How a Blog Helps Your Site

[vangogh]

Via Small Business SEM (http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/blog-benefits-traffic-links-and-indexed-pages/2246/) I cam across a study about small businesses and blogging

Study Shows Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors (http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5014/Study-Shows-Small-Businesses-That-Blog-Get-55-More-Website-Visitors.aspx)

A few quick stats from the study. The average company that blogs has:



55% more visitors
97% more inbound links
434% more indexed pages


Some good indication that having a blog will benefit your site and business.

Speaking of my own site and business, I can tell you that the majority of people who find me do so through my blog and that the blog does help my sales copy pages rank well. The blog also goes a long way toward convincing people who do find me to contact me and hire me.

I know some of you out there are hesitant about blogging and I also won't pretend running a blog is easy. It does take a lot of work. However it can be and is a great way to market your site.

[rezzy]

Steven, I agree with you whole heartedly. But I want to add a few notes.

The simple act of having a blog wont net you anything. It takes targeted posts and work to develop it. For instance, the act of installing Wordpress wont net you anything but a blank site.

When I was regularly blogging and posting on several forums, the combined effect boosted my site.

[Harold Mansfield]

Steven, I agree with you whole heartedly. But I want to add a few notes.

The simple act of having a blog wont net you anything. It takes targeted posts and work to develop it. For instance, the act of installing Wordpress wont net you anything but a blank site.

When I was regularly blogging and posting on several forums, the combined effect boosted my site.

So true. Just having a blog is not the holy grail, you have to know how they work, and how to make it work for you.

[vangogh]

Bryan I absolutely agree. I tried to point it out by mentioning that blogging isn't easy. It definitely takes work and the simple act of installing a blog on your site won't get you any extra traffic.

I just wanted to point out how blogs can be a great way to market your site and bring more traffic to it. Done right a blog can be a great resource. However if you don't work on it then it's no different than anything else you don't work at.

This thread is for those people who don't think a blog can help their site. The stats show that it can. You are right though that you have to do more than install the software.

[Spider]

I have a blog that is just another page on my site (two pages, actually.) It is no different than any other page on the site, with the exception that it is updated fairly frequently as opposed to the other pages that are quite static.

How does this differ (as far as this conversation is concerned) from a separate blog on Blogger or Wordpress, adding hubs to Hubpages, a lens to Squidoo, etc. or a fanpage or group on Facebook?

To the initiated, these may all be very different things, but to the uninitiated they seem very similar.

[vangogh]

All the things you mentioned have value, but in different ways. First the blogs. The main advantage to something like Blogger or WordPress.com is that they're free. The hosting is free and the application is free. You sign up and you have a blog. That's fine for people who don't already have a site, but if you have a site I think you're always better off hosting the blog yourself on your site.

If you already have a site then it doesn't cost any more for hosting to add a blog. Wordpress (at WordPress.org) is one among several free applications you can add to your site. One of the reasons I like WordPress is it can be used for the rest of the site too. If you look at my site, every page on the site is created through WordPress. Not every page is part of the blog. WordPress lets you create pages outside of the blog, but by making them WordPress pages your whole site is easier to manage.

So why have it on your own site. As much as we might all wish it were otherwise, it's hard to build links to sales copy. There really isn't a compelling reason to link to someone's sales copy. It'll happen sometimes, but not a lot beyond the home page. People link to informational pages. Your blog posts are those informational pages. Granted you can write the same thing you would in a blog post and have it be an ordinary html page on your site. The page and site in general will be easier to manage with a CMS and today's blogging platforms tend to be CMSs.

Blogs should also send out a ping every time a new post or page is published (as long as you've told it to), which very quickly brings search engines to index your content. Blogs also publish your posts as an rss feed which allows people to absorb your content without having to visit your site. at first that may seem counter productive, but it's more important to have people read your content than worry about how and where they read your content.

For example I'm subscribed to about 550 blogs at the moment. I read them through a feedreader. If I had to visit the sites to get the content, I'd probably read about a dozen or so. That means there are some 530 sites out there that have my attention, but wouldn't if they didn't publish a feed.

