Top 7 Benefits of Blogging on Your Website

Most small business owners are confused whether to include blogging in their content marketing strategy. This is primarily because they do not know how they can regularly create high-quality content and the skills required for the same.

However, the fact is that investing in a content publication strategy can be extremely fruitful, leading to improvement in search visibility, leads, and conversions. Start your content strategy with a company blog and get ready to experience the top 7 benefits of blogging on your website:

  1. Enhances search engine traffic

Blogging is just like fishing – when you have more hooks in the water, chances to catch a fish are higher. Adding content to your website increases the number of pages indexed by search engines. Every new blog on your website gives you the opportunity to rank higher for keywords relevant in your industry. This further helps to enhance web traffic organically.

  1. Adds a voice and personality

Your home page or about page sticks to information about your business and the services you offer. A blog post, on the other hand, allows you touch on issues that are of interest to your prospects. It enables you to voice your opinions. It adds a human approach to your brand giving you a unique personality that clicks better with the target audience. The likeability quotient of the brand also improves.

  1. Assists with social media activities

Maintaining a social media presence requires a continuous generation of content. Most of the time, small business owners resort to sharing other people’s content on their own pages. While this is an effective strategy, it won’t take you far. You need to redirect people to your own website in order to be able to directly pull customers for your products and services. Sharing your own blog posts on your social media pages comes in handy here.

Additionally, blog posts help in creating email newsletters. Simply compile the blogs of last week or list the top 10 and shoot a newsletter to all your readers.

  1. Establish Authority

With a blog, you can position yourself as an expert in the industry. You can share information and insights related to the current trends and build trust among the target audience. A brand that has established authority through its content tends to familiarize with prospects and remains in their top-of-mind recall, thereby generating more queries and leads.

  1. Pulls up conversion rates

A blog with content updated actively shows that  the business is alive, updated and loved. This is why just having a blog is not enough. The blog needs to be updated with high-quality content regularly to establish brand loyalty. Customers see the expertise and innovation the brand brings to the table through their blog and helps to improve conversion rates.

  1. Helps with long-tail keyword rankings

If a website does not have a blog, ranking well for long-tail search queries will be a challenge. Regular industry-specific keywords can be easily taken care of; however, when it comes to targeted keywords with special search queries, content is vital. It is the only tool that helps you rank for the less commonly searched queries.

  1. Facilitates two-way communication

Blogging allows two-way communication. It gives users the opportunity to comment and interact with the brand on industry updates, company updates, and launch announcements. Any feedback from the customers can be recorded through the blog and getting an insight into the customers’ perspective is essential for the marketing team. Your next marketing initiatives can also be planned on the basis of the inputs you have received from your customers.

Conclusion

Blogging on your website is an important way to differentiate your business from that of the competitors. Sharing such content allows you to express your own words, your own thoughts and insights building a trust factor and connect with the target audience. This further impacts the search traffic and ultimately sales positively.

Blogging is more crucial for small business owners as it gives them the opportunity to compete with the big brands without spending much. Blogging is cost effective and you don’t have to set aside a large marketing budget to execute a content strategy.

How Blogging Helps Ecommerce Businesses in the Long Run

Is blogging helpful for an ecommerce website? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

Take the case of Marcus Sheridan owner of River Pools and Spas. His blog post on fiberglass pool costing led to sales worth more than $1.7 million for his swimming pool company.

While it is rare for a single blog post to lead to such huge amount in sales, there are numerous small businesses that have seen substantial increase in their conversion over the long term. According to a study by Hubspot, businesses that blog get 55% more visitors and 97% more inbound links.

Here is how blogging can help your ecommerce site in the long run:

  • Blogging improves SEO

Blogging regularly leads to better ranking on search engines such as  Google and Bing. More blog posts mean more indexed pages for Google to crawl. An average company that blogs has 434% more indexed pages compared to one that does not blog. This translates to better ranking on Google.

Search engines also prefer sites that are updated regularly with fresh content. This is why adding new blog posts regularly will boost your rankings.

