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True or False – Should EVERY Business be Blogging in 2021?

Written by Ella Pegrum on .

Over the years, it has become apparent that Google favours sites with fresh and relevant content. But, as Google’s algorithms get smarter and quality guidelines get stricter, many businesses are left wondering how they can tailor their websites to suit. This is where the beauty of a blog comes in.

Blogs can benefit businesses of any size, in any industry. This guide will take you through exactly why every business should be blogging in 2021 and how you can get started.

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(https://unsplash.com/photos/3GZNPBLImWc)

The Benefits Of Blogging

If you’re not already blogging, now is a great time to start. Read on to discover just a few added benefits for businesses that blog.

1. Boosts SEO Potential

The SEO value of a blog is often the main reason most businesses choose to utilise them.

When Google is figuring out where to rank your pages, they reward those that meet specific content criteria. One of the methods that Google uses to analyse your content is E-A-T:

  • Expertise
  • Authoritativeness
  • Trustworthiness

If your blog content is being written by an authoritative and trustworthy source, and you can prove this with Author bios, it’ll have a far higher chance of ranking. Stronger rankings, for a larger pool of keywords, will put your business in the spotlight and increase traffic and sales opportunities.

Blogging also boosts SEO potential through the use of links. You can direct ‘strength’ to your money-making pages through internal links placed cleverly throughout your blog content. And, if the content is of high-quality, you may even generate some links from referring domains. In fact, businesses with blogs generate 97% more inbound links than businesses without blogs!

2. Builds Trust With Customers

Creating valuable blog content helps to build trust with your audience. Visitors are far more likely to revisit your business if you post regular content of high value. If you prove that you’re worth listening to, visitors won’t even bother heading to competitive sources for further information. This leads nicely to our next point…

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3. Attracts New Leads

Studies have shown that marketers that focus on blogging are 13x more likely to generate a positive ROI. This is because, when optimised correctly, blogs can help to attract new leads.

If a user searches for a query and your blog has an in-depth guide on the matter, you’ve immediately laid down the foundations for a strong relationship, without a single sales pitch in sight.

As your blog will highlight your expertise (remember E-A-T), the reader will quickly begin to realise that they’re in safe hands. This increases the likelihood of them enquiring further about your services or product.

Blogging For Business Tips & Tricks

When blogging, it’s always best to focus on quality over quantity. Let’s take a look at how to make the most out of your blogging efforts with these ‘blogging for business’ tips.

1. Know Your Audience

Before you begin blogging, it’s important to ensure that you know your audience. If a business creates posts with no real direction or intent, the results will never follow. However, if you know what your customers care about and wish to see, engagement rates will soar. Relevant content always wins.

Gain insights into the questions your audience is asking by using these tools:

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The above resources will help you to create surefire personas that you can refer to time and time again when creating your content.

These long-tail question based terms are fantastic for FAQ and blog content!

2. Create Valuable Content

As mentioned previously, Google uses E-A-T and other various quality checkers to assess your site’s content. The algorithm will take everything into consideration; from the post’s structure (is it easy to read?), right through to the information featured. With this in mind, it’s important to make every single blog you create as valuable as possible. This includes:

  • An easy-to-read structure
  • Accurate, insightful, evergreen content
  • Optimising the content for SEO (but with no keyword stuffing)
  • A word count of 1000+ where possible (long-form posts = higher quality content)
  • Visuals (images, videos, etc but don’t forget to optimise the ALT data)

3. Take Advantage Of FAQs

If you’re concerned about finding topics and/or content inspiration, there is a simple solution. Take one FAQ, or a combination of FAQs on the same topic, and turn the answers into a blog post. You can use the tools mentioned earlier in this guide to help you here.

These types of posts help to ensure that you always have something relevant to write about. And, if the post is well-optimised, your answers may even feature in Google’s ‘people also ask’ box in the search results.

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Bear in mind that you will have to include FAQ Schema on your pages to ensure Google can identify FAQ content and feature it in these special SERP features!

4. Weekly Roundups

Another great way to use a blog to your advantage is by posting weekly or monthly roundups. The main idea behind roundups is to compile a selection of your favourite blogs/resources, providing links to each one. This is a subtle link building tactic that, when done correctly, may generate some inbound links. Some of the sources you mention may return the favour!

Are You Ready To Start Blogging?

As you can see, if your business blogs in 2021, it will reap many benefits. With help from the tips mentioned in this guide, it’s time to take your site’s content to new heights! Remember that most content marketing is about 20% creation and 80% promotion, so don’t forget to post your blogs on social media for an extra boost.

Keep up to date!

Please keep coming back to our blog throughout the year to make sure that you always have your finger on the pulse of what’s hot and trending in digital marketing.

Also make sure you check out our article on 2021 Marketing Trends to Read Up On Now ⋆ Slam Marketing

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