If you run your own small business, you wear a lot of hats! One of these hats may include writing for your blog that’s on your website.

No? Your website doesn’t have a blog?  Well, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but, unless you are an E-commerce site with robust product descriptions, or have a website that you never need potential clients or customers to visit, then you should have a blog on your website! 

BUT WHY? 

Why Should My  Small Business Website Have a Blog?

The short answer- there are two major reasons why your small business website should have a blog:

1. Blogs are the BEST WAY to create "findability" for your website.  I just made that term up, but it's good, listen!

Findability (definition): The ability for a website to be found by potential customers and clients. The technical term for "findability is SEO, which stands for "Search Engine Optimization."

2. Blogs serve as a foundation for your content marketing, and content marketing (i.e. social media, newsletters, podcasts, youtube show) is the way of the current marketing world.

Let’s dive deeper!

via GIPHY

1. How to build SEO or "Findability" for your Website with a Blog

A. Blogging Adds More Pages To Your Website

By having a blog on your website you are adding more pages to your website, and the more pages you have on your website, the higher Google will rank your website against your competitors.

Google calls pages that visitors can find on your website "indexed pages" and they give better rankings to websites with more quality "Indexed pages."

And the better you are ranked by Google, the higher you will be placed on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when your customers are looking for services or products that you sell!

And the closer that you are to the top of your customer’s search results, the more likely you are to gain their business, right?

So blogging = more website pages = higher placement on the SERP= more sales! .

But there is one more catch- Adding a bunch of pages to your website just won’t cut it!

Google is smart and would like its users to receive value.

So share interesting, credible content, you guys!

Read further about the type of content you should add to the pages you add to your website for SEO purposes here

 https://www.gobluemedia.com/blog/more-pages-better-seo-results/

B. Blog Pages Help To Add Keywords, and  Keywords Help Customers Find You.

 “ Keyword”  is internet-speak for  “ Search Term.”  Ideally, when your potential customer needs or wants something you sell or provide, she will search for her desire on the internet by typing in a keyword in the search bar and you will pop up first in her search results.  But there are probably hundreds of possible words or combinations of words that a potential customer could type into google when she is looking for you, right? Right!

The Goal?  Your website is optimized for search (or SEO, see above) for ALL of the keywords your customer might type!

 BUT, each page on your website will only optimize for one Search Term. You can’t really optimize for more than one- Google just doesn’t allow it! 

Google says that is confusing and usually serves as a red flag for poor content (Google calls this “Key Word stuffing”)

And that is why blogging is so awesome because, with each blog you post to your website, another page is created on your website. which gives you new real estate to optimize for an additional keyword.

Check-out Neil Patel’s tips on adding Search Terms to your website or blog here:  https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/11/14/how-to-rank-for-a-keyword

C. Blog Articles Lead to Backlinks

If you are unfamiliar with the term, ‘backlink’, that’s okay!

A backlink is when a link referring to another website or resource is added to your page or another website refers back, or links,  to your website! 

 Backlinks are yet another way to help you rank higher on the SERP because Google gives priority to websites with numerous, credible backlinks. It creates authority, right? 

If your blog is often referenced, by other websites it probably means that these businesses find you credible. You gain "clout" and Google’s trust and voila, move up higher on the SERP. 

via GIPHY

2. Blogs Create Content: Content is King

A. Content For Your Email List

Let’s say you have an email go out every week, or at least you’d like for an email to go out every week, blogging helps with that. The more blogs you write, the more content and information you’ll have to share with your audience. The resources are right at your fingertips, so take that blog you wrote and create an email from it! 

B. Blogs Provide You With Social Media Content 

Sometimes coming up with content for your social media pages is challenging. However, if you have content from your blog you could pull from, do it! This not only gives you more content for your social media pages, it also drives traffic back to your website. It’s really a win-win situation.  

 The bottom line:

If you consistently add valuable and relevant information to your website, you will slowly create a reputable brand to whom Google will gladly send users that want to work with you!

And BONUS:  you will create a bank of great content you can use in all of your marketing and branding efforts.

Blogging is a long game but one worth investing your time and marketing dollars in.

It’s time to get to blogging! For inspiration, check out my other blog posts here.

I use Kajabi to create my blog and website. Interested in Kajabi? Try it for free for 14 days and then receive 20% off the annual price with my referral link. Click here.