Blogging will also give you an opportunity to rank for keywords that do not fit into your product pages. For example an ecommerce website selling bicycles cannot target popular keyword ‘best bicycles for mountain trails’ unless they write a blog about it. Blogging will also increase keyword density of important keywords in your site and drive up your rankings.

Lastly blogging allows other bloggers or businesses to link to your informative post and earn you precious back links. Blogs are also sharable and this helps to optimize your site for search engines.

  • Helps in Branding

All successful businesses are great storytellers. Nobody wants to visit a site with just a list of products. Blogging is an effective way to tell your brand story.

Blog lends a personality and voice to your website. Visitors can know more about your business and product philosophy through blogs. Blogs can be used to connect with your visitors and build a relation with them.

An informative blog that addresses reader’s pain points will keep them coming back for more. Educating your readers with what they are passionate about will build a certain brand authority in their mind. They will turn to you for any query in your industry. This helps to establish a loyal online community that values your brand.

  • Increases Conversions

Yes, blogging has a direct impact on your sales conversions too. In fact, businesses that prioritize blogging experience 13 times increase in ROI according to Hubspot. This is because of the continuous stream of traffic that blogs drive to your website. The marketing ‘rule of 7’ says that most of your prospects won’t buy from you unless they have seen your brand at least seven times.

A quality blog will keep your audience coming back and make sure that you are on top of their mind when they think of purchase in your industry.

  • Supports Content Marketing and Inbound Sales

Blogging provides a continuous stream of content to drive your content marketing. Sharing others content can build audience, but how do you make sure your following becomes your traffic to ecommerce site?

Blogs are an integral part of inbound methodology to convert visitors into leads. This can be done by inserting a call to action in your blog itself. This could be a discount coupon, free guidebooks or free shipping in lieu of their email id.

Sharing your own quality content will build your brand authority, drive traffic and also convert it to customers in your ecommerce business.

  • Customer Touch point

Blogs are also a great way to be in touch with your prospects and customers. Encourage your readers to comment on your post to have a dialogue with them. This drives up user engagement and gives your readers a sense on involvement in the business. Blog comments can also be used to choose the next topic for your blog. Many of the successful blogs just answer the most pressing questions that customers in their industry have. Encouraging a two way communication on your blogs will drive user engagement, conversion and feedback.

The importance of a blog for an ecommerce site must be clear after reading this. So have you started on your blogging journey yet?

8 Reasons Blogging Is Vital For Your Digital Presence

 

In the current internet based world, your service or product needs great online presence to reach the desired heights. It will help bring large number, of traffic to your site and stand out among your competitors.

To improve the online presence of your business, you can seek search engine optimization. SEO is highly effective in bringing your business in front of the whole world. Blogging is a vital part of an SEO strategy.

Reasons Why Blogging Is Essential For Your Digital Presence:

Higher Ranking In SERP – Making use of blog in a regular basis is a better way of adding relevant content in your site. These blogs play an important role as they are useful to your customers. It is one of the best ways to increase your search engine ranking.

Your website gets one more indexed page every time you write a new blog, increasing your chances of a higher ranking in SERP (search engine results page). Blogging can increase your web page indexing by 434%. Linked posts will get Google to index your website for high-quality keywords as well.

Read Also: 6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Social Media Presence – Blogging also helps you to get social media presence as people can share these blogs on Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more. This results in getting new, audience to your business. If you have a blog for your website, then you don’t have to ask your social media manager to come up with new content for your brand on a frequent basis.

More Inbound Links – Blogging helps to generate 97% more inbound links. If you share relevant and quality posts, then many people will link to your blog. This will result in generating traffic to your business. Quality inbound links is another factor that can influence search engines positively.

Helps To Bring Traffic – With regular posting, your blog will generate traffic to your site on a large scale. Thus, they will come to know about your brand. In time, brand, trust would grow manifold.

