The importance of blogging for business is well-documented: it’s an excellent way to grow your business whilst also showing there’s a human face behind your brand. But here’s the thing, if you’ve got a blog, but it’s not on your company website, you’re missing a trick. Big time.
A lot of businesses use free services such as WordPress Blogger or Typepad to create their blogs, and they each provide a quick and easy way to create a blog. But there are two ways to use these services: either using their free hosting, or by installing the blog on your own website.
My advice: put your blog on your website.
Why you need a blog on your website
A blog lets you make regular updates to your site, provide helpful information to your readers, and share news and developments from within your industry. Ultimately, however, you’re trying to make sales. You want the people who read your blog to buy from you. If your blog is not on your domain, it’s taking them away from your website and all the information about your services. Not helpful.
And if it’s not on your site, you’re not getting the full SEO benefit from it. As far as Google is concerned, that blog has nothing to do with your site, and neither does the content on it. So effectively, you’re not getting credit for your own content. Furthermore, Google likes websites that update frequently, that aren’t left to stagnate, and that provide relevant and up-to-date content. In many industries, particularly service-based industries where the offers perhaps don’t change frequently, it can be hard to keep your website updated. That’s where your blog comes in. It will allow you to generate new content as often as you like, whether this is daily, weekly, or less often.
If your blog is on your website, it could help you rank for a whole host of long-tail phrases. People tend to ask questions when they’re searching in Google – these might not fit with your overall SEO strategy, so where better to address them than in your blog?
Let’s look at Hallam’s blog, which is on our company website. Our blog gets a lot of traffic, and a large amount of this is from people asking Google questions, or trying to find out “how to” do something. Or perhaps there’s something topical that people want to find out more information about, such as the LinkedIn password hacking debacle. Looking at our Analytics for that time, we got found through lots of searches for keywords like:
all of which came to a blog post that Susan Hallam wrote about the recent hacking of LinkeIn passwords.
By the same token, if you’re stuck for blogging ideas, take a look at your Analytics data. Are there any longtail searches in there that you could address with a blog post?
How can I get my blog on my website?
And if you are using a free service, such as Blogger or WordPress worry not. You may be able to integrate your blog into your main site. Have a word with your developer/s. They will be able to tell you the best way to proceed. Alternatively, if your website uses a content management system (CMS), this may have blogging functionality built in. Websites built on WordPress for example, let you do this quite easily. If you can’t go down either of those routes, it might be worth looking at a redesign for your website using a different platform.
If you already have your blog set up on your website, make sure you’re updating it regularly, so that your readers (and Google!!) keep coming back for more!
Further reading
Is Writing Guest Blog Posts a Good Idea?
