Yes. And here’s why.
- Your blog will showcase expertise and authority in your field.
- Blogging will boost your SEO and site’s rankability in search engines.
Don't lose sight of what's important - great content.
Often business owners will start a new blog purely for SEO. They want to rank well in search engines and heard that generating content with high keyword relevance will drive traffic, ultimately improving lead generation.
Don’t do this.
Mass-produced, low-caliber, low-quality blog content, just looks like you’re farming keywords for imaginary SEO points. It’s not genuine, customers can tell, and it’s a sure fire way to make prospects bounce.
Instead, write great content
Great content is at the core of every successful blog.
Deliver content of actual value and success will follow. Here’s a few scenarios that great content will produce:
- When a visitor reads your content, they enjoy it, find it useful and share it. Now you’re creating backlinks to your website – those backlinks are worth their weight in gold when it comes to SEO.
- A customer is starting their journey, and asks Google a common question. For example; “What makes a good lawn care service?”. If you have content that answers the question, you’re more likely to be featured in Google search results.
- Perhaps a customer is on the fence between two competing companies, one has a blog that showcases their expertise, the other does not. Which do they have more confidence in?
Let's talk SEO
So obviously, search engine optimization is the technical reason behind why we blog.
In the past, curating content for Google search was more mechanical, which led to content that was better suited for robots rather than for humans. In recent years, Google has been working hard to make their algorithm smarter and actually understand the context of a piece of content.
Bottom line is, so-long as you’re writing quality content, you’ll rank well in search engines (eventually). Trust in the system.
So with your guiding principle of high-quality content in place, you can focus on giving that content an extra SEO boost.
This is where your content marketing strategy comes into play.
A solid content marketing strategy will:
- Outline your core goals and success metrics
- Identify your target audience, the questions they ask Google, and terms they search
- Highlight your competition, the types of keywords they target, and sites linking to them
- Find content and keyword gaps with keyword research
- Plan new content
- Measure success
So with great content and a solid content strategy to guide you, there’s no reason you can’t be successful.
Okay, enough fluff - Let's talk numbers
If you’re like me, you like facts, numbers, and data to drive your business decisions. Luckily we can get some great metrics that support investing into your own blog. Here are some highlights from isitwp.com:
- Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website.
- B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not.
- Blogging businesses experience 126% higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses.
- Once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30%.
And my favorite…
- Better content can drive traffic to a blog by up to 2,000%
These are great metrics that should convince you to get blogging right away
3 key elements to a successful blog
Blogging and SEO is a long-burn strategy. You won’t see results right away, and you’ll feel like you’re talking into the void. It takes time and patience before you see any success, so here are my key principles to blogging success:
1. Be consistent
Publish new posts on a regular schedule. It’ll help you commit to writing the next post and encourage visitors that find value in your content to come back.
2. Deliver actual value
I can’t say this enough. Stop with the low-quality content. It looks cheap. Spend actual time creating valuable content. You might not be a copywriter, and that’s okay – Either hire someone to write for you or learn with plenty practice!
3. Stick with it
It might take a year or longer to see actual results from your blog. Don’t be disheartened, stick with it and see where it goes. The stat above noted; Once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30%. It takes time – Commit!
The problem with blogging...
Oh boy, the problem with blogging… It’s a slow burn. It takes time, dedication, and patience to see results. And it often feels like you’re barely even moving the needle.
One thing I try to remember is that like interest, improvement compounds over time.
To quote James Clear from Atomic Habits – If you can move the needle just one percent each day for a year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.
I like to think this applies here too.
Stick with it, publish new content on a regular basis, and see the results compound over time.
Alright, so how do you get started?
Maybe you have a small business you want to promote, or you want to write for your own personal blog – how do you even get started creating content? I get this question from clients all the time, so I made a short list that keeps things simple.
- Use a familiar, easy to use platform, like WordPress or Medium.
- Create a content scrapbook where you can quickly note down blog post ideas
- Your customers ask questions all the time – write down what they ask and use those to kick start your content scrapbook.
- Go to Google and search your core keywords, you’ll see a list of frequently asked questions based on your keyword, add those to your list. Neat!
- Write about something meaningful to you or your business
- Cover core topics related to your business.
- If you’re stuck on ideas, refer back to your content scrapbook.
And most importantly…
Have a plan. A strategy for your content goes a long way. It’ll keep you on track, holds you accountable and give you a benchmark for success.
Wrap it up
Forget affiliate marketing, passive income, and monetization. Instead, use your blogging platform to support your long-term digital marketing strategy in a meaningful way and deliver something of value to your customers.
Be genuine and sincere in helping your customers – they’ll thank you with their business.
Creating content is hard, it’s time consuming, but there are many benefits of blogging and it’s certainly worth it.
Our SEO support plan is perfect for small businesses looking to boost their SEO. We’ll help you to build and maintain the perfect SEO strategy, while providing 2 hours a month completing key SEO actions or consultation. Give us a shout and we’ll get started on your SEO as soon as possible.
