We love a blog post, from easily-digestible listicles to thought-provoking informational guides, but what good do they do beyond providing people something to read? Well, a whole lot actually, especially if you’re a business or brand with a website.
Ready to learn more? In this blog post, we’re going to be talking about… blog posts. Inception! However, unlike the movie, we’re hopeful this article about the importance of blog posts won’t leave you scratching your head.
What actually is a blog post?
A blog post is a piece of written content uploaded onto a website for an audience to read. Websites will typically have a specific section or page for blog posts, if they have any to share.
Blog posts are used to provide information, answer questions, share thoughts and opinions, advise and recommend, and go into detail about whatever the writer wants to share. When relevant and well-written, blog posts can be an excellent marketing tool.
Why are blog posts important?
It’s generally acknowledged by the digital marketing industry that blog posts can be an important part of a solid content marketing strategy, but why? Let’s get into what makes blog posts so effective:
Blog posts support SEO
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, is all about improving a website’s visibility on search engine results pages (also known as SERPs) to bring in more organic traffic to a website. We won’t go into the full details here (that’s a blog post for another day), but we will talk about keyword research.
Keyword research is the process of finding search terms that are relevant to your brand, business, or whatever the purpose of your website is. Not any old keyword will do; good SEO means finding the terms that people are actually searching for that relate to what you’re offering.
By identifying these keywords, along with the types of questions people are asking, you can create written content including these terms and answering these questions. As part of healthy SEO efforts, these posts could have the chance to rank on the SERPs when people search for the terms. This helps drive organic traffic (people coming to you through unpaid search engine results) to your website.
Top tip: avoid keyword stuffing! This is when you ram as many keywords as possible into a piece of writing, or use the same one over and over and over again in a way that isn’t natural. Search engines like Google will see this, view it as manipulative, and you could end up penalised for it, which in this case could mean your page getting lower rankings or removed entirely from the SERPs. Not only that, but readers will realise they’re reading something awkward, unnatural, and spammy, and it’ll turn them off.
Blog posts build trust
Trust and authority are absolutely crucial when building your brand or business. You want your audience to trust that you know what you’re talking about, and blog posts are a great way of doing this. With lots of written content rich in correct and engaging information, you help to position yourself as an expert to your audience.
If you’re the head of a bakery and your blog is full of posts about baking techniques, recipes, customer FAQs, and case studies, your audience is going to trust that you know what you’re talking about. This authority and credibility can lead to more leads, as people like to purchase from those they trust.
Have you ever heard of E-E-A-T? It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and it’s what the human reviewers at Google use to judge your content’s quality. Google wants to offer its users only the best in response to their queries, so it’ll ensure that those with a high E-E-A-T rating are the ones that get seen on the SERPs. That trust and authority you build by writing content using your expertise and experience will put you in Google’s good books, which is where you want to be!
Blog posts build brand awareness and drive engagement
Blog posts also offer the opportunity to drive engagement, as they are content that both you and your customers can share on social media to amplify your visibility. By engaging, educating, or entertaining, you’ll help strengthen the connection with your community, and they’ll be receptive to consuming more content as it comes, more likely to share it on. You’ll essentially be creating brand ambassadors for free: customers who will sing your praises, share your products and services, and stay loyal to your business.
Building awareness for your brand doesn’t just happen on social media through shared blog content. If you continue to answer the questions people are asking related to your products, services, or experiences, you’ll likely pop up again and again on their SERPs. You’ll start to become familiar, something that sticks in people’s minds, perhaps before they even search their next query.
Blog posts generate leads
Beyond landing on SERPs when people are searching with the intent to buy, there are many other types of leads that blog posts can help you secure, and ways in which that can solidify a lead that someone may have been on the fence about.
- Email newsletter sign-ups – Blog posts are a fantastic place to encourage sign-ups to your newsletter, if you have one! You’ll turn a satisfied or intrigued reader into someone who receives a reminder about your business regularly. This creates familiarity, which can lead to… well, leads.
- Downloadable content – E-books? Guide? Webinars? Whatever downloadable content you’ve got, a blog post is a great place to put it. If they like what you’ve got to say, they’re more likely to download what you’re offering. This might be the intended lead in the first place, and if not, then it can bring customers further down the funnel towards a purchase or quotation.
- Service and product pages – Internal links are a big part of a healthy SEO strategy, and what better place to naturally direct people to other pages on your site than within blog posts? Offer readers quick and easy access to the pages you want them on, be that other blog posts, services pages, or products to buy. Just make sure you link naturally! Search engines don’t like ‘click here’ links and others like them.
- Connected communities – Use the E-E-A-T concept to build a happy, loyal community that trusts your brand, and you may find your blogs lead to leads and conversions. It can’t be understated how important it is to have a community that trusts you, and blog posts truly are an essential tool in making this happen.
You need engaging blog posts
Yes, we’re telling you what to do, but in our defence, we know what we’re talking about when it comes to proper digital marketing. Blog posts are a fantastic way to support your SEO strategy, build trust, engage your audience, increase your brand awareness, and generate leads, all in one go when done well.
If you’re nervous about getting started, we can help – take a look through our handy dandy guide to writing blog posts for six tips that’ll have you typing in no time. Not feeling it? Well, that’s where we come in. Our expert copywriting services include top-notch blog posts backed by research into your business and audience, ensuring each piece does exactly what it’s supposed to do for your brand. If you fancy a chat, use our enquiry form, give us a call, or send us a message on WhatsApp.