Does your business need a blog?

By Sherry Bonelli / Guest Column

You’ve probably heard of a blog, but exactly what is it, and does your business really need one?

A blog is a section on your website that includes a group of short posts (typically 500-1,500 words), videos, images, links to other websites, comments from readers, etc. Blog posts are usually listed by date, with the newest posts appearing at the top of your page. To see an example of how a blog is structured, visit brightlocal.com/blog.

Blogs are great because they give you a way to share information about your products, services or industry with your customers and potential customers. Blogging is also a marketing strategy that can get your business more visibility online and higher rankings on search engines.

When blog content is optimized correctly for search engines and readers, posts can help boost your website’s rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. If you use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to write your blog posts, your posts could appear higher in search results when specific keywords related to your business are searched for. An example would be if you own a pest control company and you write a blog post about what to do if your college student finds bed bugs in his or her dorm room. When the parent searches for the keywords “what to do about bed bugs in dorm rooms,” your blog post about the topic can appear in the search results.

It’s all about content

The internet is all about content. To make your website a valuable asset that can help attract new customers, people need to be able to find your site on the search engines. That means you must continually be adding and optimizing content on your website to be found.

The more pages with quality content your website has, the more chances you have to rank on Google. Every time you publish a new blog post on your website, you have a new page. Writing blog posts is one way to create pages that can help get your business in front of people looking for your products or services.

Blog posts also make great sharing opportunities. For instance, when someone finds a good blog post about a topic, they often share it with their friends and family on social media. Additionally, other websites might find your post interesting and link back to your website as a reference. This gives you yet another way to get your message out to the world.

Does your business need a blog?

For years digital marketers have been telling local businesses that they need a blog to rank higher on the search engines. However, like all things digital, the thinking is starting to shift. What you really need to add to your site is quality, search-engine friendly content. Now, that might be a blog post, but it could also be just another page in a section of your site.

Blogs are best used for industries and businesses that people are really interested in following. If you own an interior decorating firm, chances are your customers would be interested in your blog if you wrote about how to decorate a home for the holidays, how painting a room can change its look, decoration tips, etc. But if you own an HVAC or plumbing company, are people really interested in following your blog about air conditioner issues on a regular basis? Probably not.

If you’re in a not-so-sexy industry, the better thing to do is to create a section on your site where you can add new pages on a regular basis. For instance, pest control companies could create sections on their site specific to each type of insect they eliminate. Their website URL would look like this:

www.pestcontrolcompanyname.com/roaches/how-to-identify-cockroaches

instead of making a blog post and adding it to a blog:

www.pestcontrolcompanyname.com/blog/how-to-identify-cockroaches

When you add a page to a section of your site, you’re also better able to organize and optimize your website page’s URL for keywords as well (“roaches” vs. “blog” in the example above.) Additionally, since blog posts are dated with the date they are published, posts can get “old” and seem outdated fast. Regular content pages typically don’t have dates tied to them, so they can seem fresher and live longer.

Ultimately, it’s up to each local business to decide if they want a blog or will create quality content pages on their site. Regardless of which avenue you choose, remember that the internet is all about content.

Sherry Bonelli, digital marketer and presenter/ speaker, is the owner of early bird digital marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency in Cedar Rapids. Reach her at http://earlybirddigitalmarketing.com