Innovation & data-driven digital marketing.

You may or may not have heard that for digital marketing and SEO purposes, every website needs a blog. You may have even started one, with a few posts from last year, then you get off track when more important projects come along. For small business owners or managers, it’s a common tale.

However, if you’re not a marketing pro, you might not understand the intrinsic value that a blog will bring to both your website and business as a whole. It’s no longer just a ‘nice-to-have’ feature; it’s a must-have.

“Your website must have a blog to be effective for SEO,” explains Matthew Capala, founder of Alphametic, “According to Hubspot, websites that blog regularly receive 55 percent more traffic and over 80 percent more leads.”  AKA traffic and sales you can’t afford to miss out on.

Let’s break down the basics and explain why when it comes to small-to-medium business, every website needs a blog.

1. Maximize Your Organic Online Presence

Very simply put, the more blog posts you produce, the more available content exists for people to find and surf your website. If you have a blog with 20 posts, you have a much larger online presence than a website with zero posts. Users will stay on your site longer if there’s more information to consume.

What’s more, blogging also provides material for social media posts (linking to your blog), which is another digital marketing tactic that small businesses struggle often struggle with. Especially if you’re just starting, developing an online presence can be a daunting task. Blogging allows you to build your brand organically.

2. Connect with Your Audience

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, or if your target audience is customers, clients, investors or channel partners—content allows you to connect to them and offer value-driven insights.   

When you create user-engaging content, you’re able to communicate directly with your audience to:

  • Better explain your product or service
  • Solve a problem they have
  • Offer suggestions and advice
  • Answer FAQs
  • Provide a how-to guide

Bottom line—you can offer value to your audience. Neil Patel, digital marketing guru, says it best, “To me, the underlying philosophy of blogging has to be rooted in a commitment to giving massive value. I’ve seen the impact of this approach when writing content, no matter what topic or industry the content concerns.”

3. Rank Higher (Boost SEO)

Understanding how search engine results pages (SERPs) are ranked—and all the tips and tricks that go into it—is complicated, to say the least. Just take a look at Baclinko’s list of 200 ranking factors. However, one thing that’s easy to wrap your head around is that Google ranks pages, not sites. So the more high-quality pages with value-driven, optimized content (i.e., your blog posts), the better opportunity for ranking on SERPs. When your site organically ranks higher, more people can find you when searching and click on your site–thus increasing traffic.

4. Increase Site Traffic

Now that you understand the basics of ranking, here are a few stats from Hubspot to help you comprehend just how much more site traffic you can expect from consistent blogging:

  • Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts.
  • B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost three times more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month.
  • B2C companies that blogged 11+ times per month got more than four times as many leads than those that blog only 4-5 times per month.

5. Drive Sales and Leads

Once you have a higher ranking and increased traffic, blog posts will help to complete the customer journey. Basically, this equates to the notion—you got people in the door, now what are you going to do with them?

Consumers are 131 percent more likely to buy from a brand immediately after they consume early-stage, educational content, according to new research. Blog posts can provide educational content that help your customers understand your products and services.

Another recent survey showed that 81 percent of companies were able to directly tie revenue generated by content. Including a call-to-action (CTA) will direct blog readers to a purchase or contact page, so that they can convert. Which also allows you to measure the ROI of your blog.

6. It Ties in With Email Marketing

Blog posts and email marketing goes together like peanut butter and jelly. If you have a subscriber list or email marketing strategy of any kind, you likely have the goal of sending out X number of emails per month. What do you send? Links to your blog posts, of course! (That then drive leads and sales).

Email campaigns can drive more traffic to your blog, but you can also include opt-ins on your blog posts, to drive more sign-ups to your subscriber base—it’s a symbiotic marketing relationship.

Harsh Agrawal, blogging expert, and owner of Shoutmeloud, explains, “Your email list is the biggest asset of your blog, and all of those subscribers are people who love your blog. These people are also your brand advocates, so your goal should always be to give them something extra.” The two can work together to build brand awareness and continuously reach your audience in new ways.

7. Create Linkworthy, Value-Driven Content

One of the many Google ranking factors is the number of backlinks your website has (external links that link to your site). Linkbuilding (outreach to acquire high-quality backlinks) is a whole other game, but the main point you should know is that other sites will not link to yours’ unless you have resources to link to.

If you write high-quality, value-driven blog posts where you demonstrate your expertise, industry connections will take notice and link to your content. For example, you can use internal proprietary data (such as customer sales history), to glean stats and insights on industry trends and create high-value articles.  

8. Establish Industry Authority

Blog posts offer a platform to describe previous success and experience. If you’re a business owner with years in the industry, you can draw on your expertise to create thought-leadership pieces. Case studies are also valuable content that allows your team to showcase client wins and effective projects. Blog posts that draw on knowledge and expertise will allow your business to establish authority within your vertical.

Achieve Long Term Results — Start Your Blog Today

Business owners and managers often wear many hats and work long days. Especially with SMBs, it can be challenging to actually find the time to sit down and write blog posts. When time is your most valuable resource, you need to make sure you there’s a clear ROI. Blogging can offer that, as well as long term results. Once you publish blog posts, the pages are ranked, and with evergreen content (articles with valuable information that doesn’t go out-of-date), you can see traffic for years to come. Beyond that, every website needs a blog to increase brand awareness, traffic to their site and provide their target audience with valuable content. In our digital landscape, it’s necessary to stand out from your competitors.


What’s stopping you from devoting time and resources to your blog? If you need help creating your content plan, get in touch with us today!