Marketing trends change constantly, so it’s reasonable to wonder, “are blogs still relevant”. The short answer is yes, absolutely. In fact, blogging is one of the best marketing initiatives to grow your business and build your brand.
1. Google Likes Fresh Content
Google uses a variety of signals to rank a website, and regular updates is one of them. However, Google also takes into account the type of website and the quality of content so lots of minor changes won’t help. How often Google will crawl your website looking for new content will depend upon the type of website you have, and the patterns detected. For most websites, time interval between a Google bot crawl will be three days to four weeks, though established news websites are crawled every few hours.
Google also has two kinds of content crawls – a discovery crawl and a refresh crawl. The former searches for new pages on your website. The latter seeks updates to existing pages Google has previously indexed. So having a blog on your website that is updated at least once a month will signal to Google that someone is maintaining and updating the website regularly, which helps your search rankings.
2. A Blog Demonstrates Expertise and Authority
Well-written blogs position your brand as an authority in your industry. The topic expertise shown also helps to develop trust with your audience. Google also uses E A T – Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness – to determine the quality of the user experience on a given website.
3. Answer Common Questions
A good blog can answer pre-sale questions and questions your business commonly gets about its products and services. While no blog will completely eliminate all questions, it can decrease the amount of time needed to answer questions. Prospects will frequently explore your website to see if your business is a good fit for their needs. Blogs that address common questions can draw them in and help convert them to buyers.
4. Take Up More Google “Real Estate”
When people search for your industry, you want to show up in the results. It’s even better if you show up multiple times. A blog can help you do that. Let’s say you have a family dental practice. One way to stand out from the crowd would be to have a blog that addresses topics such as the difference between braces for adults versus those for children, invisible braces, why a person might consider veneers, and so forth. Then someone looking for one of those items might find both your main website and the relevant blogs.
5. Attract Prospects
Blogs can also help attract buyers. Consumers research their purchases now more than ever. When they find your brand through your blog, that can be the first step to getting them into your lead generation sales funnel.
Let Efferent Media Write Your Blogs
Producing high quality, SEO-optimized blogs on a consistent basis that highlight your business and expertise is time consuming. Let our expert content marketing do the work for you. If you need blog writing services or general SEO services, call Efferent Media’s marketing experts at (631) 867-0900 to get started.