We often suggest blogging as a marketing strategy to clients and sometimes this suggestion gets met with excuses like “we don’t have the time” or “we don’t have the resources” to create compelling content. This may be true to a degree, but what they usually mean is that they don’t see the value in investing in weekly or monthly blogs for their website. We can’t blame them - as understanding the profitability of blogging isn’t as clear-cut as seeing the returns in other online marketing campaigns.
So, to explain ourselves better, we thought it worthwhile to pull together some of the many benefits of business blogging. Uncover details below or speak with a WEBPRO marketing expert for tailored information.
Blogs generate repeat website visitors
The main purpose of a blog isn’t to sell your products or services, which in itself can be why it puts businesses off this avenue of marketing. The primary purpose of a blog is to inform your prospective and repeat clients. The blog should provide them with genuine information they can use to make consumer decisions.
For example, if you offer financial advice, you may publish a blog on the difference between income protection and critical illness cover, which is often confused. In this instance, you’re providing useful information but subtly encouraging the reader to consider your advice and brokering services in insurance products.
When you create blogs that offer real value to readers, those readers are more likely to return to your blog, and therefore your website, in the future when required. Google loves it when a website generates repeat website visitors and as a result, your website may become more visible on search engine result pages which can help you attract more leads. Another thing Google recognises and rewards is new content. Your blogs are an easy way to add new content that is completely bespoke (another thing Google loves!) on a regular basis, which also contributes to increased website visibility, more leads and hopefully increased sales.
Blogs showcase EEAT
Google doesn’t publicly tell us exactly how it indexes website pages but they do provide us with nuggets of information from time to time. We’ve always known about its search rater guidelines and these guidelines have been updated recently, now known as EEAT. This acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Content created for businesses now needs to highlight and promote these positive attributes to make their web pages more visible and attract leads. There are ways of doing this without repeat blogging but it’s difficult to argue against the power of blog content to tick these boxes regularly and drive more traffic to the site.
Your content can be repurposed
Another great thing about creating website blogs is that the content for your blogs can easily be repurposed. You can use the content to create newsletters that are sent out to certain subscribers. This is perfect because blogs are primarily supposed to provide helpful information and soft-sell products or services – which is the same for newsletter marketing. You can even use excerpts from your blogs to inform social media posts and help generate more of an online social media presence.
How to get blogging right in 2023? (Hierarchical content wins!)
Blogging in 2023 isn’t just about publishing lots of standalone blogs but rather, creating a hierarchy of blog content that informs blogs above and below in the hierarchical structure. For example, you might be a financial adviser with a master page on getting your first mortgage which links back to a mortgage advice service page or forward to several blogs on the different types of mortgages. These blogs may link forward again to individual FAQs about those types of mortgages. WEBPRO can help you design an informative and effective blog like this!
Recap: Business blogging offers numerous benefits for website owners which can easily be outsourced and still offer solid returns. It helps generate repeat visitors, improves website visibility on search engines and showcases experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (EEAT) to attract leads. Additionally, the content created for blogs can be repurposed for newsletters and social media which reduces marketing costs elsewhere.
WEBPRO Knows
One study found that businesses with an active blog generated 67% more monthly leads than their non-blogging counterparts.
