Factors to Consider Before You Add a Blog to Your Small Business Website

By Rhonda Campbell

Points to Consider about Small Business Blogs

Search engines love blogs for one simple reason. Blogs allow search engines to direct users to fresh content. In fact, if instead of thinking of a search engine as a complicated software program you thought of it as a friend who gave you directions to local attractions, events, etc. you wanted to attend, it may become more clear to you as to why search engines love blogs.

Blog content helps search engines to satisfy millions of Internet users who are hunting for specific types of content. Add enough content about one to three particular subjects (e.g. marketing, fiction writing, auto racing, education) to your blog and you may be viewed as an “expert” in fields you blog about. When this happens don’t be surprised if you see your company blog move up search engine rankings.

But should you add a blog to your small business website? And if you do, what can you do to ensure your small business blog is able to hold its own against the millions of other blogs already on the Internet?

Key Points to Consider about Small Business Blogs

A key point to consider when answering these questions is your ability to create attention grabbing content. After all, consistently creating engaging content isn’t as easy as it looks. Most business owners can create sticky content sometimes. However, creating daily online articles people are eager to share with their family, friends and colleagues takes work, which makes this “to do” both a pro and a con of adding a blog to your company website. Other factors to consider before adding a blog to your small business website include:

• Who will write the blog articles – because you want to create and publish fresh content daily, think about whether or not you want to hire a team of writers to create the content for you. Of course, you can also set aside an hour a day to write one to two new blog articles yourself.
• How are you going to build back links to your blog – the more quality websites you have linking to your blog posts, the more traffic search engines will likely direct to your blog. You could ask writers you hire as independent contractors or employees to create back links to each article they write or you could assign that responsibility to someone else at your firm. Of course, if you manage a micro-small business you may end up completing that task yourself.
• Are you going to include advertisements (in-house or external through companies and ad networks like Google Adsense, ValueClick, Mirago and SearchFeed) on your company blog pages – Although you can generate thousands of dollars a month by placing ads on your blog, you may not have much control over the types of external ads that are placed on your blog. Also consider how many (and where) you want to place ads on your blog as too many ads may distract visitors from your blog content.

Linking Small Business Website Blogs to Customer Sales

If you do decide to add a blog to your small business website consider creating blog posts that are similar, in subject, to the products and services you sale to customers. This way you can avoid pulling in visitors to your blog who may love reading your blog but have zero interest in ever ordering from you. Also consider keeping displayed blog posts to one short page, so visitors don’t spend the bulk of their time at your website scrolling through six or more blog posts.

Remember your goal is to get a higher search engine ranking for your company website. In turn, this higher ranking can attract more visitors to your business products and services, thereby increasing your customer sales. By mentioning one to two of your products and services in each blog posts you can keep these products and services on the minds of current and prospective customers helping to build familiarity and trust with your brand, another achievement that leads to great customer sales.

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