Our website is currently undergoing a major redesign. As a result, we are currently giving a lot of thought to the optimal configuration of our company blog. Strategic content, search engine optimization, content management system, social media, image selection, article promotion, and so much more all go into creating and sustaining a successful blog. In this piece, I’ll share some tips for creating a winning business blog. Why? Because blogs generate 6 times as much income as non-blog websites and 434% more pages indexed by search engines:
- Research shows that content marketing is the most effective method, and websites with blogs are the driving force behind this strategy.
- We’ve put together a comprehensive guide on blogging for business that will help your firm reach its goals. I say, “Shall we?”
Why Should Your Business Have a Blog?
- Businesses that maintain active blogs receive more leads, increase brand loyalty, and more easily surpass sales targets.
- It’s also what customers want; research shows that the vast majority (70%) prefer reading about a business rather than seeing adverts.
- One of the worst things a company can do in the modern digital age is to forego the benefits of establishing a company blog.
Blogs generate 97% more inbound links for businesses than traditional marketing methods. Sixty-seven percent more leads are generated for B2B marketers that blog than for those who don’t. It happens all the time with our clients and on our company blog, as I can attest.
My ability to outrank my rivals in search engines depends on the quality of the blog posts I publish. Although it does take time and effort, most business owners overestimate the difficulty of developing a successful business blog. Your blog may rank highly in SERPs and even compete with high-authority sites with a well-executed plan.
Perform CMS (Content Management System) Installation and Configuration
Getting the basics in order is our priority right now. A common error made by businesses is to rush into content publication without first addressing any technical considerations. Although they may not seem exciting, these factors are crucial to search engine optimisation, traffic generation, and reader expansion on your site. In as little as two days, and without any specialised knowledge or training, you may launch a successful business blog. You will need a blogging or website-building platform to get started. WordPress is my go-to site of choice.
- It has a tonne of features and can be downloaded for nothing.
- Plug-ins and themes make it simple to alter the look and feel of your site.
- If you need help keeping up your blog, WordPress makes it easy to give others administrative privileges. Because of its widespread use, it is understood by all professionals in the fields of website upkeep and content promotion.
- Include Weblog on Primary Menu
To determine whether or not your website provides the benefits you claim it does, visitors (and search engines!) will use the main navigation menu you’ve provided. Even the best material will be overlooked if the site is difficult to navigate. When that happens, you should expect a drop in organic search traffic.
Include a Link to Your Blog in Your Site’s Primary Menu
However, this changes if your landing page is tailored to lead visitors directly to a purchase. Couldn’t they be led astray by your blog’s inclusion? Although this is a reasonable concern, the reality is that most website visitors spend no more than 15 seconds on a landing page before moving on. Studies have shown that up to 95% of first-time visitors do not return for a second look. That ideal way to become a believer? However, few use it.
While your blog could potentially steer some visitors away from the best opportunity to convert, it would also provide them more reasons to stick around your site. When done correctly, blog content can increase consumer trust and provide you more chances to bring them back around to making a purchase. Shouldn’t your homepage feature more backlinks to your blog? Yes!
Homepage blog entries generate credibility for your brand even before readers go through to read them. How? Why? Because your blog titles are so catchy that people will consider you an authority even if they don’t read the rest of the post. They demonstrate that your company cares about its customers and is covering topics of interest to them at the right moment.
And what if they leave your landing page to read it? Better still. You’ve got some very great material and additional methods set up on your site to help turn readers into potential customers.
Make the Blog Site Today
Let’s speak about the format of your landing page now that we know why you should connect to your blogs page there. You can use numerous approaches to designing your blog’s layout. It should look and feel like the rest of your site, but you may be creative with where and how you feature material to drive home your brand’s most vital points.
The best structure for your blog will be determined by your specific field and goals. While a design firm may prioritise incorporating feature photos to highlight past work, a B2B consulting firm may prioritise featuring case studies.
Make a Blank Layout for Your Article
To make your blog more interesting and to increase the number of conversions, you should modify your blog theme to use a regular article page wireframe.
Blogs that employ a standard article page layout are more likely to attract readers’ attention and result in conversions. Your blog’s wireframe layout should showcase an eye-catching image and encourage visitors to continue reading. The following action might be:
- I’d like to sign up for your newsletter.
