Why Your Business Needs a Blog: 4 Compelling Reasons

If you want to succeed with SEO, you need a blog on your website. But why is a blog so important? In this video of our SEO Basics series, we’ll answer that question and more!

Transcript: Hi, my name’s Rebecca Stickler and I’m a content marketing specialist here at WebFX. Today, I’ll be talking to you about why your business needs a blog.

If you work in the marketing industry, you’ve probably heard more than once or twice that you should be blogging. And at this point, it’s a very common marketing strategy for businesses in a lot of industries. But many companies start blogging without really understanding why or how it can help them reach their goals.

So, while it is one of the best ways to improve your online presence and reach new customers, today we’re going to discuss how that works and four of the biggest benefits of starting a blog for your company.

1. The first benefit of blogging is that it’ll help improve your SEO.

Even the most well-designed website in the world won’t help you reach your business goals if no one visits it. That’s why search engine optimization (or SEO) is an extremely important part of any digital marketing strategy. But today, SEO goes way beyond just optimizing your title tags and other HTML elements.

It involves creating original and high-quality content for your visitors and ranking for the long-tail keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Blogging is a great way to reach both of those goals. When you regularly publish new posts, you have the opportunity to cover new topics and keywords that you haven’t already targeted on your existing site pages.

And every time you cover a new topic, you have the opportunity to rank in results for new keywords. Over time, this will help you gain more visibility and reach new customers.

2. The second benefit to blogging is that it can help you build relationships with potential your customers.

In the past, most marketing strategies were focused solely on selling. And while that’s the end-goal of digital marketing strategies, today’s consumers expect more. They go online, they research their issues, their concerns, and their needs, and they look for information that will help them identify the best product or service to meet them.

And when you use your blog to address their concerns and their needs, you show right off the bat that you’re a helpful resource and that you’re interested in helping them solve their issues. And even if they aren’t interested in making a purchase right away, when you make a first impression as a helpful resource, they’ll be more likely to come back to your site later and make a purchase.

3. Another benefit to starting a blog is that it can help you become an authority in your industry.

When you cover industry trends and news, you show your followers that you’re not only up to date, but you’re also willing to share that information with them. This can help you build your reputation online and build trust and credibility with your potential customers. When you establish thought leadership within your industry, you show that you’re an authority and a trusted source of information.

And when your customers see that you’re a trusted source of information, it’ll build confidence in your ability to meet their needs with your products or services.

4. Starting a blog can produce longterm benefits for your business.

  It can continue to attract customers to your site for years to come who are searching for the longtail keywords that you’re targeting. Plus, since your posts are all hosted on your site, there’s no additional cost to continue ranking for those keywords. You can also update your posts over time with new information and as industry trends change to provide your customers with the updated information they’re looking for.

You can also share your posts on social media and continue to do so as long as the information isn’t outdated. Then, it can reach your fans and followers multiple times who haven’t seen the article, and as they share those with their friends and followers, you can reach an exponential number of people on social media. Because of the longterm results it produces, the ROI of blogging is huge.

Once your blog is up and running, it costs nothing but time to add and publish new posts. And when you compare that to the benefit of ranking well for a variety of keywords, building relationships with your potential customers, and gaining a reputation as an authority in your industry, it’s certainly worth your time. These are just four of the benefits to starting a blog for your business.

And if you’d like to learn more about how blogging can help you grow your online presence and attract new customers, check out our beginner’s guide to content marketing.