With the huge success of blog-based websites like WordPress and Joomla (i.e., Content Management Systems), many small business owners looking to upgrade their outdated websites are being told to start a blog-based website platform. To help small business owners understand the essential importance of blogs, we put together an easy to follow summary to answer the typical questions we hear from small businesses: Why Should I Blog? What should I Blog about?
Why Should My Small Business Blog?
- Blog-based websites are essentially “free” – you can create a blog on your own with minimal technical help
- Your blog provides up-to-date, information-driven content to the static elements of your website
- Blogs will build your organic Search Engine Rankings and drive more traffic to your website; Google loves websites with constantly changing information and websites that provide usefulness and value to searchers
- Blogs add credibility to your business help to establish you as an industry “leader”
- Blogs help you manage content creation & delivery for other Social Media sites like Facebook & Twitter
- Blogs formats are great for hosting and sharing video and photography
What Should I Blog About?
- Up-to-date overviews about new products or services at your company
- News about your industry
- Lists (Top Ten Best or Worst)
- Tutorials / How To’s – Don’t forget use both text and video formats
- Share about your experiences (include photos/videos)
- Occasionally write posts about and link to other interesting industry blogs
Here are a few tips on writing blogs that are best optimized to help build your organic Search Engine Rankings:
- Unique, Useful, Well-Written Content. Be Engaging.
- Allow Comments, but protect yourself from spam using spam protecting plug-ins
- Incorporate Social Media sharing tools for each blog.
- Generally posts with 250 – 600 are sufficient
- Spelling and Grammar.
- Don’t forget to add links within your posts.
- Link to other areas of your website and outside websites.
- When posting photos on your Blog, be sure to fill in the Alternative Text tagging for photos & videos (Google loves when alternative text is addressed.)
- Use the categorization tool for your blog posts with terms relevant to potential searchers
- Tag your posts with relevant, searchable tag words. (But, please no more than 8 – 10 tags per post.)
Tahoe Production House offers complete blog writing services for your business, including blog template integration with your site, blog content strategy and blog post writing.
