If you’re a business or individual who wants to promote yourself, your expertise and/or your products or services online, then the answer to that question is probably, “yes.”
Put simply, a blog is a web page that gets updated periodically with new content. The subject of the blog can be anything, but it’s generally to meet a business or personal need. It’s a way to boost your online presence to potential customers or followers. A successful blog can drive traffic to your website, improve your SEO (search engine optimisation) and help new customers to discover your brand.
How did you get here, to this blog? Did you enter a search term on Google (or another search engine)? Maybe you clicked on a link that you saw on social media. Either way, there was something about this subject that caught your interest, made you stop scrolling, and click through to find out more. That’s the main aim of a business or personal blog.
When did blogs start?
Back in the 1990s when the internet was in its infancy, people started to set up websites. A web log (similar to a journal), was a place where someone would write about a particular topic. Remember, social media wasn’t really a thing then. Blogs (web logs) were the place to publish opinions and to create content to share with others.
A US college student, Justin Hall, is said to have created the first one in 1994. His was more of a personal homepage, but it was updated regularly with new content. In 1997, a tech blogger coined the term ‘web log’ which was then shortened to ‘blog’.
What are the key reasons for starting a blog?
Businesses and individual influencers tend to use blogs as for marketing and promotion. The main aim is to get more website visitors to engage with your content. It’s a way of boosting your visibility online to benefit your business. The main reasons to blog are:
1. To help your business rank on search engines. Incorporating relevant search terms into your business blog content will help you to be found by people looking for that information.
2. To position yourself as an expert in your field. Blogs are a great way to show expertise and instil trust by showing what you know. You’re providing helpful information for free (people love that). Sharing your expert knowledge boosts brand awareness when it performs well on Google.
3. To attract visitors to your site. You can then convert those visitors into leads. Blog content can be repurposed or shared across other marketing channels like social media platforms, podcasts and newsletters. It’s a great starting point to feed into different avenues and bring more people to your site.
4. To build and engage with an audience. It can be a good conversation starter for your online community. A successful blog can be used to build an email marketing list. Offer gated content for loyal users/ subscribers to your email list to learn more.
How does a blog contribute to a website’s SEO strategy?
An active blog that is updated on a regular basis sends a really important signal to Google that you’re an active business. Creating a blog with high quality content will entice Google to come back to your site more frequently and push you up the search engine rankings and help you improve your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). Ranking highly on SERPs will increase your website traffic as more people will click through to your content.
Search engine results are calculated by new content, the number of indexed pages and keywords. So it’s important to update your blog on a regular basis with new content, and to do your keyword research to make sure that the content’s optimised for search engines.
Drive traffic across your website with effective link building. Add links from your blog content to other pages, blogs and product or service pages on your site. This encourages people to spend more time on your site engaging with your content, as well as building brand awareness and visibility.
Take a look at our blog for more tips on SEO
Blogging for beginners: how to get started
So, we’ve shown how blogs play an important part in a digital marketing strategy and can be really effective in attracting your target audience of website visitors to your content. But how do you actually start blogging? Follow these steps to start blogging.
Plan
Define your target audience: who do you want to reach with your blog? Work out marketing personas so you know who you’re talking to. That will really help you to plan content that’ll connect with them.
Choose your content management system (CMS): there are many available, like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace. Take a look at what they offer and which suits your needs best. PS. We use WordPress.
Create a blog content strategy: decide your blog’s purpose. It needs to be specific enough to match your area of expertise, but broad enough to provide scope for lots of content. Decide who will create your blog content, how often it will publish, which keywords it will target and how it will be promoted.
Do your keyword research: work out which search terms your target audience are likely to type into Google. Think about the questions they need to be answered and problems to solve. Once you know the most relevant and achievable keywords to target, you can plan content around it.
Map out a content calendar: which content will you publish when? Are there reasons to publish on a specific date (eg is it a national day/ seasonal topic/ day a relevant event’s taking place)? A content calendar helps you to visualise the new content schedule and keep on top of content creation and its promotion.
Create
Think about article structure: to optimise your blog content, it’s important to use keywords in your headings and subheadings. Break up text with bullet points, subheadings and call to action buttons.
Use different types of blog style: create a mix of content. It could be purely informative, thought leadership, news or totally SEO focussed for example.
Write SEO optimised content: put your keyword research into practice. Write naturally in a tone that suits your brand and your target audience, but weave in those search terms as well.
Make sure there’s a call to action: tell the reader what you want them to do next. It could be to contact you, to sign up for email newsletters, to download a guide or read more of your content.
Promote
Add social media posts: help people to find your content by promoting it on your social media channels.
Include in newsletters and emails: if you have an email list, tell your subscribers about the new content.
Link building: add links to your blog from other blogs or webpages on your website.
Case study: Pinch of Nom
Back in 2016, Kay and Kate Allinson started to publish healthy recipes online. They set up a Facebook group to share their creations with friends and family. They proved popular! Their healthy food blog attracted more and more website visitors. Their social media community grew and grew.
Today, they still publish new content on their blog regularly. But they also have cookery books, a podcast with celebrity guests, and a newsletter (email list). Their content positions them as food experts and they share useful tips with ‘how to’ videos. They solve problems for their audience with content like ‘air fryer recipes’, ‘Weight Watchers friendly recipes’ and ‘our top 10 batch cooking recipes.’
Pinch of Nom founders, Kate and Kay, say “We’re still not sure we’d have believed anyone who told us that our little food blog would one day see us where we are today – bestselling authors with over 5 million books sold.”
Visit the Pinch of Nom website
Ready to get started?
If you’re keen to set up a new blog, or a whole website, we can help you to make sure it’s well optimised. We can support you with SEO research to find those all important keywords, a content strategy to help you plan the most effective blogs and ways to attract your target audience to your website.
Please get in touch to chat about your blog ideas, questions and plans. We’d love to help.
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