Why a Blog is Essential to Your Business: NJ Online Marketing Strategies
At Reclaim Digital, we are frequently asked whether blogging is really an essential component for online marketing. In short, yes—if you have a business in NJ, online marketing can be greatly enhanced by a blog. Many of the people who have come to us with this question lack the time or skills to create high-quality content on a regular basis. And even if they did have the time, they would not know what topics to write about that could be of any benefit to the business.
We have had first-hand experience seeing small business owners build successful businesses in NJ with online marketing, in large part thanks to blogging and high-quality published content. These stories prove the benefits having a blog can give to your business in terms of search visibility, leads, and sales.
We, at Reclaim Digital, firmly advocate investing in a strong content publication strategy for businesses in NJ. Online marketing —really solid online marketing— requires that you build a company blog. We believe that even though having a highly optimized website is a super important part of developing your business’s online marketing strategy, with the type of competition that exists in the globalized economy, it is essential for businesses to go a step further.
Are you still confused whether blogging is necessary for your business? With this article, we present 8 of the top reasons why blogging is essential for your business. But before we dig in, there is an important question that needs to be addressed:
Should the blog be a part of your business website?
In short, yes. When we start discussing the top benefits below, you will see how important it is to have a blog on your business website instead of hosting it someplace else. There are many businesses in New Jersey that prefer using free blogging platforms such as Weebly.com or WordPress.com, because of the lower cost and simpler interface. However, the disadvantage of using a free blogging platform is that you end up with a blog domain <blogname>.wordpress.com.
That doesn’t look so professional.
If you have a business in NJ, an online marketing strategy is essential—and even though having a blog on an independent server outside of your business website is better than having no company blog, it is of far more benefit to host the blog on your business website.
Without further delay, we present the top 8 reasons why blogging is essential for your business:
1. Gives a boost to search engine traffic
If we are speaking about search engine rankings, blogging is similar to fishing in this case. The greater the number of hooks you throw in the water, the more likely it is that you will end up catching a fish. Similarly, the more high-quality content you publish on your business website, the more number of pages from your website are indexed in search engines. This gives an exceptional boost to organic search visibility and search engine traffic. In this case, the number of pages on your website is equivalent to the number of hooks you have in the water. If you present more opportunities for the users to find your bait, the more fish will bite on your baits. So, the higher the number of blogs you publish, the higher is the probability of your website getting ranked higher for various keywords. Win! At Reclaim Digital, we can help you get your SEO in order, so you rank at the top!
2. Connects the users to your brand
A truly high-quality website goes beyond just the home page and about page. It has content (i.e. blog posts!) that shows the users a more personal side of the business. With blogging, you can inform your users about the issues and concerns that interest your business, and let the users find common interests with your brand. A blog also provides an excellent platform for your business and your employees to share content on subjects that they are passionate about. The blogging platform presents a unique opportunity to give a voice to your brand to share important issues and give a personality to the company, which in turn builds trust among users. All of this leads to an increase in the likeability quotient of your business.
3. Provides a pillar for your initiatives on social media
We would like to bring to your attention that the lack of high-quality and unique content can make it very difficult for your business to maintain an active social media presence. It is completely alright for you to be sharing other website’s content on your social media, but at some point in time, you will want that traffic to be directed to your own website. This is NJ Online Marketing 101: By publishing a number of blog posts on your social media page you’ll help boost the traffic to your business website.
Achieving large amounts of traffic is very difficult without the relevant, unique information that is only found in blog posts. Also, the content on the blogging website can be used in an email newsletter: your customers will appreciate a simple top-10 list highlighting all your popular high-quality content that has been published over the last 2-4 weeks.
4. Assists in producing inbound links
It is very important for your SEO strategy to have high-quality inbound links that are directed towards your website. However, if your business website does not have a blog, it becomes more difficult to attract meaningful links to your primary website. With the addition of a blog, you add a number of blog posts that are used as a beacon by other bloggers and media. The number of inbound links starts increasing automatically as the bloggers, contributors, columnists, and authors cite and reference those blog posts in their own blogs. These inbound links serve an important role in SEO, but can also assist in producing a significant amount of referral traffic towards your business website.
5. Provides a rank for long-tail search queries
Long-tail search queries contain longer keywords. Typically, a searcher uses long-tail keywords when they are close to the point-of-purchase. They often come up during voice search as well. What this means is that the amount of traffic you get on your business website from long-tail search queries would is much more valuable than the traffic you get from a common keyword search. And how do you get more long-tail search queries directed to your site?
Yup. With a blog. It will attract committed and focused searchers who want your services specifically.
If your business website does not have a blogging part, it would be very difficult for your website to be ranked higher in long-tail search queries. A normal website will have no qualms in being ranked for business-specific keywords (e.g., “Wendy’s Handlooms”), but there would be a problem to draw traffic from highly-specific keywords like “Which is the best cloth for curtains?”. The more content you have on your website, the greater the chances of being ranked for long-tail queries. Also, the more content present on your website, the higher the probability that your website will rank for keyword phrases which are less common but give a higher-converting probability.
6. Gives an exceptional boost to the number of leads
There have been studies that show a relationship between the number of pages on your website and the number of leads received. It is stated that the more number of pages you have on your business website, the more leads you will get. A study by Hubspot showed that business websites with 401-1000 web pages that contain content get 6 times more leads than the websites that are hosting a mere 51-100 web pages. In short, the more content that is published on your website, the more leads are generated. With more content, you will get more quotation requests, more form submissions, more newsletter requests, and at the end, more sales.
7. Helps to start valuable discussions
With a blogging platform comes a unique opportunity for the clients and the business to connect and benefit from a one-to-one conversation. This sends a very positive image of your brand to the customers as it shows that you are open to feedback, constructive criticism, and comments. On the other hand, getting to know about what is going on in the minds of the customers can be the equivalent for the business to striking gold. By investigating further and by asking questions, you can gain new information regarding what the customer wants. With this new found information, you can construct your content and marketing strategies on the basis of this new information.
8. Gives you a feeling of ‘freshness.’
It is a very well-known fact that the search engines like Google love to see new content being added on their platform regularly. They reward the websites that are producing such content with better visibility on their platform. Therefore, the freshness factor becomes important while maintaining your business website. It is usually the trending searches that are a lead for businesses in generating fresh content. If such content is generated in a timely manner and is news-related, your business website will get more exposure to such searches. As stated earlier, publishing more content also means generating more inbound links. This leads to a higher number of pathways for search engine crawlers that can lay out greater Page Rank across your business website.
