The benefits of having a blog on your website

In case you’ve been living in a nuclear bunker for the last few years and don’t know what a blog is, Wikipedia describes one as:

Regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Each new blog post is a new page on your website but it is usually authored by the owner of the website—as opposed to the web designer. If you want to see an example of a blog post, you’re looking a one right now. Here are the benefits of having a blog on your website. Bear in mind though, you’ll only get these benefits if you keep your blog up–to–date. The main advantages are:

It keeps your site fresh

When visitors land on your site and see a post that has been made in the last few days or weeks it shows them that this is a regularly updated site. This adds to your online credibility.

Become an authority

When you give advice through your blog it boosts your profile and positions you as an expert in your field. If a potential client or customer is shopping around the fact that you have a blog and your competition doesn’t (or theirs isn’t as good as yours) could mean the difference between winning the client and not winning them.

Unique new content for the search engines

Every time you post a new blog so long as it’s of a reasonable length and it’s not a verbatim copy of something else on the web it helps to boost your search engine rankings as each new page is another way people can find your site via Google.

Soft sell to your clients/customers

If you write your blogs correctly you can use them as a way to sell your products or services in a really soft way. How? If you give away a free piece of advice about something you offer, people will be very grateful—everyone likes something for nothing! Then all you need to do is place a tiny call to action at the bottom and it could result in new business.

Less emailing

You can use blog posts to create reference points for people you email. If you have something you send to different people on a regular basis you can save yourself time by blogging about it. Then in future you can email people a link to the blog. Allow me to use an example:

When I first talk to potential clients I ask them a series of questions which give me enough information to send them a ballpark price for a website. I used to email them; now I have a list of pre-website questions on my blog. Every time I speak to a potential client I either point them to the blog post of paste the questions and put them in an email. Okay, I could store that in a text file on my computer but it’s much better on a blog as it’s there for everyone else to see.

There are numerous benefits to having a blog so long as you’re willing to put the time in to keep them up–to–date. They are also fairly inexpensive to add because most blogs run on an open source platform.

If you’re interested in getting a site with a blog call me on 07843 483 078 or get a free quote online.