do not. In any case
Create Industry Leadership
When you have a blog, you are able to establish your thought leadership in your industry. Since blogs allow you to cover such a wide variety of topics relevant to you niche, you can use quotes, instructional videos, news posts, and practically any other type of content you can imagine. The ultimate goal is to satisfy the informational needs of your audience. In addition, when you begin to cover such a wide variety of topics, your site will become more visible on SERPs for different keywords. As a result, your page will rank for various keywords and bring more people to your site. In the end, your blog can be an instrumental tool in you creating industry thought leadership.
In any case, the goal of your blog is to provide your audiences with valuable information. At the same time, you can use the blog to share your brand story and familiarize your audience with your brand. By carefully utilizing your blog, mixing up your blog content, and using superior timing, you can build brand loyalty and establish your brand as an industry leader.