Using Blogs to Boost Web Traffic and Search Engine Rankings

Bringing traffic to your website is a vital part of running a successful business today. Websites are what brings in business, they are what make money…you need to know how to utilise the tools at your fingertips in order to ensure that the right people are landing on your site when you want them to. Which is basically when they’re looking for what you sell or offer!

Keywords are what bring traffic to your website…and blogs or latest news pages are the perfect vessel for your keywords within your site. Determining which keywords are needed is a simple process and one which marketing experts excel at…keeping track of the words which have worked is a case of using web analytics to track them. Through analytics you can keep an eye on the most active keywords and adjust your blog posts or news pages accordingly…for some businesses this can change alarmingly quickly while for others they won’t change much at all.

Put yourself in your client’s shoes
Let’s imagine that you have a website which sells craft supplies; your keywords are going to be affected seasonally; during the winter months it is very likely that your potential customers are going to be searching for seasonally specific items such as “Wreath making kit” and “Children’s Christmas crafts”. You need to be on top of this before it happens…so your blog is loaded up in advance of what’s around the corner.

A pet supplies blog would have different concerns; during the summer months, pet owners will be searching for information such as “tic removal” and “pet boarding”…blogging successfully for your business is as simple as putting yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Blogs with great images and useful information are always going to be more valuable to visitors than blogs which are simply pretending to be a source of information but are merely stuffed with keywords. People will share a useful, funny or entertaining blog, they will like it on Facebook and they will also return at a later date to check out your latest posts.

This is why a quality blog is vital if you want your business to be taken seriously. A blog which has not been updated in months is like a red flag to a casual visitor…people see it as a suspicious sign…something which calls into question the integrity of a company and which may indicate how that company performs.

An interactive blog is a bigger blog
Allowing visitors to interact with you via your blog is a good idea because it instantly broadens your base. People can comment, ask questions and answer questions in quizzes as well as give opinions…and all the time they are inadvertently ensuring that your content gets spread further afield.

Add share buttons
Share buttons allow users of your blog to click and spread the word; a share button is a fast and simple way for your visitors to show their social networks something which they like or have been affected by. Facebook, Reddit, StumbledUpon and Twitter all have buttons which you can add to your blog and make your news and views more widely readable.

Keep your blog active and keep it well maintained. Ensure that it is relevant to your desired audience and keep an eye on what’s working and what isn’t…and you’ll find it an invaluable tool.