Your Business Needs A Blog :: Part 2

Last week I talked about why your business needs a blog; and because I was fearful that if I made the post too long, you would get bored, I broke it into two parts.  This post will focus more on the increase in traffic aspect of why you need a blog.

How does a blog increase website traffic?

I mentioned last week, that if the content was informative and helpful to the reader, it could result in a purchase.  What I did not mention was that the content is the reason why the visitor landed on your blog post.  They searched for something on a search engine site like Google, and your blog post was one of the relevant search results that they clicked on.  With a little search engine optimization (SEO) help, your blog post may have been in the number one position on the search results page of their query.

Another reason why your blog post was where the visitor could see it in their search results, instead of being buried on page fifty-seven, is because you have been consistently blogging.  In the eyes of search engines, your website is considered relevant not just because that particular post was relevant to the visitor’s query, but because your site is “updated.”  Search engines take into account whether a website is being maintained or updated with fresh content.  Consistently blogging from your site adds new content, and new content is updated content in the eyes of search engines.  If you are not blogging, adding new products or updating the content on your website in any way, then search engines see your site as being stale.  Stale sites get buried on page fifty-seven.

Many businesses have a website designed, and because the information does not need to be changed very often, they only update them once or twice a year.   Normally this is only done to change the copyright year in the footer of the site or remove a staff member’s name that is no longer with the company.  Consider this scenario:  Company A sells pecans, has competitive prices and offers excellent customer service, but only updates their website once or twice a year.  Company B sells pecans that are priced above average and has a couple of complaints with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but blogs weekly.  Customer C searches the internet to find pecans for sale and Company B shows up in Customer C’s search results on page one.  Company A is on page fifty-seven.  Although Company A is the better choice for buying pecans, Customer C will likely never find that out.

If you created a web site so that you could have a web presence, take it one step further and add a blog.  By doing so, you will increase your web presence and your earning potential.