Businesses should be blogging, it’s the best way to produce new content for their websites and allow them to target the audience associated with their business. Businesses often feel that they don’t have the time or the content to build their business, and often don’t understand the importance of having a quality blog. This is a huge mistake but easily rectified. We’ll share some of the benefits of having a business blog as well as some of the techniques for managing your blog and keeping it updated regularly.

Benefits of Blogging for Your Business

One of our common practices with new clients is to establish a blog for their business. This can be an internal blog that’s integrated into the website, an external blog on a related domain name, or both. There are distinct advantages to both methods, but regardless of which one you choose, it will help your search engine visibility tremendously.

Here are 5 Benefits to Running a Business blog:

Content Creation– On the Internet content is king. The more you have, the better. Most business websites have a limited number of pages, and therefore a limited amount of content. If your web designer hasn’t built your site with a good Content Management System, creating new pages or adding content to additional pages can be difficult, tedious work, and in some cases will require the help of your web designer, which will also cost more. By having a business blog you are able to write about your topics quickly and easily and generate pages of content that will have an equal chance of ranking in the search engines. Again, more content is better, and a blog allows you to easily create the content that is needed to keep the spiders crawling your site.

Targeting Long-Tail Keywords – Because your website has a finite number of pages, and your on-site SEO efforts can include a limited number of keywords, a blog can greatly expand the number of keywords and keyword phrases that you can effectively target. When you are writing an article for your blog, you will naturally cover different variations of the keywords associated with your products and services. This is a great opportunity to build links that cover long-tail keywords that may not be targeted in your site’s content.

For example, if you had a website about San Diego golf, your on-site SEO may target the keyword “San Diego Golf“. However, through your blog, you can also target terms like “San Diego Golf Gift Certificates”, or “Book Tee Times for San Diego Golf Course“, which would be more difficult to integrate into your site’s metadata. Long-tail keywords are lower volume, but a much more specific search term, which will generally result in higher conversions than short keyword phrases.

Reaching a Larger Audience – If your website isn’t properly optimized for your keywords, or you don’t have a recognizable brand name, it may be a deserted island that never gets traffic. Your blog allows visitors to subscribe to your posts via RSS feed, and the audience that visits your blog is more likely to share your info with others if they find it valuable. By submitting your blog to the various blog directories, you can put your info in front of others in your industry, and more importantly, you spread your message through the Blogosphere, and gain an audience that will visit your site repeatedly.

Natural Link-Building Platform – Blogs are a natural platform for link-building. When you are writing articles about your topic, you will generally link to other related pages within your site, and you’ll most likely be using keyword-targeted anchor text when building those links. This not only provides your visitors with more information, but it also helps your search engine rankings due to the anchor text that is used within your links. As your blog gains value and PageRank, it passes that value on to the other pages of your site, thus helping them rank higher as well.

Potential to go Viral – Never discount the power of the blogosphere. If you write a particularly compelling article, it has the potential to be rapidly recirculated throughout social media sites and re-published on other industry publications and other bloggers’ websites. If it’s an especially well-written article, it could potentially be re-published on Yahoo News, in a local paper, etc… This is one of the best ways to get traffic to your website, as well as gain valuable inbound links from others in your niche. As you continue to write valuable articles, you may well become a thought leader or industry expert in your field, which ultimately leads to more business via referrals, etc…