RSS also allows other types of applications to grab your content so it really opens you up to being found in many more ways than a static html page.

Assuming you've put in the work on your blog it should help you establish trust and a level of authority with readers. As an example I'll use yourself. You offer a lot of thought provoking ideas here on the forum. I may not always agree with you, but you have a lot of good stuff to share. So many of your forum posts could easily be tweaked to be blog posts. And the same way those posts start discussions here they could start them on your blog. By having comments on your blog you turn your site from a one way transfer of information from you to the reader into an interactive transfer of information. Helps you establish trust and authority with your readers and helps you better understand what your market wants.

I'm sure I could come up with more, but lets get to the other things you mentioned.

With Squidoo and Facebook and similar you're leveraging the popularity of those sites to expand your reach. Those sites will generally have more people visiting them than you will on your site. So you might have a better chance of being found on Squidoo than on your site, especially in search engines. A site like Squidoo has tons of links pointing into it. If you wrote an article and placed it on your site/blog and on Squidoo in all likelihood the article on Squidoo would be the one to rank. So you're leveraging the authority of Squidoo to build attention.

Same thing with Hubpages or Facebook, which also gives you more ways to interact with people.

With those other sites you are also giving something away. Your content might rank, but it still sends traffic to the other site. Your content is also at the mercy of that other site. I don't foresee it happening, but why couldn't Facebook close shop next week. Or even if they don't close shop why couldn't they decide to close your account for one reason or another.

To me your blog becomes the central place to market your site and business. You have control over it and done right it can help your site be found in many ways, and it helps you from relationships with potential clients/customers and people you'll network with. Then you expand your reach by going out to other sites and adding content on them and using that content to direct people back to your own blog. Maybe an offline analogy would be your site is your store and those other sites are like the flea market you sell at on weekends or the trade show you go to every month. Your site is still the main point of operation, but the flea market and trade shows can make you visible to people who haven't been to your store. Not that they've seen you hopefully they will seek out and find your store.

I hope that answers the question or at least some of it. There's so much more I could write about blogging and why I think it's good for your site and how to blog effectively.

[rezzy]

Blogging done right is a win. When I was solidy blogging, my site was ranking and getting a large number of visits. Its a great way to establish a base.

I second, that hosting your blog is 100 times better then using a free version, ie) Wordpress.org or blogger.com. You are releasing the benefit to that company and it doesnt boost your page rank.

[Spider]

Thanks for the comments. Seems I have been doing it right by hosting my own blog. But it is nothing more than another html page on my site. When I want to update it = write another blog entry, I revise the copy on my computer and FTP upload it to the server at the hosting company. Just as I would with any other page on the site.

Can I add this Ping thing and RSS? How do I do that?

[Harold Mansfield]

Thanks for the comments. Seems I have been doing it right by hosting my own blog. But it is nothing more than another html page on my site. When I want to update it = write another blog entry, I revise the copy on my computer and FTP upload it to the server at the hosting company. Just as I would with any other page on the site.

Can I add this Ping thing and RSS? How do I do that?

You can ping manually by going to any ping site like Ping Goat (http://pingoat.com/), put in your info and it will update the pinging services.

There are tutorials online that will show you how to add RSS to a static website. I found one just with a simple search, but there are many:
7 Tools To Make An RSS Feed Of Any Website | Profy | Internet news and commentary (http://profy.com/2007/09/30/7-tools-to-make-an-rss-feed-of-any-website/)

[Spider]

Excellent! Thank you.

I just "pinged" my blog. Now to look into the RSS.

[KristineS]

I think blogs can be a great help to a site and a business. I instituted having blogs for our business sites at the company where I work. The sites that have blogs are indexed more in the search engines and the blogs bring a lot of traffic to the sites.

Blogs are also a great way to spotlight things. I've been able to boost sales of certain products simply by calling them out on the blog. It does work.

As others have said, it's not a guarantee and it takes work, but a blog can help if done properly.