Convert Traffic Into Leads – You will get more sales and high-quality traffic when people find your blog through Google. When you get such traffic, it will be easy for you to convert them to leads with strategic placements of CTAs (call to actions) placed at right places in the blog.

Builds Trust and Reputation – Blogs are where you begin to influence, persuade and move your prospects to act. It’s where they begin to know, like and trust you. Reading about genuine information will make them come back to your website and look for more relevant topics. This builds trust in their mind, leading to better reputation for your website.

Read Also: SEO  Two Secret Ingredients for SEO Success 

Create Conversations – Keeping your audience engaged is always a good way to build your brand. Blogs create two-way conversations with prospects, customers, and industry peers. It strengthens interaction, comments and feedback.

Knowing Your Audience Better – Blog analytics enables you to track readers, popular topics, click-through, share and comments. By analyzing such data, you will be able to learn more about your audience. Knowledge thus gained can be utilized for furthering marketing strategies.

The earlier you start blogging, the faster your business will obtain its benefits – and don’t forget to set a goal. If you think there are more benefits to blogging, please share with us in the comment section.

6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Content marketing is always one of the top strategies of digital marketing agencies. Blogs play an important role in content marketing. When used in the right way, they can pull a lot of traffic and build exposure. They are a great way for business websites to connect with customers, thus strengthening the brand. It is also a cost-effective way to promote any business. Blogs with useful and engaging content can:

  • Generate leads
  • Grow your business
  • Build your brand

According to HubSpot’s sixth annual report of inbound marketing and sales trends 2014-15, site organic sources such as blogging, SEO and social media are rising in importance.

These simple steps will help to get your blog post found on Google as well as other search engines.

Keep readers in mind

Always write for your readers. Always write something what they may need to know such as solving an issue or some unique insights in to the industry dealt with. Have answer for these questions before you begin a blog.

  • Who your readers are?
  • What is your target audience?
  • How well do you know them?
  • What do they want to know?
  • What problems do they need addressed?

Provide informative and valuable content

Your website’s authority in the industry mainly depends on the value of the content you provide. Informative content have the power to turn readers into customers. Instead of posting monotonous posts regularly, it is ideal to post useful blog tutorials daily or on a weekly basis. Search engines like Google no longer look for specific keywords and to answer the queries of the user. Rather it looks for content and makes their own conclusions as to what your website is all about. So it is ideal to think the way your readers might search for information

Along with giving genuine information, in digital marketing agencies also recommended adding videos or infographics to increase credibility. For instance, if you are talking about SEO tactics, it is better to include a recent video about what Matt Cutts said about this topic or to include an infographics that gives clear idea about the topic.

Choose effective blogging platform

With user-friendly blogging platforms such as WordPress (WP), you can customize the design, write posts and can also easily publish videos, photos, galleries, and slideshows.  With WP’s clean coding, search engines can easily read and index a site’s content. Make sure to choose better SEO plug-ins like Yoast that offers a ‘Snippet Preview’. With this option, you can find how your Meta data will appear in search engines. This plug-in will also tell you how obviously your ‘keyword’ features in the different elements of your meta data.

Use social media

A blog post, however engaging and useful, will not make any difference unless it is discovered by the audience. Social media platforms provide opportunities to drive traffic to your blog. Major sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and YouTube. These are powerful tools to promote blog posts as they have millions of subscribers.

Interact with readers

Your blog is a conversation. Though it begins with the information you provide, it continues with comments from readers, and with comment and criticism from other bloggers. To keep your content interactive, make sure to post questions, polls and contests for your readers. This will keep them deeply involved in the conversation.

Focus on Headlines and subheadings

Ensure that the headline you write focuses on readers and not search engines. Boring titles with expected keywords will work no longer, according to digital marketing agencies. Sub headings or H2, H3 tags should also be up to the point. The right choice of these tags helps you to create a digestible, readable and easily scannable post.

Writing great guest posts for other blogs can draw new readers to your blog. Using analytics will help digital marketers as well as bloggers to keep track of how people arrive at their blog and then use this information to improve their blogging tactics.