- Commencing a Risk-Free Trial
- Using social media to spread your content
- A white paper or e-book download
- Seeing something else on your site, like the products or services pages
- Setting up a meeting for advice
- Going over yet another blog post
Take a look at this sample of a Marketing Insider Group article wireframe:
Make Use of Keywords When Classifying
The strategic content organisation relies heavily on your blog’s categories or themes. They assist you keep on track and give a roadmap for search engine algorithms trying to decipher the worth of your material. They help to arrange your material and facilitate the site’s navigation.
These should be viewed as topical divisions, much like a printed newspaper’s “Local News,” “Business,” and “Sports” sections. Similar to how these newspaper sections direct readers to the locations where they may find the items they’re interested in, your blog’s categories will do the same for your audience. You should have no more than one article per category in your blog. This will help keep your content organised.
Don’t Make Your Categories Too Weird or Obscure
They should unmistakably reveal the scope of your blog. Use keywords as much as feasible within the categories for search engine optimisation (SEO).
We’ll go into the specifics of what makes for good blog categories in a little, but for now, just know that you should make some when you get started with your blog. Category structures can be compared to the many parts of a printed newspaper, such as the editorial, sports, business, and classifieds sections.
Make Your URLs Readable
This easy procedure guarantees a higher Google page rank for your blog. You are, in effect, giving your blog entries their unique web addresses. Instead of the date or a generic tag, the permalinks will contain bespoke data that will uniquely identify each post.
Regularly Release Content
You won’t see the results you want if you only put out content when you have spare time or when something exciting is happening in your field. Maintaining a consistent posting schedule is essential to the success of any business blog.
When Should You Update Your Blogs?
Our research shows that the best results come from publishing twice to four times each week. With traffic in this range, you may expect to observe the cumulative effects of organic growth.
And HubSpot has discovered the same thing, with minor variations depending on the purposes of the blogs. Three or four times weekly should be sufficient for organic traffic. Depending on the volume of your blog, you might publish as little as once every week if raising brand recognition is your top aim.
Make Sure to Space Out Your Updates Throughout the Week
Put up an article on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday if that’s how often you publish. You can also ride the traffic surge on Monday and Tuesday by publishing twice on those days. Blogging recommended practices also include posting when your audience is most likely to be online and engaged. This will change based on the specifics of your business, the preferences of your target demographic, and the time zone in which they reside.
By reviewing your Google Analytics data, you can determine the optimal posting time for your business blog. Post at 9 or 10 a.m. if the bulk of your readers is likely to be online at that time. If you notice a rise in readership in the late afternoon, try publishing your blogs at that time.
Content Creation for Humans and AI
Successful business blogging requires catering to both human readers and search engines. Find out what terms are important to your target market. Then, improve your blog entries by reading the top-ranked articles for a given search topic. To put pen to paper for clients:
- Determine what people in your market are interested in by using keyword research tools like Google Trends, SEMrush Topic Research, and Answer the Public.
- Examine Quora, social media, comment sections, and industry forums for insight into the concerns and conversations of your ideal customers.
- Learn more about your consumers’ tastes, behaviours, and propensity to buy by analysing intent data gleaned from web analytics and marketing automation tools.
- Make your material more scannable by using white space, subheadings, and bullet points.
For SEO purposes, you should:
- Make use of search engine optimisation on-page best practises by including relevant long-tail and specialty keywords.
- Use your keyword once near the beginning of your post and in the meta description.
- Don’t force keywords into the text without using them naturally.
- To show Google that your blog has new content, you should update the existing posts regularly.
To contribute to both:
Make material that people will use. If your content is useful, other websites will connect to it. The point of blogging is to attract the attention of other influential people in your field who will then link to your posts from their blogs because they find them so useful and informative. If you do this, your search engine optimization will skyrocket. Meanwhile, you’ll have a greater impact on your audience. If your material is compelling, readers will want to subscribe to your newsletter, download your white paper, and bookmark your blog for future updates.
Hire Someone Else to Do It
As a business owner, you likely don’t have a lot of spare time to devote to developing and implementing a coherent blogging strategy. And it’s possible that internal staffing won’t be feasible either. So, how does one go about making a fantastic business blog that does all of those things?
Outsource
Outsourcing allows you to do the work that you simply cannot do in-house. To construct an even more effective blog without the time and money-consuming trial and error that usually comes with nailing business blogging, consider collaborating with experienced content creators and strategists. Seventy-plus percent of companies now hire outside content providers to produce their marketing materials. Visit Engage Platform for more information.
It’s also a Money Saver
When you outsource, you just pay for the services you use, so you can easily increase or decrease the workload as needed. You can quickly change directions, and you do so with ease.