Blog Much? You Should.

Got a question? Got a problem? What do you do? Google it (sorry Bing). If your company has the answers people need, you have to rank first—or at least on the first page. Page 2 won’t cut it—out of sight, out of mind. Money can buy you happiness (if ranking at the top of a search makes you happy), but there is something you can do that won’t cost an arm and a leg. It’ll give you an advantage when it comes to search rankings. Blog. Do it now, and do it often.

With the amount of internet content created daily, you can’t afford to be standing still if you want your company to stay on top. Sure it may have taken forever to carefully craft the perfect keyword-laced content for your site, but then what? Static content becomes stagnant content. Search engines like Google favor sites that post new content regularly over ones that are frozen in time. Unless you want to update all of your pages weekly, start blogging.

A blog is a great way to add fresh content without disturbing the rest of your site. Each article can be still be full of all the favored keywords and search phrases you want your company to rank higher with. You don’t have to post daily—but often—for your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) value to rank higher with the search engine powers that be.

No, this doesn’t mean posting long strings of daisy-chained keywords and phrases to hidden pages. Black hat SEO tactics will hinder your efforts, not help them. At the very least, you could post regurgitated content from the rest of your site over and over again, with different wording. As long as the posts are peppered with your keywords, they’ll still count toward boosting your rankings—but they have to be seen!

While something is better than nothing, self-serving articles won’t gain you readership either. Yes, your company and products might be great, but a blog isn’t an ad. If you want to get the most from your posts, you have to keep people coming back for more. Make your content valuable—stop talking about yourself!

Valuable content is sharable content. That’s where the power comes from. Google and the bunch eat up shared content! If your posts get likes, shares, tweets, etc. on social media networks, your rankings will increase quicker.

If you want bonus points, you need Google+. As much as I find it useless, its Google’s own social network. Getting your articles +1’d and shared on Google+ will do more for your search rankings than “mere” Facebook likes.

To provide value, give your customers what they want. Know your market. Know your customers. Give them info that pertains to their industry and to them—what they’d find relevant, things they’d find useful. Also give your posts style—personality. Be a thought-leader, post your opinions on the matters you present. That will make you an authoritative resource to your customers. Plus, you’ll give a more inside, personal view of your company, which assures them you know what you’re talking about, and that you know them. What they want. Simple, right?

The lesson here is that if you want to get noticed, you need to keep up—sink or swim. That’s brand power. While that’s just my opinion, I say: get blogging!