There is no denying it; blogging is a highly effective marketing method for attracting new customers through SEO friendly content. If you are trying to work out why your nearest competitor is getting more organic traffic than you then it could well be down to the fact that they have a blog and you do not. Search engines index each web page, so each blog page is counted as an additional page. So this will help the website to attain higher rankings (along with all of the other factors that feed into the algorithm). So having a blog is still a very good way of generating traffic to your website.
If you haven’t created a blog before then it is worthwhile doing a bit of research. Have a look at what seems to be working for most of your competitors who publish blogs. Most importantly, make sure you are writing content that is geared towards the people that you want to bring to your website.
Let’s say for example, you sell gardening equipment. There is no point writing blogs about cooking, as that audience are unlikely to be in need of gardening tools. So your target audience is the center of everything that you do. You need to try to understand exactly what your target audience are interested in. Maybe they would like to find out about the best time to plant bulbs or whether to move certain plants into a greenhouse.
If this is the kind of information that they are typically searching for using Google and other search engines then there is a good chance that they buy a lot of gardening equipment. So think about your target audience and create content that will be highly useful for them. The content shouldn’t be too sales focused as this is likely to put them off, they just want to find useful information and feel like they are making their own mind up about any purchase.
If you do not already have a website set up, there are plenty that offer good blogging features. WordPress is the most commonly used blogging platform because it is one of the easiest to use. There are also many resources available to give you guidance or demonstrations on how to set up a WordPress blog or to walk through everyday tasks like adding images and publishing a post.
It is quite easy to get a website set up using website builders, which simplify the process of designing your website. Website builders are a great way of enabling non developers get a basic website set up quickly and you’ll often find that many of the leading hosting companies such as iPage and SiteGround include site builders within there plans often at no extra cost.
When creating content, you should also be thinking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) i.e. how to develop content that the search engines will like. So it may be worth your time, understanding a bit about the basic principles of SEO such as keywords, image tags, meta description and backlinks. Creating content that is SEO friendly will have a huge impact on where your website stands in the search results and therefore how much potential business flows to your website.
Remember that your content must always be original, as copying content can cause you to be penalized and could potentially get you into trouble in terms of copyright laws. The same goes for image use, be aware of which images you are allowed to use and which have usage restrictions, as you do not want to get in hot water for using other people’s images.
