Why does my small business need a blog?
Why does my small business need a blog? This is a common question that I hear from business owners. The reality is there is not a simple answer to this question. I believe that the best way to explain the answer is through a hypothetical case study.
A friend of mine owns All Pro Painting , which is a commercial painting business in Seattle. You might think that his main goal is to rank number one in Google for the phrase “Seattle Painters”. After all “Seattle Painters” is a relatively competitive keyword phrase. However, the fact is that there are not a lot of people that search for commercial painting companies in Seattle this way. Unfortunately the keyword phrase “Seattle Painters” is pretty vague. “Seattle Painters could refer to artists, commercial painters, residential home painters, or anything related to painting in the greater Seattle area.
So what is the solution for this painting business to get internet traffic from their website? You guessed it. They need a blog. Blogs do several things for a website. Blogs increase the total number of pages on a website, which means that there are more pages in Google with the potential to rank for any given keyword phrase. Blogs also allow small business to write about what they are actually doing. In this case All Pro Painting isn’t going to want to stuff every blog post with the term “Seattle Painters”. Instead, they should be writing about the various projects that they are working on. For instance, they could be painting the exterior of a home in Fremont. Maybe there were some interesting challenges that they were able to over come on this painting project, or maybe the before an after pictures were so amazing that they really wanted to share them with potential customers. If All Pro Painting continued writing these blog posts on a bi-weekly basis, they would have over 100 blog posts within 12 months. That would mean that All Pro Painting would have over 100 pages in Google that ranked for various search terms related to their business.
You can see in this example how important blogs have become for small businesses to thrive on the internet in their local markets. The days of getting by with a static website have dissolved. Now, you might be thinking of going to WordPress or Blogger to go sign up for a free blog to get started, but your should hold that thought. You are going to be spending a lot of time and effort on your blog and there is no reason that you should be giving this value to someone else. You want to keep your blog on your own businesses website. Keeping your blog within your website will make the blog an extension of your existing website. Your blog URL should look like the following. http://YourBussiness.com/blog. There are also several other factors and tweaks that you are going to want to do to maximize the potential of your blog and overall internet presence, but we can talk about that when you call HDR Web Designs.
Ryan Martin ~ HDR Web Designs
47 Responses to “Why does my small business need a blog?”
A blog with current information and regular updates, especially one built with WordPress is going to get much better rankings in the search engines than a plain business site with static data and contact information.
WordPress does make this so easy.
Depending on the business, finding material to write about on a regular basis can be challenging.
I agree…whatever way to increase your page rank is necessary to do to have a successful online business. Blogs are a must in this technological age.
It’s a great way to get into social media and connect on a human level with your customers.
Actually if i make a blog on my little business, then it helps marketing my business. But i need to do that in a proper way, so that people know about it. In this case WordPress os very handy.
This was a really good post. It is rare that you find talents such as yours in both Design and Optimization. I am very limited in the design area while considered by many to be the best in SEO.
Glad I was refered to this Blog by a friend…
I can see how a blog helps businesses. But some niches are very difficult to write blog posts for. Either way, the new content is loved by people and the search engines. So it is very useful.
@Brad ~ It can be challenging to come up with good blog ideas, especially if you are not a writer. I believe that this blog is a pretty good example as I have failed to update it in a few months. Thank you for your comment.
Ryan,Even though you say you haven’t done to much of updates you have already received a good PR, so there must be a secret to your fast success with PR.. and about your post really the small business owners can interact more with their visitors and that might end up in a business deal. Great stuff and I hope you will update this regularly.
-Ben.
don’t even get me started on how important blogs are for small businesses because, like you said, they give you so many additional pages that can be ranked for specific keyword content by Google. This is not something to be missed!
Interesting. We have considered adding a blog to our site. But we have wondered how valuable it would be. Our idea is to do tutorials on how to work on paint sprayers, since that is what we do. Your argument was very persuasive.
There’s no doubt a blog is essential for business websites. I’ve heard different opinions on where the blog should be located, however. Some think it should be in a sub-folder on your domain as this post suggested. Others say it should be on a subdomain of your site (blog.yourdomain.com), and some people think it should be on a separate domain so you can build in-bound links to your main site. Who is right? Where is the best place to have your blog?
@Ben ~ Thank you. I know that I need to update this blog. It is so easy to get caught up doing other things. I will try to write some more content soon.
@Bethany ~ I firmly believe that business blogs are essential.
@Jason ~ There are always things that you can blog about on any subject. I would recommend doing some video blogs about paint sprayers. I bet that would be a big hit on YouTube too.
@Ryan ~ I do believe that your business blog should be in a subfolder. The problem with using a subdomain is that the link juice won’t pass the same as a subfolder.
Blogs are an awesome way to exchange ideas and meet new people. I have come to realize this recently and I’m glad that I have.
I hope that you don’t mind that I use this example the next time someone ask me why they need a blog. 100 pages in Google in a year…that’s good stuff.
Blogging has proved to be very beneficial for a number of my clients. It has served as a bridge to them to their clients on how their products and services could help them.
