Telling someone to start a blog is so 2016. These days, seemingly every business houses a blog, and many of them do not make a tangible difference in attracting web visitors and delighting customers.
But in reality, that’s where most marketers make a significant mistake. Blogging is in fact still a vital marketing tool, if you get it right. Publish the right post, and it could be a core part of your inbound marketing efforts. More specifically, here are our top 5 reasons blogging is still important in 2017 and beyond.
1) The Undeniable SEO Benefits
At this point, you have heard it everywhere: blogging will improve your SEO. The reasons that is true range widely, but can be distilled to three major factors:
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- Regular blogs allow you to focus on keywords relevant to your brand. The more high-quality content you publish on those keywords, the higher you will rank over time.
- Blogging also adds fresh content to your site, which prompts Google’s crawlers to re-examine it. If your SEO has improved, this is the indicator for Google to change your ranking.
- High-quality posts will be shared by your readers. Those shares, in turn, up your credibility score for search engines who will rank current and future content on your website more highly as a result.
Given these factors, it’s no surprise that businesses with an active blog have significantly more positive SEO results to show for.
2) Great Content Has Never Mattered More
We’re past the year when content marketing is great was a novel and bold proclamation. Today, chances are all of your competitors engage in the concept at least to some degree; in fact, more than 90 percent of businesses across industries use content in their marketing strategy.
To stand out, you need not just any blog – you need a blog full of great content. Each post should add distinct value for your audience, and answer core pain points or questions they might have. Google’s algorithm changes have gradually moved toward an emphasis of content over structural changes for SEO as well, further emphasizing the need for high-quality blog posts.
3) Anchor Your Digital Strategy
A great blog post is more than just an article. Instead, it can be the piece that links your entire digital marketing strategy together.
You can share various portions of it on social media. You can use it as the basis for or a sneak peak into some of your gated content, such as webinars and whitepapers. You can even use it to populate your lead nurturing efforts. A single great blog post, in other words, can power and anchor your entire digital marketing strategy for a given time frame.
4) Increase Your Thought Leadership
Finally, don’t underestimate the value that your audience places on high-quality business blog content. If you find the right topics, and write about them authoritatively, you will gain significant credibility in the eyes of your web visitors and social media followers that could pay off big time down the road.
Ultimately, your goal should be for your blog to become a go-to industry resource. You can arrive at that point by focusing on just the right topics, in just the right depth. Once you get there, your chances of attracting visitors, converting leads, and delighting customers increase drastically.
5) Undeniable Cost Efficiency
Let’s face it: budget is an undeniable consideration when it comes to determining your marketing efforts. Effective marketers are always on the hunt for cost-efficient tactics that provide positive ROI. If you consider yourself part of that group, or simply want to emphasize promotional efforts that will not make a major dent in your budget, blogging is a must.
Even considering all of the above benefits, blogging can be completely free depending on the software you use. And even if you outsource your content efforts, the costs will not be nearly as high as other opportunities. A marketing tool that improves your SEO, positions you as a thought leader, and anchors your digital strategy, all for free? Sign us up.
Given all of the above benefits, it’s impossible to understate the importance of blogging to your online marketing success. Do it right, and your traffic will rise, your credibility will increase, and your business will grow.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
