Content Team It’s not uncommon for a small business to neglect the blog on its website. It sits dormant, with the last post published months—or even years—ago. A stale blog reflects poorly on the company, but, more importantly, it represents a missed opportunity. Posting regularly to the blog helps capture more business from the web.
Business owners who have tried blogging might argue their posts don’t get much readership or their blog has never generated a direct lead. Even when these statements are true, blogging with regular frequency has valuable benefits to the company’s online visibility.
When done well, each blog post helps improve the website’s search engine optimization. That’s why our web design company in NJ always recommends including a blog in the information architecture for new websites we build. Blogging also is an integral part of our search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns for HVAC contractors and our other small business clients.
Before a web page can rank high among organic search results, Google needs to know it exists.
Before a web page can rank high among organic search results, Google needs to know it exists. Google crawls websites to find the pages it should include in its index. The index is like the directory of pages Google checks to choose which results are relevant to display when a user searches for something.
If a website is unchanged each time Googlebots crawl it, the bots will return less frequently to look for new content. This could mean important information never gets included in Google’s index, which means it’s less likely people will find it. Of course, this reduces a company’s opportunities to get in front of leads and convert them to customers.
On the other hand, regularly publishing new blog posts tells Google the website gets updated frequently—so it sends its bots back often to crawl the site and update its index. This is an important step toward improving a website’s ranking among search results. The higher a page ranks, the more traffic it receives and the more new business it can generate.
Blog posts support an SEO campaign by telling Google, using keyword phrases and internal links, that a page on the website is relevant for a particular search term.
The goal when publishing a blog post is not for the post itself to rank high among search results. Blog posts should not be overly optimized to compete for rankings. Rather, the keywords and internal links a blog post contains should build the relevancy of optimized pages on the website. Blog posts support an SEO campaign by telling Google, using keyword phrases and internal links, that a page on the website is relevant for a particular search term.
For example, a blog post about preparing your air conditioner for the South Carolina summer might include the phrase “air conditioner maintenance in Myrtle Beach,” with a hyperlink on those words pointing to the website’s optimized air conditioning maintenance page. This blogging technique is an important component of a strategic SEO campaign.
Blogging also helps a company’s web presence in other ways. It improves brand awareness because the steady stream of new content helps fuel social media posts and email marketing campaigns. Each blog post gives a company something new to talk about and promote, pushing its brand into the marketplace.
Blog posts about relevant topics also establish a company’s reputation as an industry expert.
Blog posts about relevant topics also establish a company’s reputation as an industry expert. Providing helpful information tells prospective customers that the company knows what it’s doing and shows a helpful, approachable, customer-friendly attitude.
Despite knowing the benefits of frequent blogging, it’s easier said than done for many businesses. Small business owners who don’t have the time or expertise to write blog-worthy content on a regular basis can enlist the help of our copywriting team. We apply best practices for SEO to ensure each blog post works to bolster online business.