[vangogh]

Frederick, while you can do the pinging manually and add something to publish an rss feed, I'd recommend having the blog be on blogging software. It'll be a little more work upfront, mainly in developing the theme to look like the rest of your site, but I think you'll ultimately find it easier to update on the blogging software and you'll also gain other features and benefits with the software.

For example as it stands now you can't get any comments. Comments are a big part of blogging in my opinion. Adding that extra level of interactivity really makes a difference in having a successful blog.

[Spider]

I have been thinking about comments on my blog, VG, and tried adding a link to my blog's NetworkedBlogs home on facebook, but only one person has commented, and that was a friend of mine. (Maybe just trying to be helpful!) Of course, I haven't been getting much traffic and one must have traffic if one is to expect comments.

Which comes first, the traffic or the comments?! I fear that getting set up to accept comments will be a waste until the traffic increases, but I may have that the wrong way round.

[KristineS]

Traffic generally comes before comments, and you have to understand that for every ten people that visit your site maybe only one will leave a comment. I've always maintained the best way to get comments is to give comments. Pick a couple of blogs you admire and start leaving comments on their blogs. If they're savvy bloggers they'll stop by your blog to see what you have to say and leave a comment for you.

[vangogh]

You do need people to visit in order for them to leave a comment. You also need to write posts in a way to encourage comments. Asking specific questions and leaving posts a little open-ended helps. Then there's the chicken and egg thing where people are hesitant to comment until others have already commented.

Something I did on my blog to help with that last one was work out a comment exchange with a few other bloggers in similar situations. I checked the blogs of some forum members (mostly at the webmaster forum where I post, but also the old SBF) and found a few that lacked comments. I offered to leave comments on those blogs if the author would agree to leave comments on mine as well.

It generally didn't last too long, but if you do that with say 3 other people you'll end up with 2 -3 comments on every one of your posts for awhile. Once others see some comments they begin to comment as well. I think I did the comment exchange thing twice early on and it definitely helped.

With the traffic it can seem lonely at first blogging. I'm pretty sure I was writing mostly to myself the first six months or so. I just kept at it and used the first few months as a way to practice my blogging. Blogging ends up being a different kind of writing than usual and it can take some time to find your blogging voice. Post tend to be less formal than articles.

[nighthawk]

I was going to post this as a new topic, but I think i will post it here.

Who would you say should be the target market for your blog? Take for example my own situation - web development. The easiest option is to blog about programming techniques, maybe posting tutorials on how to achieve certain things. Sure this will help boost my profile within the development community, but will it bring more work?

The average customer probably has no interest in the actual techniques, all they want is a website that works. Those who may be interested in the blog will probably be either hobbyist programmers or other web developers, who are unlikely to hire me.

Would I be better off instead blogging about things that are of more interest to the client, eg SEO, the benefits of custom CMS etc etc... ?

[Spider]

I would (and I do) write articles that I hope will be of interest to people who might hire me - that is, small business people who want to improve their business. It seems you want to appeal to the same people, Gavin. If you want to communicate with other web developers, write a separate blog, but if you want your blog to bring in business, you have to appeal to the people who will hire you.

That means blogging about topics that interest them and how your web development service will help them solve their problems.

That's the route I have taken. But it's still lonely out there!

Coach Blog of FREDERICK PEARCE - Business Mentor and Personal Coach (http://frederickpearce.com/blog1.html)

[Harold Mansfield]

I was going to post this as a new topic, but I think i will post it here.

Who would you say should be the target market for your blog? Take for example my own situation - web development. The easiest option is to blog about programming techniques, maybe posting tutorials on how to achieve certain things. Sure this will help boost my profile within the development community, but will it bring more work?

The average customer probably has no interest in the actual techniques, all they want is a website that works. Those who may be interested in the blog will probably be either hobbyist programmers or other web developers, who are unlikely to hire me.

Would I be better off instead blogging about things that are of more interest to the client, eg SEO, the benefits of custom CMS etc etc... ?

Yes, you want to blog about the later.
It could actually work both ways. If you have an occasion to get hired on projects by other programmers or developers, articles and professional profiles outside of your blog can help with that.

