Why get a blog set up at the same time you’re arranging your new web design package?
As someone who has both been a paid professional blogger for other websites and also blogged for my own consulting business, I definitely feel the sooner you start that blog, the better.
Here at Nextfly, our web design experts frequently attach blogs to new website designs even before those sites have been formally launched on the Web.
Lea Goldman, senior editor for Forbes Magazine says about having a small business website blog:
“Those do-it-yourself sites embody the very spirit of entrepreneurism. What do blogs add to the small-business dialogue that a whole host of magazines, cable channels and Web sites don’t? In addition to transmitting news, industry gossip and occasional rants, the best small business blogs offer interactivity, allowing readers to chime into the dialogue with their own bright ideas.
There are, unfortunately, too many small business blogs peddling the same prosaic resources you can get from a simple google search. The better ones at least offer fresh insight on the mundane and first-hand accounts from the entrepreneurial front lines
Sure, these are wonderful reasons for starting a blog with your new website. But I think there are even better reasons why your web designer should include a blog right from the get-go:
Blogs Add Keyword Pages to Your Website
Plain and simple, a blog adds new pages filled with important keywords for your website. Lots of new pages. And they’re free pages (if you write them yourself) that you can fill with posts as often as you desire from the day your site is born on the Internet.
Plus, if you write your posts by making them as keyword focused as possible, they’ll provide some good juicy treats for search engine spiders to crawl over, enabling you to achieve a delectable organic page rank relatively quickly.
And search engine ranking is important.
You can have affiliates from here to the moon, but coming up in relevant search engine results pages organically through your own website’s blog posts is like eating dessert before the steamed broccoli comes to the table. Yeah, it is that good for you and your business!
Blogs Build Confidence and Website Profit
A blog enables you to work on your business’s “visitor to conversion” ratio. What the heck is that, you ask? It’s an all-important calculation that determines the really good stuff for you and your business in terms of promoting and achieving profits. It means the difference between merely attracting a lot of window shoppers (you could say) and turning them into bona fide buying customers walking through your website’s front door.
Consider: Your website visitors read you, they find your posts compelling and what do they do? They don’t just “visit” your site anymore, they actually start buy from you.
Cha-ching! It does have a nice little ring to it, doesn’t it?
A blog Makes You and Your Business Authentic and Personal
The blog itself is, realistically speaking, about you, your expertise and of course your business. Through your posts, you are able to generate the kind of customer loyalty a thriving business needs by helping your customers get to know you and your products/services. It enables newcomers to your site to know that you are available to provide quality customer service.
What difference does it make if other bloggers are being “outed” and sued for their blogging blabber? As long as you remain authentic and don’t make false statements about your competitors or steal written content from another website or blogger, you can be proud of your own creativity and authenticity. That’s all that matters.
(Read more about blogger rights and legal obligations from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a donor-funded nonprofit defending our digital rights.)
Blogs Help Raise Page Ranking Through Link Popularity
A blog that’s well written transforms you to become a trusted informational resource. Not only for your readers and customers to depend on (and buy from), but the kind of professional confidence that also empowers you to gain inbound links from other websites.
Inbound links are indeed a necessity, something money just can’t buy (for instance buying into a “link farm” which we’ll discuss in a future post.) Search engines love links from other websites that link back to yours. And there’s some “link love” also when you include text links in your blog posts to good solid website sources.
If you just don’t have the time to keep a blog current on your website?
You can always outsource. Hire a blogger to write those posts for you. Just don’t go for that cheapster on the block who works for next to nothing. He or she is bound to fly the coop where your blog is concerned the minute a better offer floats by. And trust me, one will.
Instead, opt for a blog writer who has those two E’s to back up their work: Experience and Expertise as a professional blogger. You won’t go wrong if you do.
NEXTFLY does more than provide state-of-the-art expert web design and search engine optimization, we also specialize in blogging and content writing. No job is too large or too small.
Get in touch for a free, no-hassle consultation.