The new millennium brought in a flood of new ideas for the World Wide Web, including online shopping, downloaded music, & our personal favorite: blogs. Short for web logs, everyone from pre-high school teens to professional journalists began using blogs as a platform to voice their opinion on a wide variety of issues. Hosting sites such WordPress & Blogger helped fuel the steady stream of blogs, providing readers with a blog about…well…pretty much everything.
The Difference Between A Blog & A Website
Blogs have been used in an even wider capacity recently, as business owners are now using blogs on their websites. To some it seems counterintuitive or even downright confusing. You may be asking yourself “What is the difference between a website & a blog?” or “Should I start a blog?” The answers to those questions are “Lots.” & “Yes.”
Your website provides your readers with content about your business & the services you offer. Blogs on the other hand are a way to consistently provide fresh content about your industry & periodic updates about your company for your audience. We suggest you use both. The results of adding a blog to your website include increased SEO & creating an invaluable personal connection with clients.
Adding A Blog Increases SEO Opportunities
Adding a blog to a website is an SEO secret that will not be a secret for long, & there are three good reasons why:
- Indexed pages
- Link building
- Fresh content.
Remember, SEO is not just about repeating the same words over & over in 1 page. Rather search engine optimization is derived from all the pages on your website. Worded very fancily by web geeks everywhere, every new post or page is called an indexed page. By writing new blog posts every week, you are providing yourself with more indexed pages. The more indexed pages you have, the more likely your SEO will increase.
Adding a blog to your website also give you more backlinks.
A backlink is just an overly complicated word for a link on another website for your website. So, quite simply, you want lots of them. For example, if you clicked on the link below, it would take you to the New York Times website.
Does it necessarily make it a good backlink? No.
Yes, you have the link, but it is not a very relevant link (much as we would like to think the New York Times and Develare have lots in common) and it is not as authoritative as if it were to appear on a website like LinkedIn. So in short, backlink it up as much as you can, but realize this benefit is dependent on other factors.
The best reason yet to add a blog to your website is for the fresh content.
Google is constantly looking for the most up to date content & so are its users. By constantly providing Google with new information, you are keeping yourself a step ahead of the competition. You know that the fresh content you create will in turn provide you backlinks & indexed pages galore!
The Human Connection
Lastly, remember as with every aspect of your business, there is a human component that should always be included. Take the time to connect with other bloggers & your clients through your blog. Ask for their feedback. Write about topics that spark their interest. By keeping your audience constantly engaged, you will have tapped into a valuable aspect of your blog that SEO cannot provide.
