Regularly publishing interesting / relevant blogs on your website, and then posting them on your social media channels, will drive additional visitors to your website.
Here is how.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Every time you write a new blog you are effectively creating a new web page which can be indexed by Google, Bing, Safari and the other search engines. When your audience searches for information online using keywords that are present in the blog, your blog page will be included in the results.
How high up in the search engine ranking pages it appears, depends on how much competition you have in your market / industry, i.e. how many pages there are on the same topic, how popular your site is, and how close a match the search engine algorithms think it is to what information the search is looking for.
New blog pages tell the search engines that your website is active, up to date and frequently managed. If your competitor sites are dormant your pages will show up higher than theirs. If your blogs then receive lots of hits your site’s popularity will increase – another signal to the search engines to rank your pages higher.
Including key words in your blog not only helps match your blog to search queries, but will also increase your probability of being presented through voice search engines such as Siri (Apple) and Cortana (Microsoft).
Social Media
Posting a link to your blogs on social media or re-writing them specifically for platforms such as Linkedin Pulse and including a link is also a good way of reaching a wider audience than just search engines. However, because the search engines can see that you are linking your website to social media sites and receiving visitors in return, they will take this as a sign of popularity and again place your pages higher on the search engine rankings.
Establish Authority
Strong, well-written and researched content will help your business establish a position of authority with your target audience. Blogs remain as a library of information on your website and therefore add credibility and substance to your online propsition.
Subject Matter Expertise (SME) is the latest digital content marketing buzzword with its premise being that if you can demonstrate to a potential buyer that you know your stuff, they are more likely to get in touch and trust your offering.
Facts and figures are always helpful, and, if your target audience learn something new whilst reading your blog they are more likely to visit again and send an enquiry when ready.
Results
Ultimate a blog writing strategy will be judged on the results it brings. How many new visitors to your website, how many more enquiries, how many more genuine leads and how much new business.
A blog writing strategy will not bring you overnight success but by regularly publishing well-written blogs, posted on social media channels, you will, in a few months realise the additional reach and activity that you are looking for.
To create a successful blog, you must first of all come up with a blogging strategy and editorial calendar – plan what you are going to write and at what frequency you are going to publish. They don’t have to be particularly long (350-450 words is about right) and then stick to the plan. Writing blogs is one of the first tasks that falls by the wayside when other priorities come up, but in our view they are an essential element of marketing and lead generation activities.
Waypoint specialises in providing well written and researched blogs and content. To see how this has helped our clients and the increase in leads generated, please visit our case studies page. If you would like more information on our content writing capabilities, please do get in touch at info@waypointdigitalmarketing.com or call 01962 862760.