Why do YOU need to Blog?

On an almost weekly basis I get asked why blogging is so important. And the simple answer is, if done correctly, it becomes your most powerful sales tool.

Why you need to blogMany SEO Specialists have written articles on this very topic all claiming the same thing expecting you to take their word for it. For example, back in Dec of 2008 (on Google Knol which is no longer available) I wrote a small article on "Why Blogging is so Important" in which I gave a pretty good explanation as to why each website needs one. This article had gotten quite a few hundred thousand hits with no visible or mentionable results other than providing the reader with a good reason to start blogging. Only a few commented on them starting to blog.

However, telling you why you need to blog is a tad bit different then showing you why you need to blog. And that was the key. Showing people why they need to do something versus just telling them makes all the difference in the world. So in this article on "Why do YOU need to blog" I will show you actual results of blogging and then you can make up your mind.

Blog Preparation

  • The first and most important step, before you begin writing your blog article, is knowing who your target audience is. In our line of work, not only do we get other website owners and potential clients reviewing and studying our articles, we get alot of developers, seo gurus and other web masters reading them as well. As a Website and SEO specialist myself, all to often I write articles that lean towards teaching other web masters how to do what I am doing, when in fact, I am trying to teach potential future clients how to increase traffic on their site in hopes that they will contact us for our services. So its very important to articulate your blog article in such away that you are attracting the viewers that you want to attract.
  • The second rule in writing blog articles is knowing what keywords you are wanting to target. Knowing how to write a SEO Article/Blog Content is a whole other lesson in itself.
  • The third basic rule in blogging is adding the visual aspect that grabs your target audiences attention to make them want to continue reading. You can do this by adding pictures to your article. You want to keep it interesting by drawing in your audience. You will do this with a couple of relevant pics, bullet points, H Tags, as well as the typical bold, underline and italics formatting. If done correctly, you visually stimulate your audience into continued reading.
  • The fourth rule of blogging is a specific call to action. What do you want people to do once they are done reading the blog article?. Afterall, what is the point of writing an article if you are in a product or services based business without asking your viewers to do something once they have read it?
  • the last rule or suggestion to blogging is being consistent with your blogs. Its recommended to produce 2-3 blog articles a week for your target audience. This does three things; 1) keeps the flow of traffic to your site steady, 2) keeps the search engines coming back to your site looking for new content and 3) helps to establish your company as a specialist in your field which builds consumer confidence.

Benefits of Blogging

In order to understand the benefits of blogging you really need to understand what a blog is about and what its for. If you are reading this you should be able to see the importance already. In our blog we provide information that pertains to our services in the form of an article that provides "you" the viewer valuable information that will either cause you to implement our suggested strategy or to call us and have our Blog Team do it for you. You may or may not call us now, but in the future when a web related need arises the overall goal is that you remember who we are and to eventually capture your business. You want the same for yourself with your blog articles.

Blogging is a dynamic way to provided fresh content on your website without having to create extra pages and links to those pages on your website menus. It's like a website unto itself within your current website.

You Need a BlogOur services are website design and development with an emphasis on the Joomla and Wordpress Content Management System. We also provide Search Engine Optimization Services. However, there is no way to cover on one page the over 300+ SEO techniques we provide. That is where the blog comes in. We can talk/communicate on our blog, article after article on each individual SEO service that we offer seperately. The article is designed to engage the viewer with the goal of 1) them implementing our strategies and keeping them coming back for more or 2) for them to contact us to help them implement that strategy for them.

"After all, generally speaking the sole purpose of a website or blog article is to capture future business. A blog opens doors to potential clients that your static website pages would not have."

Let me show you how this works:

As we mentioned before we offer SEO Services. Well this is a large field of services and the list of what we can do is long. So on our SEO Services page the keyword we are trying to rank for is SEO Services in Kansas City. Well if we have 100 Search Engine Optimization Services that we offer and we list every single one, then how do we rank for all 100 of those services on one page? The answer to that is we cant!

However, with our blog we can start writing articles on those individual services and start ranking and bringing in potential clients from the Blog Articles that we write (such as this one).

Here is a case study of one of our blog articles:

One of our SEO Services is helping clients setup valuable backlinks to their website using a typical SEO Strategy that works. We picked a high ranking website (to use as a tool to drive traffic) that has lots of members and viewers that can be targeted for this article that we wrote.

This blog article we wrote right before this one you are reading is called: How to Drive Traffic with a Squidoo Lens.

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The importance of bloggingThis article was written Feb 22nd, 2010 and within 22 hours of publishing this blog article, not only was it showing up within the top 10 results, we were at position #7 for the search term "How to Drive Traffic with a Squidoo Lens" which is exactly what we were wanting to do.

As your create and provide more and more relevant information for your readers several things will happen.

1) Your site will obviously receive more hits.

2) Your readers will pass on your articles to others.

3) Your overall site page rank will increase, thus passing on your sites page rank to your blog articles even faster.

4) As page rank and relevance increases your articles will start to be indexed quicker by the search engines giving your articles a leg up over other similar articles that have been out longer than yours.

5) Your followers will increase. Building your blog followers is very important. Allowing them to interact with your blog by being able to leave comments will give you the interaction with your visitors in a way that not only keeps them coming back but also provides valuable feedback on more of what they are wanting and needing.

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the benefits of bloggingWithin a few days our position moved from #7 to the #3 position and is now at the #1 spot on Google. So the whole point of this example is to show you that not only do we bring traffic to our website in from our static website page called "SEO in Kansas City" we are now bringing in visitors based on one of our non-mentioned services that we offer in a very short amount of time by using a blog. This article alone has made us $2700.00 in less than a month as well as bringing more relevance to our entire website as a whole.

Summary: Blogging gives you the ability to rank individual articles that will draw traffic to your site that you would not have normally gotten from your static pages. It increases traffic, helps to raise page rank, bring more relevance to your site, provides value to your readers and open doors to new business and opportunities.

Here is a quick SEO Blog Tip:

The best way to get a backlink from someone else's site to yours is not necessarily trying to convince them to link from their home page to yours (that generally doesn't happen) but to have them write a small and quick blog article/review of your site and services in their blog. These types of back links are more relevant in the search engines eyes and works well in driving more traffic to your site from a blog that has many viewers over just your link being on their site.

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