We often come across clients who don’t understand the benefits of blogging. They don’t have time, don’t have the resources, or are generally disinterested in keeping a blog. This is completely understandable! We know how difficult maintaining a blog can be. However, we also know how important it can be. In 2015 everyone should work to get a blog up and running on their website. Here are 5 reasons why you must be blogging.
- Blogging Keeps Your Site Content Fresh
Search engines prefer websites that are consistently updating their content, a factor they also take into account when producing search results. Search engines determine how often you make updates by crawling your site semi-regularly.
“Crawling” refers to the automated “bots” that search engines send to your website. These bots can actually be trained to crawl your website more or less often. If the bots crawl your site weekly and discover that nothing ever changes, they will decrease how often they visit. Unfortunately, this means that the next time you do update your site it may take weeks for the bots to notice. However, you can also train them to crawl your site more often by updating it regularly. You can do this by blogging. We recommend blogging at least once a week, if not twice. And it doesn’t hurt to blog every day if you have the time and resources.
- Blogging Positions you as a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
One of the biggest advantages to blogging is that it provides you with an outlet to showcase your knowledge. Blogging allows you to become an industry leader, or a subject matter expert (SME). Not only can you share your wide-ranging knowledge with your current clients, but you can also reach, and impress, new prospects.
- Blogging Allows you to Use Your Long Tail Keyword Phrases
Blogging is good for search engine optimization (SEO) because it gives you the opportunity to continually use your targeted keywords. Each time you write a blog, determine what the targeted keyword(s) will be and use them 3-5 times throughout. Additionally, those longer tail keyword phrases (i.e. how do I change the tire on my 2006 Camry?) can be difficult to use in your website content. Luckily, blogs provide the perfect opportunity to use these phrases. Hint: Use your long tail keyword phrase for the title!
- Blogging Provides You With Social Media Fodder
If you have trouble finding content to share on your social media sites each week, blogging can help. Blogging will provide you with consistent, quality content to share across all of your social media sites. If you write a blog every Monday and Wednesday, you automatically have two of your social media posts outlined for that week!
- Blogging Promotes Stickiness
Blogging keeps people on your site longer by engaging them with quality content. And if you hyperlink to other blogs or pages on your website, you are encouraging movement, decreasing the bounce rate. All of this is good for SEO. Search engines pay attention to your bounce rate, how longer people stay on your site, and how many pages they visit. With a blog, you have the opportunity to increase the stickiness, or time spent, on your website.
We hope these 5 reasons were enough to convince you to start a blog in 2015! If they were, check out our other “blogs on blogging” for help getting started:
Blogging Best Practices
10 Tips for Keeping a Successful Blog
As always, if you need assistance with setting up or managing a blog, please contact Informatics Inc.
photo credit: Carolyn Coles via flickr cc
