Why Your Website Needs A Blog
Every website needs a blog?
In 2018, half of the top 200 Fortune 500 companies had a corporate blog. Still, when you mention blogging or suggest running a blog to some business owners, you’d typically hear “we don’t need those responses.”
Such businesses consider running a blog an independent activity for online content creators, which could be a distraction for other conventional tasks. Totally wrong!
Why do we say so?
Even retail stores now own blogs
There were over 600 million active blogs globally in 2020, with retail blogs making up a significant number. We often forget about the information & digital age around, and that every business needs content to thrive and stay relevant. A landing page is just fine for some as long as “we can display our product and contact information”.
Landing pages can't accommodate most content marketing forms
A blog lets you express views, opinions, facts, and even offer education on the matters related to your business, thereby expanding your lead magnet.
Without a doubt, landing pages are important for marketing, especially short-term targeted; a blog offers the advantage of continuous marketing with or without targeting, and to a wider and more diversified audience.
Website Blog Boosts Traffic
A reported survey revealed that blog posts increase traffic and impressions for as long as 700 days after they online. Another report asserts that businesses with blogs have 126% more leads than businesses without them.
Maybe, you think it’s all bluff or a strategy to get you blogging. Optinmonster, in a recent report, revealed that businesses that blog get double the email traffic as their non-blogging counterparts. As of 2019, 54% of Fortune 500 corporations had a functional blog as part of their marketing structure.
The bottom line: While landing pages are limited in web accessibility – that is, people can only see them by direct search or targeting, blogs – on the other hand, may leverage the tech and intelligence of Google to offer better, non-restrictive web accessibility.
Before we mention specific the reasons of why your business should own a blog, here’s how Google enables blogs to promote marketing.
How Google Works
According to a study, 81% of shoppers research online before they purchase. This is also applicable in the B2B and service niches. People are more comfortable transacting with a business that has an online presence. They typically do such research using Google.
Google is popularly known as a search engine; it helps people find what they need on the internet by scouring through billions of web pages and projecting the most useful or most informative ones to users. Google employs Artificial Intelligence to interpret search strings and generate results based on available web pages online.
The automated mechanism responsible for generating results is called a crawler or spider. This mechanism regularly explores the web for the recent, updated content. After that, it saves the web address for subsequent references. One of the most popular ways to achieve this is by following the links from pages it recognized before. Most sites featured in Google search results are discovered and uploaded automatically by crawlers.
After that comes indexing. Google views the pages it has discovered through crawling and attempts to understand the purpose of each. It examines the content to determine what the page is about. This data is saved in Google’s index, a massive database spanning multiple computers.
Finally, the search results display. When people run search queries, Google determines top quality results. Google ranks every related page, and results are displayed to users based on that.
Several factors determine Website Page Rank
- The number of times a keyword appears on a web page and where it does: if a term appears only once in the page’s body, its score is lower.
- How long the website’s been up and running: new pages are created daily, but not all of them remain online for long. Google gives pages with a long history more weight.
- How often other pages link to the current one: to determine website relevance, Google considers other websites connect to it.
Fun fact: According to Tech Client, your website is 434% more likely to be ranked highly on search engines if it has a blog!
The results are also projected based on other metrics such as the user’s location, language, device type, and previous search requests. For example, a user searching for flower shops in Germany would see different results from users in the United States.
Same way, a French-speaking user would see something different from an English-speaking user.
Here is the thing: after all we’ve said on how Google operates, we can conclude that a landing page by default fails Google’s rank test and may never qualify as a search result except if it’s intentionally optimized. Even then, it would be limited. Google’s algorithm rarely indexes landing pages because they are single web pages: new and mostly for advertising purposes.
On the other hand, a business-owned blog would provides content on varying topics that answer users’ questions. Although the ultimate aim is marketing, it doesn’t do that directly – but acts as a dragnet that uses information and content to build leads.
For instance, a car repair shop can share content on how to maintain a car and then use that to attract possible clients who need their cars repaired.
In this case, a user may randomly search for “how to fix a flat tyre” on Google, and if there’s content that answers the question, Google displays it. If the user still needs to find out more or get professional help, they’d contact the repair shop directly.
The blog above would serve 2 purposes;
- As an informative platform – teaching people how to change tires and maintain their vehicles;
- As a marketing tool – promoting the workshop.
Reports show 70,000 Google searches per second, translating to 5.4 billion searches every day. With just a landing page, you automatically miss out on the possibility of getting leads from such a large pool of daily searchers.
You should also know that businesses with a blog have 67% more conversion opportunities (paying customers) than those without it.
Other reasons why your business should own a content blog
Blogging Aids Your Business’ Competitiveness
Several small firms offer similar products or services just like you. However, because no two businesses are alike, it’s critical to accentuate what sets yours apart. Blogging lets you demonstrate the uniqueness, knowledge, and expertise that differentiates you from competitors and allows you to compete against other larger corporations. Your company needs a blog if you want to reach out to your target audience.
A blog allows you to communicate with customers
A business website or landing page helps target and assist present and prospective clients, yet it does so by providing one-way communication. However, a business blog allows for two-way communication with your readers. This aids your company in establishing a relationship rather than merely a physical presence among customers.
Your content may be styled in a friendly, open, and semi-formal manner to encourage discussion and exchange of opinions in the comments. This would give you an insight into your customers’ wants and expectations. Professional content increases brand engagement and communication by 28%.
It builds brand awareness
About 70% of consumers learn about a business through content rather than advertising. More sources state that 78% of consumers prefer companies that share content like blog posts – they believe this is about building firm relationships, not just selling. In simple terms, a blog increases the chances of people knowing and linking with your business.
A blog provides insights into your target market
With tools like Google Analytics and comment sections on the blog and social media posts linking to your content, you can understand your audience, their preferences and expectations better. You’d also know customer demographics as well as where and how to improve your services.
An effective way to generate leads
Resourceful blog content is always a great lead magnet. You can include a call-to-action or an opt-in form to target and individualize your offers.
Summing Up
Blogging has numerous benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked. No matter what business niche you fit in, there’s always something to blog about. Almost everyone in this generation is online. Most people search the web for just about anything, and resourceful content promoting your activity is one of the best ways to benefit from online traffic.
