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
28 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.
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