8 Ways Blogging Can Increase Website Traffic and Generate Leads
If you've held off on adding a blog to your website because you're not convinced that it's worth your time, you need to think again. Maintaining a blog requires a minimal amount of effort, and the payoff can be huge.
At first glance, the connection between publishing a blog and achieving online marketing success may not be obvious. However, maintaining an active blog can increase website traffic and positively impact your online endeavours in a number of surprising ways.
Before delving into the best examples, a word of caution: You need to be persistent. These benefits aren't going to materialize overnight.
1. Blogging is a Great Way to Build Relevant, Effective Links
Penguin, the last major Google algorithm update, put the smack-down on sites that resort to black-hat techniques to generate backlinks. Link farms are out of the question, but you're not out of luck. Every time you create a new blog post, you plant a seed that could turn into an effective backlink later. Whether someone finds your website through that post or if the post is shared with others on social media, it could trigger a series of events that will boost the ranking of your website in the search engine results. An improved ranking can increase website traffic, so it's a worthy goal to pursue.
2. Blogging Makes Your Site Bigger
When it comes to ranking high on the major search engines, bigger is better. The more pages your site has, the more likely it is to get the kind of attention it deserves. There are only so many pages that are generally needed to create an effective site, and you shouldn't create random, pointless pages to make your site bigger. The key is to start blogging regularly. Every new blog post expands the size of your site. Sites with 50 to 100 pages generate 48 percent more traffic than sites with 50 pages or less.
3. Different Blog Posts can Highlight Different Keywords
It's important to rank well for as many relevant keywords as possible. Doing so with a basic site alone just isn't practical. If you try to do that, your site will sound spammy and sketchy. By adding a blog to your site, you can spread out the keywords and highlight different ones in different posts. In turn, your site will be more professional, trustworthy and appealing, and you'll still get to reap the benefits of having plenty of relevant keywords.
4. Blogging Allows You to Position Your Company as an Authority
When you create a blog for your website, you can do with it as you please. This is a prime opportunity to show the world what you know. Before making a purchase, people often do research online. If they find out what they need to know through your blog, there's a good chance that they'll check out the rest of your site too. Companies that increase the volume of their blogging from three to five times per month to six to eight times per month see their leads nearly double. People are more willing to do business with companies that really know their stuff.
5. Blogging Helps You Build Trust
The copy you use on your main website should be professional and to the point. Under those constraints, building trust with visitors isn't easy. On a blog, you can expand upon your ideas and demonstrate the ways in which your company can help. This is a great opportunity to brag about major successes and to showcase examples of superior customer service. You can also use your blog to demonstrate how your products and services can be used to solve problems.
6. Blogging Allows You To Establish Open Communication
If you're going to go through the trouble of creating a blog and updating it regularly, you should have a comments section as well. This is where you can encourage visitors to ask questions or to just share their opinions. By sharing your blog posts on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, you can increase the odds of getting real conversations going. When people see that your company is open and willing to communicate, they'll be more likely to see what it has to offer too.
7. Blogging Lets You Market Without Being Salesy
In the brave new world of marketing, being overtly salesy is a big no-no. At least, that's the case when marketing online. The trick is to engage prospective customers without lecturing or preaching to them, and a blog is the perfect place to do this. No one will bat an eyelash if you post a blog about your latest product and encourage people to give it a try. Somehow, it won't come across as being a sales pitch. If you send the same message in an email, though, all bets are off.
8. Blogging Lets You Show Customers That You Care
It's obvious when a company creates a website without a lot of thought or enthusiasm, and prospective customers don't react well to such sites. A great way to show people you care and are available is by maintaining an active blog. When visiting your site, they'll see that it is active and current. They'll also be impressed that you take the time to create fresh blog posts on a regular basis. When you consider how little effort actually goes into posting a single blog, you're sure to agree that the payoff here is absolutely huge.
Some of the best ways to increase website traffic and leads involve growing your website and maintaining an active online presence. Blogging lets you kill both birds with a single stone. Don't expect to create a blog and see your traffic soar immediately. The going may be slow at first, but it will eventually pay off handsomely.
Instead of looking for the finish line, look at blogging as a permanent part of your online marketing efforts. Even if you have to pay someone else to write your blog for you, you're sure to see a huge return on your investment before too long.
