Continuously creating fresh, relevant content for your website takes time and effort. You may well wonder if it’s worth it. You may think that having a blog on your business website is just a nice extra, but it’s actually a critical piece of an effective online marketing strategy.
I have a good website. Why do I need a blog?
If your website consists only of a home page, a page of information about your company, pages detailing your products or services, and page of contact information, it may be difficult for your potential customers to find you online. For example, if your business offers home services like heating and cooling or plumbing to local customers, you want homeowners in your area to see your business name prominently displayed when they type in a search query like “heating and cooling service near me.” In order for that to happen, your website needs to send signals to Google and other search engines that it contains information that is highly relevant to that keyword phrase. If competing sites are sending stronger signals, then they’ll rank more highly than yours (and likely catch more potential customers’ eyes).
Your web content signals Google what your business is about.
So, how do you get the attention of search engines and communicate clearly to them what keywords are relevant to your business? Content. Sure, your home page (presumably) does a good job of describing what your business does and the value that it offers, and you have pages on your site dedicated to specific products and services that you provide. That is an important start. Make sure those pages include keyword phrases that your most desirable customers are likely to use when searching for businesses like yours.
More content = stronger signals.
The more pages of content your website has, however, the stronger signals it sends to search engines about what is relevant to your business. For example, imagine that rather than stopping with a section about heating and cooling services on your home page and a separate page that describes those services in depth, you write a weekly blog about heating and cooling issues. You might review products, give tips, and answer common questions that you get from customers. Each article you post to your blog about this topic will be separately indexed by search engines, meaning that it’s an additional opportunity to get your website in front of search engine users when they’re looking for information about heating and cooling.
The benefits of your blog extend beyond your ranking in search results.
If your customers are always asking, “How often should I have my furnace inspected?” or “Which heat pump is the best value for the price?” blog about it! Chances are if people are asking you in person, they’re also asking search engines online. When you provide valuable responses to common questions like these, you gain several important benefits:
- You increase the likelihood of showing up in results to online searches that are relevant to your business, increasing awareness of your business among potential customers.
- You gain the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, bolstering your reputation as an authority in your field.
- You build rapport with potential customers by providing them information they need when they need it.
Your blog can encourage interaction with your business.
By adding calls to action to your blog posts, you can give potential customers more ways to interact with your business, such as taking advantage of special offers, subscribing to your blog, or downloading more in-depth content, such a heat pump buying guide or a yearly HVAC maintenance checklist. Interactions like these give you the opportunity to collect visitors’ contact information so you can continue to communicate with them and be top of mind when they need your services.
Ready to get started? You can find more blogging tips on our blog. If you’d like professional help with your blog, contact Blue Frog Marketing! With offices in Des Moines, Iowa, and Huron, Ohio, we provide a wide range of professional digital and print marketing services to clients nationwide. Whether you just want some advice and help as you get started or you want us to handle all of your blogging and other inbound marketing needs, we’d love to work with you!
