Why Should Your Business Have a Blog?

As a business writer who writes business blogs for a living, this is a question that I address on a regular basis. Often a young business can barely afford to have a website, much less a blog, so let's talk about why the blog is important.

Assuming you have a website with blog capability--and not all do, especially one-page jobs--the blog is a very simple way to increase your ranking with search engines.

What does increase your ranking mean?

It means that Google looks at websites or "crawls" them, and takes note if there are changes and/or additions to the website. As your website expands, Google gives your website more "juice" or points or whatever you want to call it, compared to other similar websites that are unchanging.

Having a blog adds a page to your website every time the a new blog entry is published. 

Of course, I'm assuming that the blog post is of good quality, and that it's optimized for on-page SEO or Search Engine Optimization in several ways.

By good quality, I mean that it's good writing in intelligent English, or whatever language your website is in, that the article holds together, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and transitions in between them, that there are no grammatical or punctuation errors, that the English is perfect, that it's formatted the way it should be for the internet and SEO, that there are one or more images, that there are one or more appropriate links, and most of all, that the blog article has something of value to add to your brand and the web.

If your blog posts don't meet the requirements above, having a blog can hurt your ranking with search engines instead of helping you.

The next thing a blog does is help you to be a recognized authority on your area of expertise. So, if you're a house painter, you want people to come to your website for all kinds of information about house painting. You want as many people as possible to talk about your website as *the* best source of information on house painting.

Having a blog and increasing your search engine ranking helps potential customers to find you. Maybe someone in your area is looking to paint their gutters, so they look up "painting gutters chicago" and they find your article on painting gutters. This is just an example; I'm not sure if it's such a hot idea to paint gutters.

Blogs that are well done also generate leads, and leads are the cornerstone of networking in business. Great blogs inspire comments and sharing on social media. You should make it easy to share your blog on social media by your website's design. And you should talk to those who comment or share your information.

Hopefully, your business has one or more social media accounts, and you can share your own blog articles on social media.

Great blogs generate inbound links and increase your traffic. There is no downside to having a blog except the time it takes to write it and/or what it costs to pay someone to do it.

Should you write your business blog yourself is a question to answer in another article. The answer is maybe, but probably not.

So, as you can plainly see, having a business blog is a big asset for your business. The US Small Business Administration recommends spending 7-8% of your gross revenue on marketing. Some small companies spend much more than that to gain traction. Your blog should be considered part of your marketing.

The fact is that most people who are looking to hire someone look online first. In fact, 91% of adults who use computers, look online first. If you don't have a blog, you should. Like yesterday.

I write business blogs for a living. If you want to talk to me about writing your blog, contact me today.