If you are blogging to attract customers, you need to blog about things they understand. It's a tough line to walk...on the one hand you want to be helpful and draw traffic, on the other, you don't want to give away too much instruction that would take away from people hiring you.

[Spider]

... If you are blogging to attract customers, you need to blog about things they understand. It's a tough line to walk...on the one hand you want to be helpful and draw traffic, on the other, you don't want to give away too much instruction that would take away from people hiring you.My reply (this one) is a bit of a diversion but still on the topic of how blogging helps your business.

In the past, one had to be very careful about giving away trade secrets. You didn't want to explain too much about how you did what you wanted people to hire you for. Because then they could do it themselves and not hire you.

Today, the world is very different. Today, people don't have time to do all the things they want done. They are also intelligent enough to know they wouldn't be able to do it as well as a professional who does it every day, even after they have spent some time learning how to do it. But they also know there are plenty of charlatans who don't really know how to do what they claim.

Therefore, I propose that a business owner must tell a lot more about how they do what they do. In fact, it seems to me that the person who is open and honest and forthcoming with a full and detailed explanation of what they do and how they do it, will get more business. Today, it takes a full explanation to prove you know how to do what you promise, to earn the trust of the client.

Only when they have the trust - when they are confident you know how to do your job and can make a professional job of it - will they hire you. More explanation is needed today, not less. Besides, if your skill is only at a level that anyone can copy it, perhaps it's time to improve your skills.

[billbenson]

How about "how to find a good web developer / designer" blog. Describe everything from how to do a G search for credibility, look at source they have written, active or static sites, ... Put a list of web designers on there and a star rating. You could put some tutorials on there, but make them "how to analyze why a site is or isn't working".

It may also send business elsewhere, but on the other hand it positions you as a good authority with nothing to hide an may improve business if done right?

[vangogh]

With who your audience is when blogging I think there are two audiences. One is your client/customer and one is others in your industry. It's the second group that is going to link to you and spread the word about your blog.

It comes down to the goals you have for your blog.

Gavin you and I are in similar situations. I write my posts mainly to help other web designers/developers or anyone who works on their own site. That is unlikely to ever be my clients. Some of my clients probably read my blog, but I would think most don't. However the blog can still help sell my services to clients. Your clients aren't really looking to do it themselves. They don't need to know how. What they want to know is that if they hire you that you know how. Write tutorials for other designers and developers shows you know how. You don't have to write your posts specifically for your clients in order to convince them to hire you.

I think a lot of people make the mistake that their blog posts should be focused on selling services and products to clients and customers. Other than your most loyal customers no one really cares that your widget now comes in green in addition to blue and red. No one really cares that you've upgraded your widget from version 2.1 to 2.2. Some people will care and I'm not suggesting you shouldn't post that information. What I am saying is that shouldn't be the focus of your blog.

The best blogs are those that talk about something related to what you're selling without actually trying to sell anything. Your sales pages are for the direct selling. Your blog generally isn't. And I say generally, because there are no hard and fast rules here. You should realize though that no matter what you do the majority of people reading your blog are never going to buy anything from you.

[Harold Mansfield]

I think a lot of people make the mistake that their blog posts should be focused on selling services and products to clients and customers. Other than your most loyal customers no one really cares that your widget now comes in green in addition to blue and red. No one really cares that you've upgraded your widget from version 2.1 to 2.2. Some people will care and I'm not suggesting you shouldn't post that information. What I am saying is that shouldn't be the focus of your blog.

The best blogs are those that talk about something related to what you're selling without actually trying to sell anything. Your sales pages are for the direct selling. Your blog generally isn't. And I say generally, because there are no hard and fast rules here. You should realize though that no matter what you do the majority of people reading your blog are never going to buy anything from you.
That is where self promotion comes into play in your ad spots. Nothing I hate more than to see a "company blog" with adsense on it.

If your design accommodates ad blocks, you should use them for self branding and marketing, not trying to sell someone else's stuff...but then again, it would depend on how popular your blog is.
If you are doing gang buster traffic, then the blogging itself can become a source of income.

