One of the sure fire ways to improve your website content is to set up a blog. It is very rare to see a website these days that doesn’t have a blog, what used to be a B2C thing is now prominent in B2B. Don’t feel that blogs are just for individuals to write reviews or discuss their latest musings, if you’re running a business with an online presence then you should be writing blogs too.
There are a few pitfalls to avoid when you’re setting your blog up, I’m going to cover a few here:
1. Onsite or offsite?
Your first decision will be whether to host the blog on your business website or whether to set it up as a new site. There are pros to setting up a completely separate blog – you can benefit from links back to your business site, which helps SEO and you can set it up in something like WordPress which requires little development to get it up and running. If you have the blog on your business site however, you are fully benefiting from SEO rich keywords on your site plus all the lovely traffic that comes with it.
2. Decide who you’re talking to
As with all marketing activity you need to make sure that your tone is not only representative of your business and brand, but also appeals to the type of people you’re talking to. You don’t want to take on a business tone if you’re audience is relaxed and there’s no point over complicating your language with tech talk if your audience aren’t technical at all.
3. Keep it up to date
There is nothing worse than visiting a blog that hasn’t been updated in months, it’s frustrating and once your audience mark it as a non updated blog, they’re unlikely to visit again. In addition you’ll find that Google is using frequency of updated content as a ranking tool so you’ll harm your rankings in the process. Aim for once a month at the absolute minimum for adding a new blog but for optimal performance you really need a new post once a week. Make sure that you put a note in your diary every time a blog is due because if you get busy you will forget! If you’re struggling to find time or inspiration yourself then rope in some colleagues or guest bloggers from other industry specialists.
A blog on your website will help with SEO, getting new traffic, repeat visits and stickiness with your customers. Once you’re into the habit of updating it regularly it will become much easier so stick with it!
