Blog is one of those words that is overused and often misunderstood. To be very brief, there are two main reasons to include a blog page in your website.
The first is that to blog = to communicate. It tells people what you are thinking, that you know your stuff and adds credibility and kudos to your online presence. They are also a great way to include lots and lots of content in a space that is now becoming increasingly image-led. Your blog archive is a useful, tidy library of words, to be accessed when relevant and appropriate, cutting the clutter from your main web pages.
The second reason to blog is because search engines love changing content. By adding new blogs even just once or twice every month you are feeding the SEO spiders that crawl all over your pages looking for relevant words that will satisfy a Google search. You can introduce all sorts of topics through blogging, using keywords that draw people to your website. Example: as a garden centre, you might not have a whole page of your site dedicated to how to prune your roses - but a blog on the subject will convince Google that you are the business that local gardeners need to speak to.
A good blog is largely informal and often an opinion piece. According to Search Engine Journal (June 2018): "Google wants substance, evidence, and facts from authority entities on whatever the topic may be. Turns out, longer content typically has these elements baked into it." This covers much of the reasoning behind recent thinking that we should include longer articles. However, I believe - and the SEJ concurs - "Give users what they want regardless of how many words it takes to say it". I completely agree that to drag out a subject unnecessarily is pointless. You might get the traction from SEO results but you won't get people hanging around long enough if you are verbose, boring or unhelpful.
You can use your blog again. It could become a press release with a good enough angle. You can certainly link to the whole article via your social media and include it in your e-newsletters. You can also break it down into bite-size chunks for shorter social media posts. So, investing time in your blog activity will save you time on others.
My advice is to set up a blog page, add to it regularly and check your Google Analytics to see if you are attracting new visitors to your site through it. I am confident you will be pleased.
This entry was posted on October 8, 2018