Over the past month or so, we have had several clients come to us seeking advice about “How can I get found on the search engines?” Our answer has consistently been – “Start a blog”.
Why is a blog so important? There are several reasons why blogs are great, but really we want to focus on the most important one, which answers the question of how to get found by Google:
Blogs are the most cost effective way to improve the search engine rankings of your website.
First of all, let’s clear up what we mean by a “blog”. Basically a blog is just an informational website or part of a website consisting of different posts, or articles.
Usually a blog allows for users to leave comments, and that’s a great feature but for our purposes not completely necessary (although, again – a very nice feature).
Content is King
Secondly, let me explain what the number one ingredient is to making your website appear on the first page of Google: content. The text, verbiage, wording, words, etc. on your page is what Google craves. If the words on your webpage are crumbs, Google is like a hungry puppy dog searching the floor for every dropped morsel it can find. If your website doesn’t have very many crumbs…Google will quickly move on to the NEXT website.
The reason we recommend blogs so often is that they provide that content for search engines like Google. Particularly if you are a small business or non-profit, you probably need more content for your website. Many of our clients have 5 – 10 page websites, yet their competition on the internet has websites with 30 – 50 pages. Not exactly an even playing field when it comes to who is going to appear higher up on Google.
So what do you put on your blog? The simple answer is anything remotely related to your industry.
Let’s think about what the goal is first and then work backwards. We want to feed Google words. More precisely, we want to feed Google keywords that relate to our business. If you do web design, lawn care, or hair cuts you want to feed Google the keywords “web design”, “lawn care”, and “hair cuts”, respectively.
Any topic you can think of that will naturally include those keywords is what you’re looking for.
It will take time. Even if you only write once every other month, you’re still adding valuable content to your website. But for many small businesses it’s the best and most cost effective way to improve your search engine rankings.
