Don’t blog.
Perhaps I said that without enough context. In an age where every voice you hear is telling you that blogging is going to solve all your SEO problems, I am going to take a stand against the mainstream, and tell you not to.
Now, so you will stop questioning my sanity, I’ll tell you why.
Blogging is a good way of continually providing fresh, relevant content to the people already visiting your site. It’s also an easy way to target many long-tail keywords. Yes, blogging has its benefits. But it’s not the end-all solution to all your online marketing problems, like 3 of the last 5 major SEO companies I’ve interviewed seemed to think. Here are 5 things that blogging won’t do for your company:
Blogging won’t:
1. Bring other pages on your website to the top of searches for their targeted keywords.
2. Solve the problem of poor site structuring commonly prevalent on sites that haven’t really focused on SEO in the past.
3. Make you look high tech. Blogging is no longer a state-of-the-art fad.
4. Improve your conversion rates. If your website frustrates or confuses your visitors, you’re losing customers. You should be using CRO (conversion rate optimization) to increase the percentage of the visitors already on your site that will make a purchase.
5. Make maintaining your website any easier. Blogging only adds to the required effort you must put into your site – a site with a stale blog often looks worse than it would have without one.
6. BONUS: Blogging won’t solve world hunger. However, you can take a crack at that. Or at least make a small dent, at freerice.com. When you’re bored.
In short: blogging isn’t a substitute for a decent website. First, do on-page SEO optimization for what you currently have. Next, learn about link-baiting and implement a good content creation policy. Finally, integrate your website into your current promotional material, monthly newsletter, etc. Bring users to your site (which by now should be actually useful) who are already interested in your company.
After you’ve done all these things, and still have money and resources left in your marketing budget, have at it. Start a blog. It can be useful to your potential customers. After all, what are you reading right now?