[rebecca16]

......Some good indication that having a blog will benefit your site and business.
......
i would like to share my experience with you guys as far as blogging is concerned. my husband and i both are finance people. we have a site related to finance and other stuff. when we started, the main task for us, was to get a good site for our company, we wanted a good site, so had to invest a good amount of money to get it designed and rolled.
once we were done with a technically & Search engine sound web-site, we started working...
after a few days somebody advised us to get some SEO work done, we told them that the designer has already optimized the site, then he advised and told us completelty about what is SEO, its advantages etc. again we contacted some SEO expert, again he gave us a huge amount of quotation to work on the site... anywayz i hired a freelancer from phillipines, this guy over promised us, after three months of launch of my site and before that freelancer started working on my site our site kept fluctuating between 15th & 20th page of google, and when this freelancer started working on it, in 15 days time the site got lost in google, i mean i personally couldnt spot it in first 30 pages, this guy called it 'google dance' and said it will bounce back. however in two months time i couldnt spot the site. now this guy told us that he wants to update the site daily with news, feeds etc on my site, being new, i fell for it again, and at the end of third month i had invested a huge amount and w/o any results.
now being fedup with his working and losing huge money, i started reading SEO my self, there were loads of things like links, backlinks, articles, press releases etc. one this that i felt really easy was blogging. so first thing i did was to kick out that freelancer, i created my own blog, and started updating it daily, in the next 6 months i started getting traffic to my blog, i had huge contacts in Facebook and linked in, i started sharing my blog with my friends and acquaintances on these major sites, now my site is in first 3 pages of google! and i have realized the importance of blogging

[greenoak]

:)i actually look at my blog as a way to sell things..slightly indirectly but still!!! as in look what we just got!! ..to me its like a big fat pin up page to tempt people to come see for themselves....to make them more likely to get in that car and make that trip to our store...and i know the blogs help make that happen...

im so busy i never thought of working hard on posts to educate my peers as a likely goal.... i dont see how that would help my store..but i dont do consulting or any service ......i do see some real good things from far away fans tho...shared interests , feedback, and cyber friendship and networking.....
now i have 2 blogs and facebook.....and see them all as a big plus...
I WOULD NEVER DO ADSENSE....I HAVE ENOUGH TO SELL!!!!
ann
Green Oak Shop Talk (http://www.greenoakshoptalk.blogspot.com)
magpie cottage (http://www.magpiecottage.blogspot.com)

[vangogh]

never thought of working hard on posts to educate my peers as a likely goal.... i dont see how that would help my store.

Say I'm someone who's interested in antiques, but doesn't really know much about them. I'm not sure what would be a good purchase and what would just be buying old junk. I go online to research things and come across your blog. I read a few articles that answer my questions and in the process come to trust you. Now assuming I'm in your area, who's store do you think I'm coming to? Yours.

Maybe I'm someone who also writes about antiques and I'm looking for other blogs I can quote and link to in an article I'm writing. I find your blog and link to it. So do a lot of other people. As a result your entire site starts to rank better in search engines driving more people to the site and to the store.

[greenoak]

THATS SOUNDS LIKE WHAT IM TRYING TO DO ALL THE TIME....what we call word of mouth or referrels..
.and hopefully not get boring to them.............i really try to get the good search words in there too.....
as usual i have no benchmarks for my thing.... im only getting 50 to 70 hits a day...but i hear about it a lot in the store and on the phone....almost anyone who is making a huge trip to come/aka the big spenders has read my blog...
i dont understand a lot of it but its been a great thing for us...and totally fun too...
ann
www.magpiecottage.blogspot.com

[Paper Shredder Clay]

I totally agree with you.


That is where self promotion comes into play in your ad spots. Nothing I hate more than to see a "company blog" with adsense on it.

If your design accommodates ad blocks, you should use them for self branding and marketing, not trying to sell someone else's stuff...but then again, it would depend on how popular your blog is.
If you are doing gang buster traffic, then the blogging itself can become a source of income.