I think it’s important to have a great exposure for your business. Goodluck!
blogs are a great way of getting traffic as well as to interact with potential customers
I think it is good even for big corporation not only for small company.
blog is good as additional way of communication to people and for business customers.
I completely agree with your view that small business owners need a blog to tell about their latest happenings but one more thing we should not forget that Blogs has the feature of commenting. It will allow instant feedback for the person who reads the article. For small business owners, I think creating relationships with customers is important so they become their long-time customers. By being active writing blogs and also replying to the com-mentors questions it’ll bring more traffic and it’ll also improve products by getting regular feedback.
Blogs are a easy way to invite feedback and keep a communication channel open with your prospective visitors. Be it small or large a business needs to keep an open channel for peer and visitor feedback.
It’s easier now to install a blog than it is to develop a website. Especially if you use wordpress
It does not matter whether the business is small or big the matter is that it needs to reach people and convey the message. Blog can spread your ideas and at the same time you can clear any doubts if anyone has raised. So it is a better way to get the traffic. Thanks for the nice article.
It will allow instant feedback for the person who reads the article. For small business owners, I think creating relationships with customers is important so they become their long-time customers.
A blog is an absolute must for any business
We’ve had real success posting short video how-to’s and niche specific information on our blog. It’s given our site the personal touch that it needed.
some small business owners are not aware of the technical side to web design and development however blogs such as wordpress give the ability for users to update their website with ease via a user friendly third party cms.
True that the main purpose of a blog for a business is giving updates and related useful articles regarding the same niche. Another is interacting with customers and fellow businessmen. However, there are some businesses are best if combined with a forum site to enhance interactivity.
Its good to have a blog for small business……. Publicity is the basic need for them..blog really help them……as you said your friend owing some Ars Easels…. he need the blog…..
Thanks.
Blogs almost seem like the defacto these days. I think blogs are very important for companies because they keep content fresh on their web site and it’s adding to public knowledge. The more you can share your knowledge with others the more our society can grow. Great Article. Thanks for starting the convo.
I guess there’s just nothing really simpler you can do in terms of marketing over posting to your blog, if you’ve got 30 minutes what could be simpler than posting to a wordpress blog? you can develop your site, your seo and authority with just a few hundred words, and regular posting will just add to the benefits.
Yes blogging is definitely the way to go for optimizing search results. I to am optimizing for my painting business also. I post articles around once a week on various painting topics. One week I will be talking about interior wall painting and the next one I’ll be talking about drywall repairing and so forth if you stay on topic on your blog and seed it with a couple of keywords that are relevant to the topic you should be indexed and found on the Internet.
I did notice an improvement once I installed a WordPress blog onto my website.
A blog is essential for a small business nowadays. This is how you can differentiate yourself from the “big guy”. It is a chance to sell yourself and your product/services before you even have the client call you.
Blog is very useful tool in a business website, it allows the owner to add new content dynamically, keeping it in chronicle order. It is up to the owner to decide whether the content will be news, tutorials or anything else inside the blog. While one system can be designed to add articles to a business website, in order to fill in with content – a blog is a more flexible way to display that kind of content.
A blog for businesses is very useful. Having a website for customers to go online and read up on what your business is all about is really important. Now days you can get a lot of customers online. Almost everyone surf the web/internet when they’re bored.
Small businesses need a blog/website just to keep everything updated so that people will want to read about the website, etc. Everyone looks online for information now days so that’s important.
Great marketing if businesses have blogs for people to view and read. Boost up the website and also your company.
In order to gain trust of their audience, small business owners need to showcase their product and provide valid and non bias information about it, his can be done by creating a blog.
Interesting read, you’re dead right about the way people search and that “Seattle Painters” may not be the most effective search term. This is something that people inexperienced in SEO would totally overlook – even some so called “professional” SEO consultants would miss this fact.
The easy answer is that all publicity is good. It seems a mountain has to be climbed to have a good presence on internet but I think it needs to be done one step at a time and a blog is a good start.
With he help of blog you can communicate with you customers,also search engine loves blogs so if you regularly write for your business blog and promote it on social media too, you can have a decent amount of targeted traffic.
I also have a small business and searching for tips and strategies how to market my products online. Please advice.
We have come a long way from bulky phone directories and telephone operators’ information services. These days, everything seems to be just a click away. Everything and everyone can be found via the internet.
You have good insights here. Very informative and interesting post!
I work part time as a Search Engine Marketer for small businesses in my area and from time to time like to build up small blogs about the businesses topic to fulfill two objectives. Get another high quality backlink to my site (from a site with similar content) and also to try to create a “question and answer” portal for people interested in topic. I find they work very well and on some occasions these blogs end up ranking well in Google too!
Blogs are very interesting way to move your business, thanks!
Hi, I must say that blogs are really important for small businesses because, like you said, they give you so many additional pages that can be ranked for specific keyword content by Google. I believe this is not something to be missed! Thanks for sharing this valuable information.
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